Down to the Wire

Irony being what it is, it couldn't miss a chance to mess with me today as after finally hitting the one target I had been short on this month, another target promptly went and dropped. On the last day of the month. Arrggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! Still I was determined not to let it beat me but as the day wore on and Lady luck continued to avoid me I thought I was beaten. However it ain't over till the Fat Lady sings ( or until I run out of cliches to use) and I managed to get it back with the penilumate call of the day. My first reaction was to jump up wit ha Homer simpson style whoop but I figured that might make me look weird.

Or weirder depending on your point of view :-)

Regular readers will remember me talking about the lady who got slammed with a fine and a curfew for selling a goldfish to a under 16 year old ( the maximum plenty was twelve months in jail apparently). In a article about this in the newspaper today it was revealed that apparently in amongest the 3500 new laws introduced since the 90s it's now illegal to sell a squirel door to door. Yes you read that right they have made a law preventing squrriels from being sold door to door. Now we've never had anyone trying to do this in our area and I've never heard of happening anywhere else, but there must be a problem with it somewhere right. As otherwise why would we need a law about it? Right?.....

It's also come out today that Police tracking a number of registered sex offenders can't release any information about them in order to track them down as this would violate their " human rights". So there you have it we have a justice system right now where we're protected from Grannies who sell Goldfish to 14 year olds and people selling squirrels door to door but we can't know details about sex offenders on the run as it would break their human rights....

nope, nothing wrong with that system at all...

One more day of work until the easter break.

Later folks

Good to go

It was a day of highs and lows today. The low points came with the two rudest customers I've had to deal with in quite a long time but the definite high point came with my official finishing of my NVQ. I am all now signed off and the paperwork submitted. However this was followed by a minot low point as I found out that there will be no chance to do the next level as due to cutbacks in government funding it's on hold for now. However I was immensly cheered up when I got home to find a new special edition book I ordered had finally arrived ( took them long enough to get their finger out!).

So I'd like to think that the high points certainly beat out the low points of the day.

Although it has been raining for most of the day it's hasn't been that hard, so it looks like either the bad weather has missed us once again thanks to the weather null zone that centres around geektown or it's just lulling us into a false sense of security.

Either possiblity is just as likely quite frankly.

I've decided I'm alredy getting fed of the election although with all the talk of the election everyone seems to have forgotten that it hasn't actually been called yet! I was slightly amused to see the first piece of election literature arrive from our local MP extolling all of his successes working with local businesses to bring jobs to the town. The second company on his list has recently announced that their closing costing a lot of jobs.

Who did he get to proof read that leaflet, Homer simpson?

In a case today that cost taxpayers a estimated £20,000 a women was fined £1,000 and ordered to wear a electronic tag for two months and thus have a curfew of between 7pm and 6am. And her crime? Selling a goldfish to a 14 year old. Words fail me they really do.


Anyway,

Later folks.

When your good....

I found out this morning that our team had once again won in the latest team competition once again mainly thanks to BBs efforts in solving the puzzles which meant we had each got a Easter Egg again. And we then found out that every staff member is getting another easter egg as a well done for hardwork. Which means I will have had three easter eggs already and it's not even Easter yet.

Not that I'm complaining of course as that would sound a tad ungrateful. " Oh woe is me my work keeps giving me free chocolate!"

The weather has once again turned and it's been raining for most of the day. However if you believe the weather reports we're also supposed to get snow tomorrow. Which is somewhat random.

Speaking of tomorrow, I also have my last NVQ training session which should see me fully signed off and ready to recieve a very nice certificate which I'm somewhat proud of. I know I'm very good at customer service but it's nice to have a certification to prove it.

I'm having to remember to lock the door now when I leave the house in the morning as Owen being the clever little dog that he is has now figured out how to open the back door. So if I don't lock it and he gets out Grumpy will be spending the rest of the day trying to find him!

Anyway,

Later folks.

They seek him here

It seems that J alfred has suddenly become the YSA equivilant of Bigfoot or Where's Wally as in sunday school this morning the teacher ( who was YSA as well) asked if anyone had seen him recently.
" He was at the Northampton convention" came one reply
" Oh no he wasn't" came another
" He's in Westcoates ward" was another answer
" No he lives in stockport"
" Last I heard he's living in Norfolk." was another response.

So the only definite conclusion was that no one knew where he was precisely. When someone made the bigfoot analogy I got a fit of the giggles as I suddenly got the stereotypical image of someone from the deep south of america with beard and baseball cap holding up a blurry picture and saying " It was, I say it was J alfred. I came outta the house and he was in my garbage can"

Quite why my image of a steretypical southern american seems to involve them speaking in a mix of cletus and Yosamite sam I have no idea.

I've just seen a trailer for a new film called Scott pilgrim versus the world. It's based on a comic book which surprisingly for me I've never heard of but it's directed by the guy who did Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead and it looks really really funny.

I spent a large part of the afternoon doing some painting, after a long period of doing no painting I suddenly felt the urge to do some. I'm finding myself going much longer then I used to between painting but as Grumpy pointed out that's probably because it's now only my hobby opposed to being my job.

I'm back on the early shift this week although it's only going to be a short week with Easter Friday . So I will be getting home quite early but the downside is I have to get up quite early as well.

Oh well,

Later Folks!

Observation skills? Epic fail

On saturdays out canteen is not open. So one of the guys voluntered to do a run to a nearby cafe to get breakfast for everyone during his break, which was at 11am. ( okay so not really breakfast more lunch I know) he came back and was dolling out the breakfasts before he realised one was missing. Well not missing persay he had just given the wrong one to the wrong person who had happened to get half way through the sandwich without realising he was eating bacon instead of sausage. His excuse was that he couldn't tell the difference as they came from the same animal! Whilst technically correct it's still a bit of a lame excuse for having terrible observational skills.

The clocks go forward a hour this evening which means we loose a hour in bed. Boooooo!!! Boo!! I say why should we have to loose a hour in bed? Couldn't everything just go back a hour for that one day to accomodate the change? Is that really so much to ask???

Well yes it is actually, so lets move quickly on.

Asides from work I haven't really done a whole lot today. It's been petty quiet for a Saturday really which is really really boring,

oh well,

Later folks

Going Around again

Well it's almost the end of the week work wise. I just have to make it through my second ever Saturday morning shift tomorrow. Yes it's annoying having to work on a Saturday but it could be worse. At least it's only half a day.

I don't know why but this month seems to have passed really, really slowly. But pondering that thought today it did make me realise that we're now one quarter of the way into the year. Three months have gone already!

This also reminded me that I have one month left on my probabation to run. Just one month! I remembered when at the start of my probabation six months seemed like a heck of a long time. I'm feeling pretty confident that I will pass but I will by no means take it easy. I've learned the hard way not to take anything for granted.

Okay that makes it sound like I'm sitting up in some darkened room eying the outside world warily through the curtains but I'm not.

The room has a light on :-)

Well only one more week until the new Doctor Who. It should be interesting indeed to see where they'll go with it now.

I have both good Friday and Easter Monday off whic his great as it means I get a nice long weekend, so Ihave time off which doesn't come out of my holiday allocation. Bonus!

anyway,

Later

Escape from Geektown

I usually leave a bit more time then I probably need to when leaving to go to work as mainly I'm very paranoid about being late. Usually this means that I get to work a bit earlier then I need to but fortunatly this morning it paid dividends as I found two of the routes from geektown completly snarled up with traffic to the extent that I had to come back through the town twice before finally having to try the back route which I was loathe to do as I wasn't to osure of the route.

However fortune favours the bold as it were and I was able to find my way without disappearing into the depths of Leicestershire never to be heard from again! I even made it in time as well which was a bonus.

They've announced that registrations for this years national YSA conference are now open however someone seems to have been bitten by the technological bug and decided to implement a new way of registrations online probably becasue it's new, shiny, technological and makes them look clever. If it works it should cut down on a lot of man hours but emphasis on if it works as technology does have a tendency to fall over and fail when your not looking.

I had to laugh at the amount of new reorts that are currently slamming Jonathan Ross's wive for writing the screenplay to the new film Kick ass. Now what has got the media all hot under the collar? I hear some of your ask? Why it's because the film features a 11 year old girl who is basically a assassin who kills people, chops off limbs and generally uses language that would make a sailor blush. I'm sure your wondering at this point what I was laughing at? Well what I found amusing was one all of the newspapers failed to mention probably because it would take the wind out of the sails of their righteous indigination. Yes she has written the screenplay but the movie is based on a existing comicbook. So it's not like she came up with the character to begin with! But I'm sure stated that fact wouldn't make for such a focussed article.

anyway,

Later folks.

Lessons learned

I woke up this morning to find Owen slowly wandering around the house looking very sorry for himself. I found out why from Grumpy. Basically at the weekend Grumpy had a massive blitz on the garden so it went from a wild garden ( *cough* had let it overgrow and was looking for a excuse *cough cough*) to well back to what it used to look like. This meant that we could finally see the pond clearly and we discovered that we had some vistors.

Lots and lots of vistors.

You see it's finally got warm enough for the frogs to return and start laying their spawn in the pond and to say the Pond is heaving with frogs is a massive understatement. Owen has found this all very fascinating and always wants to go and have a look at the first opportunity. However when he went to have a look this morning he was carrying his bone and went Grumpy called him to come in in threw his head back quite fast and unfortunatly let go of his bone. Which promptly sailed into mid air before landing in the middle of the pond disappearing from sight quickly. According to Grumpy Owen sat there with a mournful look before looking at grumpy with a even sadder look which seemed to say " Where's my bone gone?"

It's been a nice day all round, I got a nice lie in, I watch a DVD, did some reading, some painting, some model making, then some more reading before playing on the Wii and managing to hurt my shoulder as I got a bit too carried away with the Wii Sports boxing.

So maybe not the most constructive of days but still a fun one I'm sure you'll agree.

A new Doctor Who trailer is doing the rounds on the internet. Apparently for some reason the US version of the trailer has more footage then the UK version. Still we only have another week to wait before it returns here in the UK and then it hits the US two weeks later on the 17th. So I'll just have to make sure that I don't start talking about it until two weeks after the first episode so not to spoil anything for my US readers.

Later folks.

The kinda rewards I like

Our got into work this morning to find that my team had won a informal competition that had happened last week between all of the teams in our department. Well I say won, technically we drew but it was BBs stellar performance last Friday which won us the competition. Our reward for winning the competition? It wasn't a cash bonus, or early finishing time it was something better.



We each got a easter egg!



Yes it's a little early but your not going to argue when someone plonks a easter egg down in front of you are ya! The main problem most of us faced was getting through the day without being distracted by the easter eggs sitting on the desks in front of us!



As I'm working this Saturday I'm on extended mid shifts which means I get one day off in lieu this week. Thanks to the computer ( or a monkey with dice I'm still not sure which is the most plausble possibilty) I've worked today, then I get tomorrow off before working from Wednesday right through to Saturday. This sort of shift pattern kind of makes it hard to get a good rhythum going but at least it helps to keep things interesting.



Later folks.

It's a new Height record

Just to put how high Owen jumps in perspective, Grumpy is 6ft tall!

Return of the Ninja Doggy!

Hi-five for Frisbee

Owen Versus the Postman

" Is that a chainsaw?"

Was my somewhat rather confused thought when I woke up this morning as I heard a noise which did sound like a chainsaw. I then realised it wasn't a chainsaw ( probably a good thing) but rather Owen growling while he stood at the top of the stairs. This was promptly followed by a loud clattered as he charged down the stairs and started barking as loudly as possible. I simply shrugged rolled over and went back to sleep. Why was I unbothered by the barking? Well at that time of a Saturday morning it could only mean one thing. The post had just been delivered.

It's been a bit of a yucky day which I know isn't a official weather service term but it's the only one which comes close to describing today. As it's been really warm, but also quite wet as well so it's just been sticky and warm all day which is not a nice thing. Not nice in the slightist!

It was fairly quiet in Loughborough today, I don't know if it was because it's a long month or it was just one of those things but most of the shops were pretty quiet. Which was great for looking around. It would have been even greater if there was anything I wanted to buy.

There's suppose to be another fuel duty rise at the start of April of 3p a litre which si really annoying considering the average price of fuel is 1.16 right now. Everyone keeps complaining about the high prices but no one is owning up to whose causing it. The government says it's not there fault, the petrol stations say it's not there and the oil companies say not to blame them. Well someone is making the price that high so who do we blame? The monkeys?

It's been confirmed that the new Doctor Who series starts two weeks today. All of the early buzz about the new Doctor seems good and the new trailer almost had me convinced ( spitfires in space that is so cool!) but like most people I will wait to be convinced when the new episode airs.

Anyway,

Later folks.

Saxon vs the Early Morning

" Do you know what would be great, to just keep lying here!"
This was the first thought that flashed through my head this morning as my alarm blared into life and to be fair it was a good one and it was very comfortable and warm. However like a lot of good ideas it had a big flaw in that if I stayed there I couldn't go to work and they kinda want you to turn up for work before they will pay you :-)

Still now it's light at that time of the morning it's a lot easier to get moving, even Owen will now get up to say goodbye to me as it hasn't done that since the start of winter.

Only having a 12 minute drive to get to work ( or at least to the car park where I have to catch the bus) is also a big help in getting to work in a positive frame of mind as opposed to the somewhat frazzled state of mind which resulted after getting stuck in some of the traffic jams going into Nottingham.

It turned out to be good that I didn't to that little voice and stay in bed as not only did I have a very good day customer wise, I also found out in my monthly review that I had maxed out on KPI scores. That wasn't probabation KPI scores as well, I had maxed out on the actual "proper" full timer KPI's which cheered me up no end as I wasn't expected to have done quite that well this month.

Well it's the weekend now which means two whole days just for me.

Later folks.

Grumpy versus the tech guys

Sorry for the lack of bloggage yesterday. Our broadband connection went out and Grumpy spent half an hour on the phone to the tech guys who insisted that everything was fine and the problem was at our end before calling him back after investigating to admit that there was in fact a technical problem which they had to fix at the main telephone exchange and they probably used the same technical method most engineers use when something isn't working a large hammer.

It was a usual day at work as it started with one girl ranting about the healthy lunches list her sons school had sent home ( seriously what kid would want to eat salmon in sandwiches?), followed by a extremely patronising customer, followed by one who wanted to send her cat, which was then followed by a can of drink which suddenly decided to explode in my bag which may or may not have caused a little bit of bad language as I struggled to clean up the mess without spraying drink everywhere, before finishing the day with finding out the list of activies that will be going on for sports relief tomorrow including the managers doing a sponsered hula hoop around the building.

Nope I have no idea either what that has to dow ith charity but it's probably going to be as funny as hell.

As I mentioned a few days ago my old company has launched their new website, well a picture appeared today which showed in the background my old desk which now seems to be being used by someone else which was a weird as hell feeling quite frankly. It's been almost six months since I was told I was being made redundent and it still seems like it was yesterday but it also seems to have been a incredibly long time ago as well. If that makes any sense whatsoever.

I realised that I have learned a heck of a lot in the past almost six months and really pushed myself forward in developing my own capabilities. I do miss my old job but I've realised that it's pointless looking back. There's always what if's and maybe's in life, you'll drive yourself mad if you dwell on them too much. I would have liked to keep doing the proof reading as that was fun, plus i would have got to read stuff much earlier. It's hard to wait when you now just how far in advance a book is finished!

I'll just have to find something else to use my encylopedic knowledge for. Maybe a local gaming group needs someone to write a campaign for them? Well stranger things have happened.

I've spent some of this evening moving some stuff up into the loft as it's now fully converted. I think it's time to put my much talked about plans to redocate my room into action!

Now only if I knew something about decorating.

One more day to the weekend which I'm very glad about as I've found myself starting to lag the past day or so. Getting up that early in the morning does take it out of you no matter how early you get home.

Not the Enemy

One of the training courses I completed at my new job was how to deal with difficult customers. The best piece of advice I picked up from this course is to remember that I'm not the enemy, the issue is the enemy not me. However sometimes this advice is easier to remember then it is to believe as today turned into what seemed like one long procession of shouty customers. If they had legimate complaints they would have been easier to deal with but as in most cases the shouty kind of customers you face in any field of customer service rarely have legimate complaints.

I posted the question on my facebook page a couple of days ago wondering if trained nija hit squads would be the best answer to difficult customer service problems. The advice I recieved back was that I shouldn't go with ninjas and should consider Pirates, Vikings or Oompa Loompas as like the spannish inquisition nobody would expect Oompa Loompas. So if I ever come across a trained hit squad of Pirate ninja oompa loompa vikings I'll be all set

anyway,

Later folks.

Know when to quit

It's been a rather strange day. It started when I got up as despite being on earlies it's now light at that time of the morning which threw me as the last time I was on the early shift it wasn't.

And the day just seemed to get more and more strange from then on culminating with a customer who was so argumentative he failed to realise that he had actually managed to "win" and get what it wanted and proceeded to keep arguing to such a extent that he actually talked himself out of the winning situation he found himself in.

Which to be perfectly honest totally baffled me as well he had won! So why keep arguing? I suppose it's just my field of work as every day certainly brings you something new and unexpected in customer service land.

I was possibly one of the handful of fans who wasn't totally overjoyed to see my old company finally launch their new website. To be perfectly honest it's very hard to get excited about something which cost me my job. Still that feeling will probably fade in time. Grumpy told me that I should feel a sense of accomplishment as no matter how little they may actually be there's still some of my work in some fashion in the website even if most people don't know.

Anyway,

Later folks.

Not the best of starts

I woke up this morning pleased that I had woken up before my alarm and looking forward to that nice feeling of beign able to wait all nice and cozy in bed until my alarm finally did go off and it was time to get up. However as I lay there I couldn't quite shake the feeling that something was wrong. I grabbed my watch to check the time and found that I hadn't woken up before my alarm. Far from it, I had actually slept right through it and had overslept by nearly half an hour.

Cue a rather unSunday like rush as I ran round the house trying to get ready in half the time. In midst of charging around I noticed something strange was going on outside as there seemed to be a group of men randomly running around. I went upstairs to look out of the window and was quickly joined by Owen who did his meercat trick of standing on his hind legs to look out of the window. I realised that the four men were after a little terrier who had obivously escaped from somewhere and despite their best efforts they couldn't catch the little guy. By this point Grumpy had joined us to look out of the window and watch the bizare chase unfold. It went on for three or four minutes ( all that was missing was the benny hill music) until a lady came along walking her dog. She then proceeded to show the guys how to do it by staying stock still and waiting until the terrier came up to her before quickly grabbing it and lifting it up and her arms ending his escape attempts. It was amusing to watch if only for the baffled looks on the guys faces as they wondered why they hadn't tried that.

As it was Mothers Day it was inevitable that we were going to get a musical item from the Primary in sacrement meeting. There was some confusion at the end of the song as they didn't seem sure it that was it or if they were singing another one and there was good thirty seconds of milling around. This was solved by a loud little voice from a visiting family who yelled " It's finished!! You can get down now!"

We had a CES broadcast this evening which was very good as it focussed a lot on the importance of having good friendships. The only downside was that the turn out was pathetic. There were only four people including Physics and myself.

Well it's work tomorrow, I'm back on earlys which should be a lot of fun and I mean that in a non sarcastic way....

Honest!

Later folks.

Warp Speed

I'm a fast reader, always have been and always will be. I can finish in a book in a time that baffles most people and whats more can tell you the complete plot of the book as well.

The downside to this is reading books that are in a series. I have to wait age for the next book to come along and when it does I finish it in short order despite usually always having the best of intentions to try and read books more slowly. I just can't do it, if I like a book I'll pick it up and won't be able to put it down.

I bought two new books this morning, both of them published by my former company and I've already finished one of them. The other one I'll probably read in a couple of days as it was a book that I proof read so I kinda know what happens. So I've finally reached that point when from now on all of the books they release will be brand new to me as I won't have proof read any of the forthcoming books ( bar one coming in June) or read the in depth synopis for each novel. I will miss the proof reading as it was fun and good to be able to put my almost photographic memory of the background to good use.

We watched a episode of CSI New york this evening which had both Grumpy and I shaking our heads in disbelief. It was a case of CSI meets crystal maze. It was ridiculous and only made worse by the case playing things so seriously. If they'd tried something along the same plots lines in NCIS at least they would have been making self referencing digs at how crazy it was.

anyway,

Later folks.

Ask a dumb question.........

I got my desk this morning to hear BB suddenly ask really loudly to no one in particular " Why are there so many calls right now?" to which she got response " Because a lot of people are calling us" from a rather stressed team leader.


I don't know what it was this morning but it was just manic beyond belief. I even started 15 minutes early as it was so busy. It was nearly a hour and a half before there was enough of a pause for me to be able to say good morning to the three people who sit near me.


It was then all systems go until late afternoon when things finally started to quieten down, which of course leads into one of those paradoxical situations where you spend all day moaning about how busy it is and when it finally does get quiet you moan that your bored.


Not that we say the Q word on the floor mind you as it;s like saying macbeth in the theatre. Nothing good will come of it if you say that word :-)


Quotes of the day;

" It's medium sized"

" It's standard computer sized"

" It's the size of a normal bike"


Anyway, it's the weekend now which means two free days before back to that old grindstone. Or I suppose in my case more that old telephone.


Later folks.

It's all Russian to me

At work everybody has their own code ot log into the phones and when you call somebody else internally it will show your name on their phone so they can see whose calling. Simple right? Well not for me as my full first name ( which I call my sunday/trouble name as it is usually only used on Sundays or if I'm in trouble) is actually too long to show up on displays correctly. The last couple of letters are missed which most people don't realise, so I'm usually greeted by most people trying to say a somewhat shortened version of my name which always sounds Russian.

Todays quote of the day
" It's a A3 envelope which is the size of a A4 box of paper"

Only one more day until the weekend which I'm really glad about. The problem with having a week where your start time varies is that it's very hard to get a rhythm going. You find yourself all over the place. But on the plus side I am on earlys next week and I'll be starting the same time each day. So it might mean a earlier night but at least I get home early.

Grumpy has been asking me over the past couple of days what " the point is?" of facebook. Which I have to admit is actually quite a question to answer. Or at least to answer to his satisfaction. As yes it does have it's plus points but it can also be seen as one of the most high tech time waster ever.

Anyway,

Later folks.

Random pics

Just for a change I'd thought I'd show you a shot of what the garden looked like from my window when we had that snow a couple of weeks ago.

Does he see what we see?

Waiting and waiting

I had a complete fit of the giggles at work today when the women who sits next to me had a very difficult call from a customer how barely spoke any english. His response to most of her questions was " I am waiting for man" which was funny enough but when she finally had to be blunt and ask him directly " Yes but what are you waiting for the man to do" , his response of " Waiting for him to come see me" had me practically on the floor I was giggling so hard!

Quote of the day
" But why would a cigarette lighter be classified as a flamable item?"

They've just released a trailer for the new Tron film. It looks really, really good. I can't wait for this film either. Now if only I had someone to go to the cinema with :-)

I was somewhat surprised when I logged into facebook today to find someone had 'come back' to my friends list. However I have no idea who it was as I didn't know who had gone ( with one exception) to begin with.

It's Grumpys birthday today and in case you were wondering he's 21. Or at least that what he says whenever someone asks him. In fact he's been 21 for a long time now. Funny that :-)

In the news they are saying that all Dog owners might be forced to take out insurance in case their dog attacks someone.

I'm sure our hometeachers will now feel so much more secure :-)

Still this wasn't the weirdest news of the day. Apparently Jordans ( thats the model not the country) lifts story is due to be turned into a movie. Yes you read that correctly.........

All I can say to that is

Run now! To the hills, flee flee!

Later folks

Send in the specialist

I had another session working on my NVQ this morning at work and I was delighted to be told that I'm now all but finished and it should be signed off by the end of the month. The training I've been getting in my new job has been fantastic. Not that any of you should get the impression that I didn't get any training in my last job. Far from it it's just we didn't get any official qualifcations and it makes training much more satisfying when you have a certificate or some other sort of qualification to show at the end of it.

I should be finished just in time to start the new training program that their just bringing in at work which when finished will allow you to add the term " Specialist" to your job title. Which makes any job title sound just that bit more impressive doesn't it?

Theres a new Iron Man 2 trailer doing the rounds. It looks reallllyyyyyyy gooooodddddd!!!!! I Can't wait for May. I just hope it lives up to the hype though.

Anyway,

Later folks.

The spirit versus the letter

And no before anybody asks the title does not refer to the latest marvel superheros :-)

Basically in our Priesthood lesson today things took a little bit of a left turn as what was intially some very simple quorum instruction turned into a long in depth discussion simply because people were looking at things too in depth and trying to find meanings which might not have been there. This lead to one of those conversations where things just descend in a ever decreasing circle as people start to look more and more in depth to try and find hidden meanings that just aren't there.

In situations like this I always remember one saying that one person told me about church instructions " If we're supposed to look for hidden meanings or interpretations the handbooks would be written in riddles!"

Well it's the start of another week tomorrow and unfortunatly I'm on the shift I've liked to deem the early-mids where you tend to bounce around a little bit on the start times. I go from 9.30 to 10 to 9.45 to 9.15 to 10 again! Still as Grumpy likes to say it keeps life interesting if a little annoying as it does make me miss my old 9 to 5.30 job sometimes.

I'm still looking for a new project to put my focus into as I'm finding that my attention keeps flitting from thing to thing right now. If I can focus on one thing I know I'll be able to get a lot done, it's just I have no idea what to focus on right now.

Anyway,

Later folks.

Ouch

I am once again nursing a pair of sore arms this evening after spending just a little too long playing on the Wii today. Specifically Wii sports resorts Cycling event which take a lot more arm power then you would expect.

This morning consisted of the usual shopping and a unexpected moral dilema. I found myself outside of the company store of the company I used to work for and it was closed. All the lights were off and there was no sign to explain why it was closed. Which was odd, what made it even odder was that it was a major release weekend. I found myself pausing for a few moments and wondering if I should do anything. I mean I don't work for the company anymore and I was sure somebody would know about it but why wouldn't there have been cover if they had known?

The few moments of pause turned in minutes as I wrestled with my conscience. Did I just move on and leave it or should I alert someone to it? I knew what most people would say and do, I don't work for the company anymore so why should I do anything? I'm sure most people wouldn't blame me for doing nothing.

But then again having a very strong mortal compass I already knew deep down what I was going to do. It was going to bother me if I did nothing, so I rang the store where I had served a secondment last summer and let the manager there know about the closed shop and that they were loosing customers to the store up the road from the local shop I was outside of.

Did I need to do that? No. Was it the right thing to do? Yes probably. Did it make much difference? Probably not but at least i didn't bug me for the rest of the day.

anyway,

Later folks.

Keeps getting weirder

In my last job the kind of customer service situations you dealt with were fairly predicatable and tended to at least be variations on the same basic themes.

Not so with my new job.

If anything every day seems to bring more and more weird and wonderful situations. From the customer who asked one of my colleagues if she was jealous that she was married, to the drunk sounding cowboy to the person who gave dimensions as " smallish".

It's certainly a challenging job but one I'm finding myself enjoying a lot more as my confidence keeps growing. I was also pleased to hear that I have almost finished my training for a NVQ in customer service. Just a couple more weeks and a few more bits of work to complete and I'll have a shiney new qualification.

The new FHE was a lot of fun tonight. Hopefully if things keep going as well as they started out it should be a great success moving forward.

Anyway,

Later folks.

Going down

It's been a interesting day from the women who spend so much time complaining about the length of security procedures that she actually spent seven times longer complaining that it actually took to complete the security procedures to another customer who actually managed to invent a fourth dimension. And before you ask no I don't know how he managed that at all because his reasoning didn't make any sense in the slightist. Which is probably what allowed him to find a 4th dimension in the 1st place.

With the first of our new Family Home evenings for the YSA being tomorrow night, I'm going to have to go straight to the chapel from work. Of course irony was not going to miss a chance like that and so for the first Friday in a very long time we will not be having a dress down day. So I suppose you could call it a dress up day but I digress.

As usual.

Well my friends list on facebook has shrunk again as someone else has removed me from their list. I was able to figure out who it was this time and I have to admit I'm quite hurt over this removal (although to be fair I suppose it could have been accidental but I doubt it). It's bad enough when someone removes you and stays friends with your other friends but when they remove you from their list but still stays friends with your mum and one of your sisters well that's not just rubbing it in, it's kicking it in with steel caped boots. I don't know what I've done there I tried to be a good friend but I seemed to have failed. Maybe if this person ever speaks to me again they might tell me where I screwed up.

anyway,

One more day to the weekend.

Later folks.

It's all a matter of timing

I've noticed that all of the smokers on the late shift are very adept at doing things in perfect timing. As soon as they exit the building they light up in unison and they dump their cigarettes in unison when the very nice bus driver who always does a final sweep of the building to check he has everyone comes out to drive us back to the car park.

I know it doesn't sound that funny but it really is funny to watch when they dump their cigs in unison.

The underlying pattern to the shift patterns is starting to become apparent despite the fact at first that they appeared to be organised by the rolling of a dice. I've noticed certain faces who tend to be on the bus at the same time as me which is good as it's helping me slowly get to know new people as most of them aren't from my team.

It's been another long day on the late shift although that usually is the case on the Wednesday as your at that halfway point of the week when it seems like you've been working for ages and the end of the week is so far away.

But it isn't. It's only two more days. Yah!

I had to fill up with petrol this evening with is one task that always seems to get more expensive but at least with my new job I'm only having to fill up once every two weeks which is something i quite like.

as you can imagine.

Anyway,

Later folks.

Just get on with it

I'm starting to get really, really fed with all of the politics in the news at the moment and most of the stories seem to be about squabbling politicians acting in a way less grown then some of my youngest nieces and nephews. I just wish they would just get on with it and call the darn election already.

It's been the second day in a row when we've had blue skies and lots of sunshine. Maybe spring is here? Who knows but suffice to say I could get very used to this weather. It makes a nice change from all of the miserable winter weather.

Work was good if extremely busy. The one trouble with lates is you tend to get a lot more of the difficult calls and of course as it's so late your list of avalabile options is somewhat curtailed, so it can be a good challenge to your ability to think on your feet and creative thinking.

Quote of the day

" It's the size and weight of 52 standard sized womens magazines"

It's the first of our " new and improved " YSA Family home evenings on Friday. Now I'm sure that might confuse some readers as it's on a Friday rather then a Monday but we decided to give people more chance to get to one we will be holding them every other week and will be alternating between Mondays and Fridays.

It's a good plan but as they say lets see if it survives contact with the enemy..... or should that be YSA :-)

Anyway,

Later folks

Well at least the intention was good

I was woken up this morning by a loud knocking at my door. I opened to find a very worried Grumpy telling me I had overslept and was very late for work. As you can imagine cue panic as I started to rush around wondering how I had managed to sleep in that badly and I asked him what the time was picturing a mad rush to get to work in time. ten past eight he told me.

wait? what?........

It turned out that Grumpy had forgotten that I was on lates and was far from late for work. In fact I had over two and a half hours before I had to leave for work. So that put paid to having a lie in as rapid wake up caused by the panic of thinking I was late meant there was no way I was getting back to sleep.

Well with it being Monday there was the usual mix of the mudane, slightly unsual and downright bizare that any job which is based around customer service brings with it although this job does seem to being slightly more then usual.

Although for a late shift things were surprisingly busy. Not that I minded I'd rather by occupied then bored.

Later folks!