October 12, 2006
Dear Everyone:
I am so glad I’m not in “Hobby” right now.
Up until last Friday, there was a distinct possibility that I would be in “Hobby” this week. One of my “Hobby” customers had scheduled two days for me to train her staff in the document management system. The first day was September 20th, the second was today.
So last month I flew out to “Hobby”, got hopelessly lost driving out from the airport, and finally found the office thanks to a “local” who knew how to give me directions. He was much better than the online service I had used.
Six people had signed up for the training, two of them hand-picked by my customer. Three people showed up, but the third had to leave for a meeting and by the time he returned he was too far behind, so he left again. So fly all the way out to “Hobby” (at the customer’s expense), rent a car, stay two nights in a hotel, all to train exactly two people. Not what I would call cost-effective.
So last Friday, when precisely zero people had signed up for today’s class, I called the customer and we agreed to cancel the class. Thank goodness, because three trips in four weeks would have been pushing it a bit much. Plus, flying on Friday the 13th, not that I’m superstitious, didn’t seem like a great idea if it could be avoided.
So this week has sort of been “found” time. This is time that was originally earmarked for one thing but which could now be used for something else. I’ve been putting it to good use, getting caught up on some other projects and cleaning up the training group mailbox.
A group mailbox is a place to send email messages that can be accessed by any number of persons. Typically, you have your own mailbox and no one else can see what you have in it. But sometimes you want other people to be able to handle the email messages when you’re not around. This is the case with the group mailbox that we set up for the document management system trainers.
Last year my supervisor had me turn much of the mundane, administrative parts of training over to a specialist who works at a lower salary level. This made sense. Why would the company want to spend $120/hour for me to set up authorization for new users when he could do it for a lot less?
Problem is:
He quit. Not because
of the administrative work but because his family wanted to relocate to
And up until this week, I’ve barely had time to try and stay on top of the most urgent email messages coming into that mailbox. Now it’s all nice and clean and I’m hoping I can turn it all over to the support team who should have been doing it all along.
In other news…
“Marshall” came up from
On Sunday, we got together for lunch and did some
more shopping in
More tendrils try to hang down between the slats of the arbor roof. These are determinedly poked back up to be braided through other tendrils to form a “mat” on top of the arbor. Eventually, this mat will cover the entire roof and bless the patio with shade.
This is dangerous work for “Jeannie” because she’s standing on a ladder, several feet above the patio floor. If she leans too far back, or to the side, she risks a fall. Even worse, as soon as she starts working with all these branches, a substance from the plants gets on her skin, which reacts with a rash almost immediately.
As soon as she was finished, she washed her hands and arms in the kitchen. Then she proceeded to demonstrate why the mat of plants has to be on top of the arbor roof and not be allowed to weave its way through the slats.
She has a sponge mop with a head that is just the right width to fit between the slats. She poked the mop head between the slats and vigorously jabbed it up and down, thus causing all the dead leaves, broken tendrils and spent blossoms to rain down on the patio. And “Jeannie”.
In no time, the patio floor, table, chairs and
“Jeannie” were covered in dead vegetation.
“Marshall” declared it the most entertaining thing he’d seen in
months. But keep in mind the
fact that “Marshall” refuses to pay for
cable TV and
makes due with what comes from the stations in
Love, as always,
Pete
| Previous | Next |