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If I'd Known, I'd Have Had A Duvet Day
Jan. 11th, 2010 01:23 pmI got into work this morning to find the heating was broken. Ten degrees celcius at 9.00am (I was delayed by traffic stupidity in the first instance), so I went straight back out to get a hot drink, following which I've been sitting here in my coat all morning.
The heating was fixed by about 9.45 or thereabouts, but given the office takes the best part of a day to warm up anyway, and is always quite chilly on Monday mornings even when the heating is working, over the course of a couple of hours the temperature slowly clambered to 15 degrees.
There are very few people in today, and thus there is nothing to do. At 10.15, David said that if the temperature had not improved in an hour of so, he was happy for Noor and I to go home and he'd take the blame for it if questions were asked later.
So, at about 11.30, the temperature had not improved sufficiently, and we still didn't have any work to do. He then set about trying to find someone appropriately in charge of the WPOs in Marie's absence to authorise us going home. He then came back from his mission to inform us that it was significantly warmer on the other side of the building, and our options were to either go and sit at a spare desk over there, or merely have an extended lunch until the building warmed up. He could see the lack of sense in having two dithering WPOs sitting at their desks with nothing to do, but didn't want to just send us home when it transpired that the WPOs over there (i.e. Marian) were staying put.
Anyway, a few minutes later Carol H wandered over, the secretary named on the rota as covering in Marie's absence. Obviously, she wasn't about to send us home. There was some discussion as to whether it was down to manager or employee discretion, whether we would lose pay or have to use up leave, etc; Carol went to "ask Jerome" (her Head of Service) and didn't reappear, so we assumed that we were not allowed to leave - neither of us are going to be so presumptuous to merely walk out without permission.
The most irritating thing in all of this was that Carol said we should go and sit over their side and help Marian - when we checked a few minutes earlier, there was no work anywhere, and no help therefore required. The suggestion of helping is not annoying in and of itself, as if there was any work to do it would be done with pleasure. It was the implication that we simply weren't bothering which irritated me. Noor and I are the only two WPOs who provide full cover at any given time. This issue has been raised over and over again without resolution, but that's neither here nor there. As ever, those of us who are willing to be flexible are penalised for it.
And now, to top it all off, the lift's broken.
I should have stayed in bed.
The heating was fixed by about 9.45 or thereabouts, but given the office takes the best part of a day to warm up anyway, and is always quite chilly on Monday mornings even when the heating is working, over the course of a couple of hours the temperature slowly clambered to 15 degrees.
There are very few people in today, and thus there is nothing to do. At 10.15, David said that if the temperature had not improved in an hour of so, he was happy for Noor and I to go home and he'd take the blame for it if questions were asked later.
So, at about 11.30, the temperature had not improved sufficiently, and we still didn't have any work to do. He then set about trying to find someone appropriately in charge of the WPOs in Marie's absence to authorise us going home. He then came back from his mission to inform us that it was significantly warmer on the other side of the building, and our options were to either go and sit at a spare desk over there, or merely have an extended lunch until the building warmed up. He could see the lack of sense in having two dithering WPOs sitting at their desks with nothing to do, but didn't want to just send us home when it transpired that the WPOs over there (i.e. Marian) were staying put.
Anyway, a few minutes later Carol H wandered over, the secretary named on the rota as covering in Marie's absence. Obviously, she wasn't about to send us home. There was some discussion as to whether it was down to manager or employee discretion, whether we would lose pay or have to use up leave, etc; Carol went to "ask Jerome" (her Head of Service) and didn't reappear, so we assumed that we were not allowed to leave - neither of us are going to be so presumptuous to merely walk out without permission.
The most irritating thing in all of this was that Carol said we should go and sit over their side and help Marian - when we checked a few minutes earlier, there was no work anywhere, and no help therefore required. The suggestion of helping is not annoying in and of itself, as if there was any work to do it would be done with pleasure. It was the implication that we simply weren't bothering which irritated me. Noor and I are the only two WPOs who provide full cover at any given time. This issue has been raised over and over again without resolution, but that's neither here nor there. As ever, those of us who are willing to be flexible are penalised for it.
And now, to top it all off, the lift's broken.
I should have stayed in bed.
