Rumbling and rumination
Thursday, January 8th, 2004 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanWell, I made it to the office despite my inclination to hide under the quilt (I've said it before: they're continental quilts, not duvets).
It seemed like a good idea before I left the house to wear a fedora, but I rather revised that opinion as I reached the Lagrangian Point between home, the newsagents, Clapham North and Stockwell tube stations and the railway station. It was there, you see, that the wind/rain combination was at its worst and I could only keep the hat on by clutching at it desperately which in turn meant that rain entered my sleeve via the up-turned cuff and trickled down (up) my arm to settle in a pool somewhere around my elbow.
Nice.
I am meanwhile impressed, even by my standards, at the complete lack of motivation I currently feel towards doing anything even remotely productive in the office. I have a number of things to do, and I suppose that I should make an attempt on them today (some of them are currently lying in the Pre-Cambrian layers of my in-tray). Most of them involve semiliterate letters from disgruntled members of the public which we are supposed to answer within 15 working days.
I am currently working on a definition of 15 working days that brings some of the more elderly pieces of correspondence back within target.
At some point too, I must tackle the growing pile of over claim check failures accumulating dandruff-like next to the telephone. But this is all boring beyond belief. The day, however, is not a complete loss: I have brought my juke box in with me and I can at least have a little music while Iwork shirk.
I think a little later I shall dig out my rhyming dictionary and make a further attempt at writing something that rhymes. I made a start on something yesterday but it is rubbish. I like to fool myself that I can write prose with the best of them, but poetry is most definitely not my forté as I have mentioned here on LJ more than once. Do not be surprised if my efforts never make the transition from the hard drive to [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com]. Having said that, I should stir myself and do something creative on that forum at some point.
Ho hum. So much time, so little inclination.
It seemed like a good idea before I left the house to wear a fedora, but I rather revised that opinion as I reached the Lagrangian Point between home, the newsagents, Clapham North and Stockwell tube stations and the railway station. It was there, you see, that the wind/rain combination was at its worst and I could only keep the hat on by clutching at it desperately which in turn meant that rain entered my sleeve via the up-turned cuff and trickled down (up) my arm to settle in a pool somewhere around my elbow.
Nice.
I am meanwhile impressed, even by my standards, at the complete lack of motivation I currently feel towards doing anything even remotely productive in the office. I have a number of things to do, and I suppose that I should make an attempt on them today (some of them are currently lying in the Pre-Cambrian layers of my in-tray). Most of them involve semiliterate letters from disgruntled members of the public which we are supposed to answer within 15 working days.
I am currently working on a definition of 15 working days that brings some of the more elderly pieces of correspondence back within target.
At some point too, I must tackle the growing pile of over claim check failures accumulating dandruff-like next to the telephone. But this is all boring beyond belief. The day, however, is not a complete loss: I have brought my juke box in with me and I can at least have a little music while I
I think a little later I shall dig out my rhyming dictionary and make a further attempt at writing something that rhymes. I made a start on something yesterday but it is rubbish. I like to fool myself that I can write prose with the best of them, but poetry is most definitely not my forté as I have mentioned here on LJ more than once. Do not be surprised if my efforts never make the transition from the hard drive to [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com]. Having said that, I should stir myself and do something creative on that forum at some point.
Ho hum. So much time, so little inclination.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-08 05:08 am (UTC)And now of course we transition out of the holiday period and I still can't be arsed. The Overseers are back now and I am having to disguise this total non-interest in being here by staring at my computer screen and answering your insightful piece.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-08 07:42 pm (UTC)You must subtract from this an hour for lunch, plus say twenty minutes a time for elevenses and tea break - so that's brought our working day down to 6 hours twenty minutes. If you work in front of a VDU, you must take a five to ten minutes break every hour to stop your eyes exploding, so we'll call that six breaks of ten minutes, a round hour. Our working day is now down to 5 hours twenty minutes.
On top of this, of course, one should factor in an hour a day for administrative work which is nothing to do with the public - filling in leave forms, answering e-mails, tidying desks - which brings our working day down to 4 hours twenty minutes.
That's... quick mental math... 260 minutes a day. Your required 120 hours for response amounts to 7200 minutes. Therefore, logisitically speaking you actually have 27.7 working days to answer someone - obviously on a 5 day working week this amounts to 5 and a half weeks.
Perhaps the scariest thing about this is that it all makes sense. And I'm almost sure it's the system banks use when they say "ah yes, that'll be 7-10 working days..."