Staff moves 1

Copy of e-mail from boss:

Dear all,

Another staff move that directly affects us, Helen has been asked to help out on the bureau and has kindly accepted the opportunity.
Again, I don’t know how long it will be for but I know you’ll join with me in wishing her all the best.
Kind regards


Of course Helen didn’t appreciate it. She said “It sounds like I volunteered, or had some choice in the matter”.

Movement of staff

We got told yesterday (Thursday) that Clive and Helen weren’t needed for the new section that was being put together. I thought that it was too good to be true at the time, that we would be getting rid of a couple of duffers. We were quite depressed when the woman putting the new section together told us. We haven’t told Clive and Helen that they’re not leaving us yet. They were both quite nervous about moving section, so we were going to let then stew for a bit.
Then in the afternoon we were told that Helen would be going anyway, somewhere else. We could not be told where she was moving to. Then later one of the women who is moving came and told us that she was moving section. Then it became obvious where Helen was going to be going. Clive looks like he might be staying for the foreseeable future, but we did tell the woman who’s section he was going to that he would be upset that he’s not going now. We told that Clive was quite keen about the move, even though he wasn’t, so next time she needs anyone she might come looking for him and take him off our hands.

Filming

I’m not sure if I mentioned that we have been covertly filming Junior at his desk with his cordless headphones on, nodding his head about and doing the odd bit of drumming on his desk. We were going to set it to music, originally some rock tune, but since reviewing it we thought the theme to Sesame Street would be better.
Since we got some good footage of Junior I’ve been dying to capture crazy Helen on film. She is amazing when she gets going. I can only describe her as a kind of female John Cleese. She gets out of her chair and keeps the rest of her body in the same shape as she was sitting down, then manages to just move her legs and waddle like a nervous duck, looking around her as she goes, moving about very jerkily. Then when she comes back to her chair she puts her hands on the arm rests and just hangs there in mid-air for 10 seconds before she decides to lower her bum onto the seat. I’m not sure if she is even conscious that she is doing all this stuff. It would be very difficult to film though, because I never know when she is going to be getting up from her seat. What I really need is a BBC Wildlife camera crew that could stay poised in position all day waiting for the right moment to capture on film.
She is going to have to work when she moves onto the new section. No more spending the whole of the afternoon on the phone while she just pushes her mouse from side to side with her spare hand in some kind of gesture of working. I will also miss all the jokes about Clive and his size. Like the running joke about him having his own gravitational pull. Yesterday he went to McDonalds at dinnertime with Dan and ate two complete burger meals. He didn’t want to go to McDonalds today. So they made a joke of having to let them re-stock before he goes back.

Extraordinary team meeting

Yesterday Karen (team leader) put round an e-mail inviting us all to a meeting. She’d even booked a meeting room on the first floor. I thought it was going to be about the employee opinion survey, or the ideas for a Christmas meal. I couldn’t have been more wrong. One of the managers, who has been off long term sick, has been replaced (until Christmas at least) by a new guy. He’s been taking a look at the organisation and is moving some of our staff about to make a new section (supposedly temporary) for clearing a backlog of work that he wasn’t happy about. Of course, when this all starts happening you worry about what other changes he would make, and if your job is safe. The good part about this was that each section has volunteered staff which they would be happy to let go. So Karen had put forward our two duffers, Clive and crazy Helen, who we would have difficulty getting rid of any other way. This has all been explained to Clive and Helen (that it’s only until Christmas) and they seem happy enough (not that they had much option). Karen suspects that it will be a permanent move though. So the mood of the office has brightened considerably, with each of the sections putting up there two worst staff to move onto a new section.
I’m expecting that we will get them back at some stage, but driving home yesterday I had a silly grin on my face all the way. A happy song came on the radio, the sun came out from behind the clouds, and the traffic on the dual carriageway seemed to part just to let me through.

Pop Quiz

There’s not a lot of work in at the moment, and with tomorrow being “Clean your desk” day Junior asked what we could do to keep everyone entertained. We ended up with a kind of quiz that they could do at some stage of the day. I did my ten questions and we’re just waiting for Junior to do his ten. I e-mailed my part over to Junior and Karen, and was promptly beckoned over and told “you’re going to have to change one of the questions, someone might take offence.”
It was obviously the Helen Sweep question, which she knows nothing about. I told them that she would not know what it referred to. “But she’ll be asking everyone about it though.”
“We could leave her out of the quiz”. But they thought she would get offended if she wasn’t allowed to join in, so question 7 has got to come out. I wasn’t sure what we should give as a prize. I suggested we all club together and by the winner breakfast on Monday. Karen said that she wouldn’t mind paying for that, but Junior pointed out that not everyone has breakfast in the canteen. Junior came up with the crazy idea of giving them a free hours worth of overtime for nothing, but I don’t see how that would have worked out, especially if whoever won didn’t usually do overtime.
I eventually volunteered a company mug as a prize, which seemed quite popular.
“Where are you going to get one of them from?” asked Junior.
“Have you got one, where from? Can you get me one?”
I told him that Andy had got me one, but they were very easy to come by because there was a big box full of them at the other end of the office. All Andy was doing was going and pinching them one or two at a time, to order.
“If I get in early, as usual tomorrow I’ll go and grab a couple.”
“Will you grab one for me as well?”
“Alright.”

When I leave the office I tell Karen I’m changing question 7.
“That’s good,” she says. “What are you changing it to?”
“Who’s buying the sausage rolls for Clive’s leaving do?”

Not a bad Friday

In the lift at breakfast time, coming back up to the office, Nige had held the lift for me and Chris, with a few other people in who weren’t too happy at waiting.
Nige said: “If it had been Clive, we wouldn’t have held the lift.”
“If it had been Clive, he wouldn’t have fitted in the lift.” I told him.

Alan came in happy, about 10.15. He’s managed to get his "magic pants" for playing WOW. He was up until 3.00 am playing it last night, then got up about 6.00. He looks too happy for someone who’s only had 3 hours sleep. He tells us that his daughter Freya has thrown up all over him when he dropped her off at nursery this morning, so he’s had to go home and get changed.

Ginger Steve won the Helen sweep this morning, winning about £12, so he was happy. She came in at 9.55am, if anyone is keeping track.

We had a big influx of work yesterday, so Junior rallied round and got half of the staff to come in on Sunday. Junior isn’t coming in himself mind, he reckons he’s best man at a wedding on Sunday.
This morning they realised that they hadn’t got access rights to get into the building at weekends (those who hadn’t worked on a Sunday before). So I told them to go down and see security and they would probably get them to fill in a form and get it signed by my boss. Security asked them to get their boss to send an e-mail to request their access be upgraded.
How is this for laziness? Not known as someone keen on work, the boss asked the guys to send him a request (which he is obviously just going to forward on). How lazy is it to not write a request to security and e-mail it.
Eventually, when they went back down to security, the person they had asked them to e-mail was off sick and they were unable to open his e-mails, so they got them to send them again to a different e-mail address.

Helen sweep

Occasionally when the boss is out, and Helen knows the boss is going to be out she will come in late. Even later than usual. Even pushing it to 11.30 some days. Lately we’ve grown wise to this and have started doing a sweepstake on what time she will come in. The first couple of times we did it we just wrote the times that everyone was going for on a post-it, the one closest to the time she turns up claiming the money (everyone putting in £1). It just makes the Friday morning more interesting. Plus Helen doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. We manage to control our cheering or disappointment when she walks through the door. Junior is very competitive and the one Friday he was fighting over the lift with Clive, who was trying to make her a few minutes later so he would win. That day we were watching out the window for her taxi to pull up. Another day I hadn’t been round everyone with the sweep before she arrived. There was only Andy left, and I had to explain what was going on. Junior wasn’t happy (I had won on that day) and he wanted it declaring void, because Andy hadn’t chosen a time.
Junior wasn’t too happy with me being in control of the scrap of paper, so he drew up an excel sheet ready for the next time with rows with five minute intervals from 9.30 to 11.30. So today was the first time we had used his sheet, and we had to decide what to do in the unlikely event she came in before 9.30, or after 11.30, because that’s as far as Junior’s sheet went. Also, we had to decide that the sweep was void if she either phoned in for a days holiday or phoned in sick. I tried to get them to agree to a roll-over under such circumstances to be a bit more exciting, but Junior wanted to void it.
Because we had stuck to the nearest time being the winner, and Junior had started his sheet at 9.30, he sneakily picked 9.30 so that he could have any time up to that, or even 9.35, because Chris had picked 9.40. This made him even more annoyed when she rolled in earlier than usual, for a Friday, at 9.45, making Chris the winner.