Question Asked Isn’t The Question

I was reminded today about incidents where you have to physically stop your sarcasm and sassy-ness coming out of your mouth.

Many life times ago I worked as a Secretary/Admin/Accounts/Cashier type person at a tourist attraction set in a country park on a Baronial estate, somewhere that had hundreds of years of history and secrecy. The thing about Joe Public on his holibobs is you have to be in semi-holiday mode too, rather than stressed, over tired, is it home time yet mode. Despite the attention given to signage, literature and such, you are constantly asked what sound like obvious questions. Often the question asked isn’t really using the correct words to get the correct answer. For example “can I go out?” what the person is really asking is “If I go out to my car, will you let me back in again without repaying?”

Over time, after the hundredth ask, brain goes into sarcasm mode and you find yourself glazing over as the answer you really really shouldn’t say out loud comes to the forefront. Here are a few common questions and the wrong tired answers…..

Do we have to pay? No, I work for free and the animals don't eat.

is this where we come in? No, it's my front room and you're disturbing my siesta.

What's here? (There's a 20 foot information board beside them) ohh nothing, absolutely nothing.

Do I park there? (Point to carpark) No, you go up to the main road, turn east, go 7 miles, park and get on a bus.

If we come in and we go out? Please do, I want to go home at 6.

Is that the lake? No, that's an illusion, you get a train, turn round three times, recite a mantra and come back tomorrow.

Are you open? (Usually this is a bank holiday Monday) Noooo, we've buggered off to Antigua for the day.

There was only ever one question that stopped us in our tracks and made us go “Huh?” That was – How heavy are your heavy horses? – very, they were big burly Shires and Suffolks, did the person think we were running a horse fat camp.

 

Game, Set, and new strawberries please

The past two weeks have delivered a rather welcome distraction from the trials, woes, chaos, stresses, bureaucracy and struggles I am wading through. With the BBC having such extensive Wimbledon coverage online I could switch and flip through numerous matches from 11am until almost bed time.

Boy have there been some thrilling and entertaining games, from the rocketing prowess of the 15 year old Coco Gauff, the epic men’s doubles games and the men’s singles to the antics in the Gents and Senior Gents Invitational Doubles (affectionately known as the old and the dead) with such characters as Mansour Bahrami, Paul HaasHois and Henri Leconte. It has been lovely. But that’s ended for another year *sigh*

Time to get back to my lists of jobs, chores, tasks, bureaucracy and such. So here goes

• Update Management Company spreadsheets
• Email Agents for update on works pending
• Liaise with Director over estate business
• Order Great-Niece’s birthday present (4 already!)
• Collate care professionals names, addresses, phone numbers
• Begin DLA to PIP migration (scary)
• Amass medical evidence
• Do own financial evaluation
• Source home demo powerchairs
• Update website (1st Aug)
• Cogitate Mac ‘big project’
• Go through and weed 300+ saved read emails
• Finish cat blanket crochet

That should do for starters. None of them are exactly five minute easy jobs and seeing them it looks a little daunting, but I’ll get there one tick at a time.

 

I Think I Am Bad For Business!

Whilst twiddling my thumbs in the wee small hours, a thought percolated in my noggin. Apart from the last place everywhere I have ever worked no longer exists!

While at school the obligatory two-week work experience was done in the admin offices at the local psychiatric hospital. Many years ago the former naval hospital was refurbished into numerous plush, sought after, town houses and apartments.  During my studies at College to get letters after my name I worked for a period of time at a fabrication business, which was taken over by a larger one and then everything moved away (also the winter snow meant College closed but I still went into work through the snow drifts).  After completing my courses (and getting those letters after my name) I went to work in a section of the Department for Education, hmm, yeah, well, that was partially disbanded and partially amalgamated with other sections.  Off to a speciality advertising agency, if you needed your logo and details printed on things, we sourced it, pens, key rings, clothing, carrier bags, travel adaptors and umbrellas, manic in a word, well it was the eighties. 

When that went to the wall, off I hopped to a temping agency, that too no longer exists, nor do the companies they sent me to, from holidays camps, to builders merchants, to security companies, to car sales, to ship chandlers, to law firms, accountants. Some were for a week or two, some were months or longer, most were where the first temp ‘upset’ things so I was the rescue party.

Next stop a Baronial Estate, the job I enjoyed the most, it had the greatest variety. I’d grown up with the family, it certainly topped up my anecdotes supply.  Recently the new 4th Baron (I worked for the third) has decided to no longer operate that area of the various businesses on the Estate, another one closed.

I’d moved on to a couple of companies contracted to work for the Ministry of Defence, both now gone and forgotten.  Finally onto another Government Department section, which is still shuffling the bureaucratic red tape even if the actual building I worked in now has a different function.

Hmm, I wonder where I could put my ‘business black widow’ skills to good use, join the Labour Party maybe or the Trump Administration, how about the banking industry ……….. then again, it might be a wise thing I am now classed as “unfit to work”, I doubt the post brexit economy could cope with me.