11:07 p.m. - 2004-06-16
Blurry
Today was a bit of a blur. My supervisor from my downtown contract called at about 6 am. Sounded like he was in transit somewhere. He was responding to my calls from the day before. He said that going into that work place today wasn't really that helpful because the work that we were waiting on still hadn't been started. He would call me later. Fine.
Got into the elections office about the same time as usual. There really is only time to get all the dodads turned on and the coffee started before the staff arrive. We hired a cleaner yesterday just to give everything a more professional appearance. He'll come in once or twice a week until we are done. He was in bright and early so our meeting was held over until 9 :30 am so that the noise from the vacuum wouldn't drown us out. Printed off the lease for the second school board I need to deal with and found someone to courier it downtown. Checked e-mails and responded accordingly; printing off and delivering memos to various staff who had responsibility for different tasks. The French issue to reception. Tech news to the AC and AAC. Material for our trainer, more for our recruitment officer and also the Special Ballot co-ordinators.
Responses to key in and adjustments to tasks and schedules as a result. The heavy hand of our local rep demanding a contingency plan in case polling day staff don't show up. We have been told that the central poll supervisor is supposed to call their 20+ staff at 5 in the am to wake them up on E day. I don't think so. I was told it was mandatory but that is ludicrous. If one doesn't want staff to show up go ahead and tick off their whole family by calling at that time of day. Arrogance. I sent my response back talking about the preventative work we had already done and the results of our efforts. There was a bit of backing off. Writing wasteful reports when I'm already drowning in paperwork is really irritating when it serves no useful purpose. I don't see feeding head office's egos as part of my mandate, thank you very much.
Notes about protest votes and the acceptable behaviour of candidates also arrived. We posted the one memo all over our office and filed the other inthe canadiates' mailbox. Another security issue brought to my attention. This time one staff's ID and oath containing their signature and social insurance gone missing - potential for identity theft very high. The staff emeber in question deals with credit issues in her other life so she was very disturbed by the risk she is now at especially since she takes extra precautions based on her experience. She last saw her material on the desk of the person we are having trouble with, but wanted to implicate one of the people being bullied. I took her into my office and talked to her about how she was feeling and explaining a little of the sercurity problems we are encountering. I think she had a slightly dfferent perspective when she left.
Morning meeting was brief. Everyone just reporting on their activities. One of our recruiters took a stack of personnel data from me. She called one of the people listed in the pile to offer them a job working in the local hospital. Turned out to be the head of hospital voting for all of Canada. Somehow a fax from him had found it's way into that pile. I'm certain the staff in Ottawa are still laughing about it. The upside was that my recruitment officer gleaned an awful lot of good information from him. He was being quite expansive on the topic for her. He expressed surprise at her fluency in French and I think that might have had something to do with his openess as well.
Worked some more on checking for oversize polls in all our polling sites. Finally completed that at about 6 pm. Phew. We are allowed to "split" those into two or three sections when necessary. Good idea except one is still limited by the amount of space available and also the number of willing workers. To make a go of full splits in the high numbers we would have to recruit and train another 70 people in addition the the 50 we already have to have. I think I'll think about that tomorrow.
My downtown supervisor and one of the security staff from Ottawa called one after another. My supervisor wants me to go into that job tomorrow for a while to help my co-worker to plan and set up the next phase of our assignment.That's fine. I must admit being a little edgy about all the attention I am getting from the security people in Ottawa. I am very grateful for their concern on the one hand but also very uncomfortable because they are taking things happening in our office even more seriously than me. That's not a good sign. Up and down calls. More material going missing - key paperwork, elector list boxes and staff information again. Ballots arrived - enough to get us through this weekend. One of the managers taking the lead in assessing their quality once I had set up a spreadsheet for her to follow.
I know a lot more occurred but I can't remember my own name right now. Time for bed I think.
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