Lynne reckons that the baby misses me during the day. Awww. I wasn’t so sure whether that was true, it’s still hard to say how much the baby takes in, but when I came home today she looked up at me and gave me a big, gummy smile. She’s been trying to smile for a few days and now she’s cracked it. It made going to work worthwhile.
I have one more day on the college survey. Good. It’s pish. My little round of rooms takes about ten, fifteen minutes to check off and then I am free for the rest of the hour. It’s not enough time to do anything else, but just enough time to be a bit bored. I sit in the staff common room with the other guy that is surveying the building, talking shit and watching daytime telly. Everyone else that uses the common room is a middle-aged woman and, as you can no doubt imagine, this is a nightmare. Any work place with a single sex population is always problematic. If it’s all men it quickly turns into a pirate ship. If it’s all middle-aged women, well…
Yesterday one of them grassed us up to our boss because I left my bag on the sofa. Apparently someone had wanted to sit there and couldn’t. Nobody had said anything about my bag to me. Bear in mind that all day all these women had grinned a big ‘Hiya!’ at us whenever they came in or out. Today the crisis was over milk. Who was drinking it all? I bet it was her. That sort of thing. The staff fridge is now full of separate pint cartons with labels on them to identify their owners, the levels marked with marker pen. As we were redistributing the milk between the cartons so they all held the same amount before we left tonight, we noticed that the cleaners had misspelled ‘cleaners’ on their carton. It was a cruel laugh, but we laughed it anyway.
One of the joys of my round is the office of the assistant vice principal. A lot of the staff in the rooms I’m surveying seem to be scared that if I don’t put down that they have lots and lots of people in their rooms they will end up being allocated tiny offices in the new building. They think I'm a spy. I don’t think it will work like that. I think they will take my numbers, make it into a graph, bin the graph, design a big fancy building, decide they don’t have enough money, and then build a glass and steel box same as they always do. It seems to me that what I’m doing is pretty pointless.
Anyway, the assistant vice principal is one of the more prickly customers. He is used to being an alpha male round here, he doesn’t like to be counted. Every time I knock on his office door, every hour throughout the working day, he has a new bit of shit to give me. Last thing today I find him having a meeting with another guy.
‘Let’s see your numbers, then,’ he says.
‘It’s boring really. See?’ I say. I turn my clipboard round so he can see it.
He holds out his hand. ‘Come on, don’t be shy.’
I pass him the clipboard. ‘You're that line.’
He frowns. ‘There’s a lot of zeros. What do all the fives mean?’
‘That’s the code for what you are doing. Five means admin work.’
‘It doesn’t mean picking my nose or scratching my arse?’
‘No,’ I say, deadpan. ‘That would be a seven.’
I have one more day on the college survey. Good. It’s pish. My little round of rooms takes about ten, fifteen minutes to check off and then I am free for the rest of the hour. It’s not enough time to do anything else, but just enough time to be a bit bored. I sit in the staff common room with the other guy that is surveying the building, talking shit and watching daytime telly. Everyone else that uses the common room is a middle-aged woman and, as you can no doubt imagine, this is a nightmare. Any work place with a single sex population is always problematic. If it’s all men it quickly turns into a pirate ship. If it’s all middle-aged women, well…
Yesterday one of them grassed us up to our boss because I left my bag on the sofa. Apparently someone had wanted to sit there and couldn’t. Nobody had said anything about my bag to me. Bear in mind that all day all these women had grinned a big ‘Hiya!’ at us whenever they came in or out. Today the crisis was over milk. Who was drinking it all? I bet it was her. That sort of thing. The staff fridge is now full of separate pint cartons with labels on them to identify their owners, the levels marked with marker pen. As we were redistributing the milk between the cartons so they all held the same amount before we left tonight, we noticed that the cleaners had misspelled ‘cleaners’ on their carton. It was a cruel laugh, but we laughed it anyway.
One of the joys of my round is the office of the assistant vice principal. A lot of the staff in the rooms I’m surveying seem to be scared that if I don’t put down that they have lots and lots of people in their rooms they will end up being allocated tiny offices in the new building. They think I'm a spy. I don’t think it will work like that. I think they will take my numbers, make it into a graph, bin the graph, design a big fancy building, decide they don’t have enough money, and then build a glass and steel box same as they always do. It seems to me that what I’m doing is pretty pointless.
Anyway, the assistant vice principal is one of the more prickly customers. He is used to being an alpha male round here, he doesn’t like to be counted. Every time I knock on his office door, every hour throughout the working day, he has a new bit of shit to give me. Last thing today I find him having a meeting with another guy.
‘Let’s see your numbers, then,’ he says.
‘It’s boring really. See?’ I say. I turn my clipboard round so he can see it.
He holds out his hand. ‘Come on, don’t be shy.’
I pass him the clipboard. ‘You're that line.’
He frowns. ‘There’s a lot of zeros. What do all the fives mean?’
‘That’s the code for what you are doing. Five means admin work.’
‘It doesn’t mean picking my nose or scratching my arse?’
‘No,’ I say, deadpan. ‘That would be a seven.’
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