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11:41 p.m. - 2003-12-19
Pre-Christmas
I found some really interesting links in my e-zines tonight. The first is about a mystery book written in the Elizabethan style using a code that has never been broken.secretcode. That sounds like a good Christmas break project - for those who get such things. Next up was a link to a media watch site that fills in the missing information which can give a news story a very different cast. Mediawatch. The third link was to the New York Times "Ideas of the Year" - very stimulating. Ideas. The story I've been following, for the past few days, is in the Arab News. Its about how the Kingdom deals with the challenge of meeting drinking and domestic water use demands. It never occurred to me to think of a country banning agricultural activities, for example, as a means to manage the problem. I also have never really had to think about how to produce water where there is none - so the techniques of desalination or building dams (damming what?)is quite intriguing to me. Sometimes ideas that are centuries old can have an entirely new cast for another person or society.

Started out this morning guessing it was going to be one of those "roll with the punches" days. I had prepared all my clothes the night before as usual. First thing to go was the back zipper in my dress. Nothing else prepared for an emergency situation meant I had to apply "safety pin" technology. First thing in the morning trying to reach the spot on the seam in the small of my back where the stitching that anchors the zipper had come undone. Uh huh. Missed my regular bus as a result. Well I had been trying to do that unsuccessfully all week, hadn't I? The ride to work was pleasant, since neither the bus or the train ever filled up past seating capacity. I even made it into the office just before start time. Bonus.

Since it was a half day for everyone else, because of the company's Christmas party tonight, the records center was really busy, with everyone trying to get their year end tasks completed by noon - not. I've switched over to working with another collection of records, as of today, and they were the ones in highest demand. Meant I was doing client service off and on - also not in the contract set up for me - but what other alternative was there? The whole purpose of a records center is to provide staff with timely and accurate access to critical information - right? Besides that, the alternative was to let each person wanting help to dig through the stacks - and stacks - of data I was trying to sort on their own. I think not.

The other contract and I were going to go out walking at lunch, but she was suffering from a Chinook (windy weather) migraine and left just before noon. My current liaison came by just before she left at lunch too. She presented me with one of the company's high tech pens as a Christmas gift. It comes with five tiny batteries, so the shaft of the pen can continously change colour while in use. Cool. I thought that was very kind of her to think of me. I must admit I'm ambivalent about gift giving between management and staff or co-workers though. It's such a difficult balance to achieve to ensure each person feels acknowledged appropriately. I did appreciate the kindness, but almost think it would be wiser if the gift were to come through the company rather than individuals. How do you choose an appropriate gift for your manager or your co-workers? There was a great article in the HR e-zine I receive about doing gifting well. I wish I'd seen it before today, although I hadn't, as a contract, expected anything at all. We're not usually included in such activities. At another contract one Christmas, my job was to prepare all the bonus packages for all the permanent staff - about 1000 people. Working in HR, I knew what everyone's wages and benefits were. For some senior staff, their bonus, in just cash, was three times what more junior staff earned in a year. Some of the junior staff had to use the food bank to supplement their wages once in a while. "And the beat goes on", Sonny and Cher.

The afternoon was very quiet and I got a lot done. Still a lot of the scientists running in and out of the library needing help with finding the data they used, but everyone was quite patient with each other. That's a definite change from the past few weeks. A lot of the field staff were on-site and it was good to see them. They had come into town for the party tonight and were doing double duty by getting their central office work covered at the same time. Lots of treats floating around too - my poor diet. Because my walking partner had booked off sick just before lunch, I worked through lunch meaning to leave an hour earlier as a result - 3:45 pm to be exact. Miss rush hour and the crowding was my thought. Not.

As I crossed Seventh Avenue, I noticed the flashing lights of a police car just reaching a spot two train platforms away down the line. A disturbance maybe? No, someone fell in front of the train there just a while before. Instructions coming over the loud speakers for waiting travellers were, of necessity, incomplete and changed often. First could we walk to the pick up point two platforms down? Fine. Got there and the train waiting pulled away as we pushed the button to open the doors. Announcement - could we go back to a previous platform for pickup? Fine again, not much else one can do is there? I thought of all the alternative travel options by a series of feeder busses and decided to stick with the train. Too much risk of detours and missed connections in such situations. That can double travel time.

As it was, I and about a thousand other people, going my way, walked back and forth for nearly an hour. Finally on the right platform, I saw that my train was jammed to the rafters. I tried to back away,intending to wait for one less crowded, but the unstoppable pressure from the crowd of people behind me forced me forward into the train. Now I know why people get crushed in crowd situations. There is no control over your movement. It feels like the force of a tide at full-bore and you a single drop of water. All one can do is hope that the pushing stops before you are crushed. Fortunately, most of my fellow travellers were patient, with the attitude that since there were no real alternatives one might just as well make the best of it. There were some idiots, but they were just pointedly ignored until they stopped complaining. At least we were alive and safe, heading home to our families. In addition, with the chinook that caused my co-worker's migraine, came the benefit of unseasonably warm weather - at least for here, about 55 F/12 C. It could have easily have been -30 F/C. Ended up I got home about the same time I normally would have.

Checked my e-mail from Elections Canada, wondering if there was any word on when we would be paid, since I'd submitted all the work I could do about a month ago. There was a memo dated today. First up, despite the deadline, only about one third of assignments are completely submitted - mine being one of those. Our original notice had said we would be paid within three weeks. Uh huh. Next comment was about our tracking of time on task - the paradox. We were told we had an iron-clad limit of 78 hours to complete all tasks, but, that notwithstanding, that we were to log every amount of time spent doing the actual work for future benchmarks. Fine. My time added up to somewhere around 110 to 115 hours.

Some things I still couldn't "complete", because we weren't allowed to call electors whose place of residence was in question to verify their eligibility to vote in our constituency. I had 127 people registered who appeared to live elsewhere by postal code. Even though I had checked on-line "people finder" sites and Canada Post's website there was still no way to verify their residency independently. I wasn't willing to confirm them as eligible electors without talking to them directly. So, if I'm not allowed to call and I'm not allowed any more time, already having invested half again as much time as Elections Canada will pay me for anyway, where does that leave me? Am I supposed to falsify my reports to ensure my work is counted as "complete"? Am I supposed to put in even more unpaid hours to ensure I have met the legislated ethical requirements of my office? What a wonderful Christmas present from this employer, a severely crimped budget for Christmas presents for my family. How kind. The only good thing, I guess, is that this is so typical of EC's operations that I would have been surprised if I had been paid on time. I had already planned on how to cope if I didn't have access to those funds by already warning my guys that at least part of their gifts might be late coming. Between having missed so much time being sick and this, there aren't any other options. I'm glad my guys are old enough to be comfortable with that. EC's senior management complain of a 75% turnover in field staff each event. No surprise is it? I know I'm doing it because I love being involved in the essence of the democratic process, otherwise it would not be worth the grief. Oh well - a "roll with the punches" kind of day today.

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