Ady had a Special Assignment for B&Q today which was covertly going round Homebase and Focus and checking whether they have equivalent lines to B&Q on about 100 products, noting down the price and barcode and trying not to get caught, entering all the info in a spreadsheet and then emailing it back to B&Q. It will then be used as part of an ad campaign, presumably to show how much cheaper they are on comparable lines.
He was hampered by this in several ways a) having Davies and Scarlett with him, although in many ways they help his cover by making him look less suspicious b) getting Davies to read out barcodes to him, he likes Davies to help but is not 100% confident of him reading out the right numbers 😆 c) across the array of laptops (3) in our house all have different versions of spreadsheet programs, he didn’t want to send it from our email address so wanted to forward it to his phone first and send it from that which would show up at B&Q as his work email – a trial run with various laptops last night proved tricky in this manouvere (that doesn’t look like it’s how you spell manouvere).
But I was off being Nicola and wearing a skirt to work (I also wore a top and leggings, not just a skirt although perhaps a topless library service is the way forward to drum up issues?). I got them to drop me off on their way to Homebase and Focus and was rather launched into the fray.
Now I really, really don’t believe in the whole Friday 13th thing, infact I don’t hold with any superstitions and will deliberately walk under ladders to prove it but several of my colleagues do and for once it would have been nice to have an explanation for all the stuff going wrong today. We started with the banking, once we’d found the safe key and that was all pretty straightforward. Except C, the childrens librarian was the senior on duty this morning and she can be a bit Famous Five and need to Deal With A Crisis in an efficient way, although I saw a rather different side to her today.
As I was about to go to the bank with the cash the doors were opened to the public and it became clear things ‘out the front’ had not happened, such as the papers being taken out of the letterbox and stamped with the PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE FROM THE LIBRARY stamp. C was all for giving them straight out but I insisted, much to the amusement of the two old boys who read them every morning on stamping them as I am sure that is the only thing preventing them from doing a runner with them. They agreed :lol:. Then there was an issue with the photocopier so I also dealt with that, all with the last two days takings in a bag on my shoulder.
I finally escaped to the bank, paid in the cash, had a brief chat with someone I used to work with at ScoutShops 10 years ago (10 years! Really?! She assured me I don’t look any older at all 🙂 ) and got back to work to find the systems had all crashed and gone down. Some phonecalls to other branches ascertained this was a county-wide issue and with some faffing we got the system into fallback mode which means we can issue and discharge book and that’s about it. While we were struggling with that the gardener (older woman, has very attractive Sarah Connor from Terminator arms which always have me drifting off slightly into lesbian tendacy fantasies) managed to flick up a stone with her strimmer (see, she even has power tools) and shatter one of the main foyer windows. Cue almost mass hysteria from C, childrens librarian, while nice T who works on relief was still struggling with the very concept of the whole Fallback mode. GI Sarah and I went for tea and decided as we were there all day til the bitter end and had an early 12o’clock lunch we’d go to the pub to compose ourselves for the afternoon :).
Which we did. And it was most pleasant. GI Sarah had a half a bitter shandy, I had a white wine spritzer and I strongly suspect that fortification saw us through the rest of the day with glaziers, further system disruptions and general stressiness.
I had a chat with Big Boss Brenda who told me there was no possibility of a career break as I’d simply not been there long enough but that I was a really valued member of staff they would be very sorry to lose, if there is even a library service when we come back a year later I would walk straight back into any vacancy and she hopes I have gotten something out of my time there as to her it has felt very one sided with them getting a really good deal out of me with all my extra commitment, ideas, Chatterbooks, Reading Groups etc. I felt quite cherished :).
Finally 6pm rolled round and Ady was outside to collect me. D&S were pleased to have me home and I sat and read several chapters of Why The Whales Came to them once they’d finished the HP game they were playing and I’d showed them the OCD way of putting the geomags away (seperating into different coloured rods 😳 ).
Once home and sitting down I felt my cold making an re-emergence so in the interests of Not Giving In to it I drank lots of wine instead :lol:. Ady and I were chucking a plastic claw (I think it is from a Ben 10 figure) at each other with impressions of the aliens from Toy Story who worship the claw so when he fell asleep on the sofa I sellotaped it to his head. This made me laugh so much I almost woke him up and when he did wake up I laughed until my tummy hurt and tears were rolling down my face as he in his sleep addled way was saying ‘you’ve done something haven’t you? have you drawn a moustache on me?’ until he finally reached up to his head and found the claw 😆 😆 And fun like that won’t be hampered by living in a small space next year 😆
And now bed is calling.
it’s a shame about the career break – how long would you have to be there to get one? But good to get the compliments 🙂
I think that’s a jobsworth decision about career break – there is a lot of flexibility about career break decisions and it’s not as if you have just joined. Would they not make you redundant then?
You need to be there for over five years and career break has to be for more than 3 months and less than 12. I will have been there for 4 years in December. She did say that if I’d asked a year ago the answer would have been yes but in the current climate when we don’t even know if the library service will exist it would be a flat no with no negotiation. She doesn’t even know if she’ll have a job as the librarian level of staff is currently being reviewed with cuts due to be announced in October to be active from January and then even more uncertainty come April when the new financial year figures of what the library budget will be from the council.
To be fair I never expected to get a career break and I don’t really intend going back to the library anyway – it certainly wouldn’t be the decider on doing the whole thing or not, it would just have been a nice little security blanket.
love the claw story 🙂
Hardly any staff left at our library. You can order in books using their computer by the desk, collect them from the book collection shelving (just look for your name), check them out of the library all without seeing a human. When returning its the same automated system, then place books onto shelf trolley or post in box if its been requested. Staff aren’t happy as they barely have any interaction with users now.