To answer that question, it’s the Monday after pay-day and we have no money. I took something like $50 in change and small notes to buy my tickets this morning, and now have $1.80 until Thursday week, which includes the super-extended Easter/Anzac-Day weekend.
- We have child-care to pay for ($714 for a whole fortnight, despite their taking him for only six days of that fortnight [wages have to be paid over holidays too]).
- We have to pay $180 to the surgeon tomorrow simply for him to look at the CT-scan I had on Saturday. (We might be able to get some of this back from Medicare but that’s not the point)
- jr_g goes to the Easter Show on Thursday, and while it won’t cost anything for us to get in (BIL and SIL are members of the RAS, who run the show every year), Mrs _g still wants spending money (as you do).
We worked that out last night. Today started off as any normal Monday. Alarm goes off 04:50, check into Foursquare, go about feeding myself and preparing for the day.
I walk the 2km to the bus-stop. The reason I do that, instead of to the railway station, is that
- Buses are more frequent (every 5-10min instead of half-hourly except between 7-8)
- The fare is only $2 as opposed to $3.30 from the bottom of our street, but there’s no bus in either direction between 05:15 and 06:15
- It’s 1600m to the station, so what’s 400m between friends [turns out it’s only 5-6min!]
- The dietician wants me to move more, so there’s 400m extra daily
And there are probably more. Anyways, the bus pulls into the stop while I’m about 200m from it. After a while I say to myself, “Don’t make me run”, but he stays there. Turns out the guy at the stop had $20 for the $2 fare which, regular commuters will know, pisses off the driver; especially when he has to play mix-and-match with his own money.
I get to the ticket window at Blacktown Station and pay the $472 fare in $5 worth of 50c, $2 worth of 20c, and $40 notes. Turns out I only have $4.50 of 50c, and give her 60c of the additional 20s I had on me. I left the window without collecting the 10c change. That could make a difference come the end of the week.
Oh, and speaking of loose change, we get out to the car yesterday morning, and I find the contents of the centre-console and ashtray-come-money box on the pax-seat. I ask mrs_g if she’d left it like that. No? Great – someone has been rifling through our car. Sometimes it locks itself, but obviously not this time. Good thing I’d not left my wallet and phone in it ... as sometimes happens. mrs_g reckons we’d left it open on Saturday when we’d got home because of the rain. Nothing else was taken (incl music discs and toll tag).
Back to the main whinge, and I manage to get a fast train (Parramatta / Redfern / Central), make the office by 07:30, and begin my day. I’m told at 09:00 that I will be in the call-centre this morning – Mondays are the busiest, so that’s not good news. I ask where one of my colleagues was (I did the call-centre last week, so it would be his turn this week, while I would do tomorrow) and am told he would be in later. Great – he did the same last week: and I said as much. The other colleague (the Aspergers man – I’m sure I’ve mentioned him but if I haven’t I will be happy to) isn’t in yet, but is rostered to be on phones from 09:00. When he rocks in at 9:15, I say nothing, but when he’s not taken any calls by 09:30, I look to see what he’s doing (that’s OK – he is APS2: the lowest of the lowly; I am APS3, still lowly, but “allowed”, nay, expected, to give him orders / work / directives, etc). Now this guy lives at Leichhardt on his own. We have people coming from Morisset and Wollongong who can make it in the office by 08:00, yet this guy can’t make it in from the next suburb by 09:00. So I tell him. His defence was (and he has an excuse for everything) that he was checking on a booking he said on Friday that he’d look into for a patient. I said that he should have come in earlier to do that, because his tardiness means that other people have to cover his arse. He had nothing, and didn’t say boo to me all day).
Then my phone rings .. and because I hadn’t taken the divert off, it went to the hunt-group. Fem-colleague picked it up, muttered something at the phone, then at me. I think I’ve mentioned this woman before (let’s call her Mrs Useless, because she is USELESS (as opposed to Useless, as per Mr Asbergers above). She can speak something like 5 languages, but I am almost positive that none of them is English. Then my phone rings again (I hadn’t taken the divert off yet, probably on purpose – if this call is something I don’t want to deal with, I won’t) – it’s her trying to put a call through (the first call) but it goes back to the hunt-group. This is why I hate working where I do. NO ONE knows how to use the phones properly. We have an Avaya system – those of you in offices with such machines will know that there is a button you can hit if a call isn’t answered – that button brings the call back to you. Granted, I only learned that secret a few years ago, but there are limits (i.e – I know how it works now, why doesn’t anyone else – and I’m not a team-leader or responsible for training so I won’t show you! I found a manual online and sent it to Mr Asbergers. He has yet to read it, yet every time he asks a question about how to use the phones [25 years in the service and he still doesn’t know how to use a computer] I ask if he’s read the book yet … [I should write entries on these people I work with]). SO she tells me I have a call – “Who is it?” I ask. “Ay Dah Nah”. Why would you transfer a call to someone without either knowing who it is or introducing the call/er (the DC3 sent an eMail out recently about cold and warm call-transfers which I’m sure no one read.] I told her to find out … turns out it was a call I wanted, but that’s not the point.
Doing some really boring work (checking data-base details for a national project, and ringing to confirm / obtain them), but would prefer to be doing that than call-centre phones. I see this project as a chance to build relationship with service providers, which is pretty pointless as I have been told that I will be going back to the call-centre full-time. Well, the eMail went along the lines of “we need to discuss your return to” the call centre. My response was, “that’s not a good idea”, to which mgt replied along the lines of staff-rotation / fairness / yadda yadda / platitudes / bullshit / etc. Those of you who deal with bureaucracies will be fully aware of the kind of response I got. I have been in a/c-payable for a year, half of which has been spent sick, or going to doctors / specialists due to either jr_g’s arrival or my own health issues. I excel at Excel and am the only person of the 17-member team anywhere near capable with that application. Plus other medical issues I have (anxiety / GAD, and GORD) make call-centre work inappropriate. Anyway I noted my concerns down, dated it, and will present that to mgt when the time comes. But preparations are well under way – the third colleague (whom I know I haven’t mentioned) is doing stuff that I know nothing about – stuff I haven’t been shown, stuff that makes his role less expendable. But also stuff that Mr Asbergers was doing before his move to the call-centre, and I’ve taken many components of his work over and made them mine… spose I shouldn’t get too paranoid.
I leave work early, and have to take either Burwood-Strathfield-Lidcombe-All to Emu Plains or wait another 20min for the slightly-quicker train. The “Burwood Train” will get me to Blacktown by 16:00, as will the later, quicker one. So here I am. I texted mrs_g that I would meet her at Seven Hills either before or after she collects jr_g from child-care. Still no response. If she hasn’t replied by Parramatta I’ll ring her. That may mean waiting for a Quakers Hill or Marayong train, which could be anywhere up to half an hour, then walk the aforementioned 1600m (with the appropriate Foursquare check-ins for each street I’ll be using).
First-world problems
1 Not a real word, but the exchange student at uni with whom I first used it seemed to appreciate the context! Call it Ausdeutsch. But for purists, he correct term is probably geärgert.
2 This is the weekly fare from Marayong to the City. It is $57 if you want to use unlimited trains, buses, and ferries in the same area. For more info, see www.cityrail.nsw.gov.au.
3 In the APS, the Deputy Commissioner is the highest-ranked officer in the State. This person reports directly to the Commissioner, usually based in Canberra. There is a whole hierarchy but I won’t bore you with the details … Ministers, Secretaries, etc etc …
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