When your partner has overtime and has to be in work by half past seven, so you have been up by half past six then the day takes on a different perspective. As long as you don't actually have to do directed work yourself.
I had set myself a list of complicated financial, administrative and occupational tasks to complete. And had completed them by ten o'clock. Why, you may ask. And how? Well, when you are in school you are limited, hemmed in, confined by the constraints of the timetable. Anything you want to do has to be done in the few moments of freedom at breaks when still trying to have some coffee (or tea) or during the lunch time, when M&S is tempting you to spend hard earned cash on food you actually want to eat. In other words, you have no time to wait during the lengthy period that most organizations take to respond to any reasoable telephone request.
Consider. You phone (any) organization and what happens? After a breathtakingly exciting period when old fashioned technology exerts its benign influence and you hear an ordinary ringing tone the real voyage of discovery begins. The ringing tone ceases, a tantalizing moment of silence and then The Voice. Depends on the firm: sometimes The Voice is obviously someone who has drawn the short straw and resents having to do the chore of leaving a message for any member of the public; at other times it is a relative of the original woman who voiced the Marina's of yesteryear. What all of them have in common is that they threaten. That little reminder that all calls are recorded "for training purposes" is of course there to indicated that, if you finally lose your patience and say direct and truthful things to the operator, they have your voice on tape and they will prosecute.
Then the torture by numbers. "If your call is . . . then press . . . " and the exquisite torture of being too thoughtful and thinking that your actual enquiry is not really any of the numbers but is quite near to number 1, though it could also be considered near to number 3, and you know that if you lack decision and go for the "all other enquiries" number, no one is going to pick up.
Even on a good day it's going to be outside the time limits of a normal teacher's break and the residue of despair and hatred that a failed call brings will effect the next lesson to the detriment of learning! To say nothing of the human effect on the teacher. Firms never understand the time limitations of teachers during the working day. However many times you explain to 'outsiders' that their window of contact opportunity for a teacher will be exactly 10 minutes at a stated time, they never understand and will phone twenty minutes later and be shocked that they cannot contact the person.
But, if you are at home, with a telephone with a loudspeaker attachment then the switches, delays, swappings, music, recorded voices, indeed anything that an inhuman firm can throw at you are as nothing. You sit back with your cup of tea and with something else to do and stroll your way through the telephone call and, and this is the real delight of it all, you get a result. You follow through (for as long as it takes) and actually get somewhere. I recommend it.
Meanwhile, the house. The house is not selling, and I still have not made up my mind about what to do. I think that any reduction in price will be a short term measure. I do not think that the person who wants an open plan house will buy a traditional semi instead. I think that the sort of people who buy open plan will want something a little less traditional and will be prepared to pay for it. Or, of course, I'm wrong.
I am told by the BBC that this is the time for the consideration of ideas for programmes, so, in the near future, I should find out if any of my ideas make it through to a commission.
No comments:
Post a Comment