Update Time

commoncomitatus is forcing me to do one of those 30-day memes (and obviously picked the hardest subject possible, i.e. music) so I will start that when I've written down some possibilities and whittled them down. :P

In the meantime, here's an update of last week. ( Week of Sociability )

( Less Pleasant Colleague Stuff )

That's about it, really. We are currently levelling out at 48-hour turnaround on work, which is better than seven days as it was a couple of weeks ago. Despite doing three long days last week, leaving early on Monday and two long lunches effectively killed off any flex I might have gained (I only got 0.10 of an hour), so I need to make the effort this week. It does seem that no matter how hard I work to get through the typing, it just keeps on coming. I hope when Noor finally comes back from sick leave we'll be able to cope a bit better; KEH typists were helping out but were more trouble than they were worth, and couldn't access the matters on IKEN anyway, so I think they've given up now.

Anyway, I should really tackle said typing, I suppose.

Edit at 18.20: The afternoon did not exactly improve. I had intended on leaving work at 4.30, and picked up a longish piece of dictation at just before 4.00 to kill some time. It was 25 minutes in length and shouldn’t have taken as long as it did, except the fee earner in question has to spell everything every single time (not being content to spell, for example, the child’s name the first time and expecting us to be intelligent enough to remember it two seconds later…), which uses up precious minutes, and also being overly verbose. I disapprove of the phrase: “… has the ability to be able to…”. Calling the Department of Redundancy Department!

Anyway, I finished that at about 4.45 (I think) and was just filling out the receipt for it to take it upstairs, when Senior 1 tells me she’s put something in as urgent and it needs to go out that afternoon. Right. Okay. So I do that, and am in the process of printing it off when Senior 2 comes up to me and says he’s put an urgent in that also needs to go this afternoon and could I please do it. Having already been thwarted in my first attempt to go home early, I reacted possibly less politely than I should have done, but did it anyway.

You know what? This is getting a bit tedious now. I’m rather sick of being the only person around after 3.30pm to do any urgents that come in. Also I seem to have done nothing except urgents today, and there’s a lot of it because we’re still behind and people are panicking.

*grumps*

It’s all flex. I just have to keep telling myself that. And I have a week off in September. I will doubtless return to similar levels of chaos as last time, but that seems to be par for the course.

On the plus side, I did manage to find a halfway decent cardigan in Primark with very little hassle, for once. It’s one of those buttonless ones with the dangly tails at the front. I have several tops which are longer than my standard cardigans / hoodies so it will come in very useful…