22:00 - 15.01.06
Perspective
When I was providing relief for the one polling division team yesterday, a young man noted he was really tight for time in terms of getting to work. Turns out he was a flight attendant for a local air carrier. My special ballot co-ordinator asked where he was bound. Hawaii. I commented that maybe I'd see him again sooner than he thought. The look on his face indicated I "had some 'splainin'to do, Lucy". I just noted my youngest son and I had discussed a vacation with our hard earned cash when the election was over - plus my airmiles since they are recognized by this carrier. I asked how much tickets were running right now and was amazed to hear that it was under $300 one way. I commented that the choice of destination was an issue between my youngest and I, because he favoured Florida where there is a young lady he met in an IM group and I favoured somewhere else like Hawaii where the focus would be on relaxing and taking in the local culture. I asked if they flew to Florida as well now. The answer was yes. Maybe we'll decide the destination based on cost. Maybe we won't go to either destination either. My problem, when it comes to travel, is that I'd like to just travel everywhere. Around the world in 80 days anyone?
When my trainer arrived yesterday she was quite upset because someone had gone through the material on her desk. The list of people who were to attend the scheduled training for the morning session was missing. She is a special needs teacher in her other life and is very organized and methodical. A number of us had seen that package of information on her desk late the evening before when we were having a discussion in her office at the end of the day.
I commented that there had been other instances of things going missing, including a package of information from one drawer in my desk that was locked most of the time. It contained contact information for a certain group of people. The person who had given it to me had watched as I placed it in its proper folder. A couple of days later I needed to retrieve that information and it was gone. I searched the bottom of the drawer plus the two or three folders on each side of her folder thinking maybe it had been misplaced. No - it was completely gone. I went through every folder I had in that drawer yet still could not find it. Fortunately she had kept a copy for her work, so it was possible to replace the information, but it really bothered me all the same. I usually lock my desk drawers after I work in them or I lock my office if I know I need to be away for any length of time. There had been a couple of instances in the intervening days where I failed to lock my door, because I thought I would only be gone for a very short time only to find I was delayed by a series of questions or issues that required my attention elsewhere.
Because of the nature of the personnel information contained in the trainer's package, we had staff go methodically through every office and drawer in the entire office suite yesterday looking for the lost documents. We also called everyone we had remembered being in or near her office after 3 pm the afternoon before. No luck and no clues as to its whereabouts were uncovered and we were all very concerned.
Today she came rushing in to my office after going to her own just before her training session. She always organizes her desk just before she leaves. The last thing she does is places her identity tag in the top right hand drawer of her desk on top of the paperwork there. This afternoon she found that lost package of information on top of her identity tag, even though we all knew it wasn't there when she left yesterday. There were only a few of the staff present today, because it was our short working day with no events scheduled. When the break in occurred at the beginning of December, it was obvious that both security in Ottawa and the police believed it was a staff member because of the way access was gained. At the time, I dismissed that theory but now I have had to revisit that thought. If you recall, dear diary, several similar instances, like the last two I've mentioned, happened last election. We never did determine who had gained access to secured material. Hmmmmmmmmmm.
One young lady became a bit of an issue for the rest of the staff yesterday because she had her cell phone glued to her ear continuously. I have told them all to bring a book or craft to work for slow periods during the day, because we are required to have a certain number of staff available to look after whatever volume of calls or visits arrive from the public. That is not at all predictable. Often we have prep work that we ask them to do as it becomes available and there is never any hesitation to help on demand. It doesn't seem right to ask staff to sit and stare into space when no work is available, even though they must be physically present. As long as the young woman kept her voice low and stopped when calls or the public arrived I had no problem with it. Yesterday though she was on the office phones and she was getting louder and less discreet as the day went on. One of the other staff complained and my assistant arrived to let me know about the issue. How should it be handled. Well, first of all it might be wise to inform her that Ottawa randomly monitors our calls to ensure we are using our lines for business only. My assistant looked quite upset and I realized that it was likely because she often calls her family when things are slow for her tasks. Anyone who works in a government office should realize that nothing they say or do there is considered private because of the nature of the work we do. There is always some measure of monitoring occurring. Personally I see it as a protection of our own safety so it doesn't bother me. On company time, whether a public or private enterprise, one should expect that the employer is going to take measures to protect their internal security. Apparently my assistant hadn't taken that into consideration. She bolted for the door and hurried over to talk with the offending young lady. I didn't see my assistant for the rest of the evening and she allowed she would likely take today off too when I suggested it to her at the end of the day. She did arrive in the office today aboutan hour in to our regular schedule but kept her distance again. Don't know what to think about that.
Today my financial officer and I came into work early for a couple of reasons. We still had not received the authorization number we needed for the additional staff hours in order to submit payroll and our deadline for submission was 3 pm. Also the first day of voting in the hospitals was to begin at 10 am and I wanted to be available in the office if I was needed by that group. Finally, given the nature of that notice coming from the one candidates office wrongly implying that we had advance polling today, it was important to me to ensure that the signage we had created late last night to inform electors that that service wouldn't be available today was up and properly secured. Given the turnout at the beginning of the voting hours yesterday, I was afraid that crowd control might be an issue if another rush had been planned like the one that had occurred yesterday.
The rest of the office staff arrived at the regular noon opening time for Sunday. My financial officr and I were trying once more to contact the senior staff in Ottawa who must approve our requests before we could proceed. We had already made two attempts at reaching them by phone and email to no avail. The front line workers were very kind, but noted that the people we needed to talk to were all on days off. One finally noted that one of the senior people had just walked in and if I could quickly get an email off to him I would likely get a response. I was trying to quickly write that email when my computer froze.
Several attempts to get it working without losing what I had written had failed, when two people appeared at my office door. I asked what they were doing in the secure area and the male stated they wanted to vote. I started to explain that there was no voting in this area and that no advance polls were scheduled for today when he started trying to shout me down. "Don't you take that attitude with me" I began again to explain about how voting was scheduled when he got even louder and more abusive "We just came from the candidate's office and they told us we could vote right now and we are going to vote right now" peppered with other comments less than polite, saying all this as he stepped through the door. I picked up the phone and started dialling without thinking where I was calling. He grabbed his wife's arm and yelled "she's calling security, we'd better get out of here" heading back out toward the front of the office. By the time I secured my computer and reached reception, our special ballot co-ordinator was talking with them in his office. I asked the receptionist why she had let them wander the building unescorted and she admitted she had been in the kitchen leaving the entire office unmonitored while she did "other things". She is the one who has been a problem for some time and seems to look for opportunities to create crises. I was not in the mood for excuses and told her to never leave that post unless it was an emergency, or if there was someone to relieve her. She also stated that she had told the couple some information that was incorrect and that she thought it was for the best. Just like yesterday when she decided to allow someone throwing a major temper tantrum to move way up past several voters who had been patiently waiting their turn to vote just to pacify them. She was told that rewarding abusive behaviour by anyone entering the office was not acceptable and not to do it again. I reminded her what services we had available and the number of staff allowed - especially with Ottawa refusing to ok the amount of staffing hour we had already gone through - and asked her how it was she believed we could meet the increasing demands of people as ignorant as the ones she was encouraging in their behaviour. Word gets around and an escalation of the abuse some members of the public of the past few days have been dishing out toward my staff and me is not acceptable.
I went back to my office and called the official agent of the candidate in question, to let him know how frustrated I was with some of their supporters dirty tactics. He is someone I have known for a long time and who I know would not engage in such behaviour himself - nor would the candidate find it acceptable if he knew about it either. The greatest danger to any candidate is the wolf in sheep's clothing who offers their "help" on a campaign. Many of the public scandals found by the press during campaigns are actually planted or created by a rival campaign. It has cost some very honorable and upright people not only the election, but their public and private reputations too. It is one of the reasons I decided long ago not to stay involved in that part of the governmental process. When I was volunteering when I was an at home mom, I had no choice but to deal with the political entities who had control of the decision making process for quality of life issues. They held the purse strings and the authorization that we needed access to - somewhat similar to the people withholding approvals I need for my payroll dilemma, as a matter of fact.
I think the two incidents today combined, triggered quite a strong emotional response from me not only because of the past memories they revived and the direct problems they caused, but also because once again the work I have to have completed by the end of Tuesday is not getting done. I have to confess that after I returned from the reception area, I quietly used the bad words I have always hated hearing someone else use as I sat at my computer struggling to get it rebooted, after dealing with the server crash that had frozen it once again. My financial officer just sat there quietly with her shoulders hunched and I felt awful about my behaviour. I know better.
At about that time my tech called to check if everything was ok. He got an earful of whining and laughed. On top of everything else, when I had first tried to log on when we arrived before regular hours it was obvious head office was monitoring activity on our units. They locked me out until I went back to his office and carried out his regular start up routine. When that was done I was allowed to log on to my programs, but only for short periods of time and then they would freeze up the software again requiring me to reboot every hour or so. I fully understand their desire to protect the security of their system, but it is just one more barrier to my ability to do my job.
Signed off with him and tried to get back to finding any of the decision makers in Ottawa who could authorize the hours we needed to make today's payroll. I finally called one of their direct lines and found the man in question had forwarded his line to his home. I could hear his children playing and laughing in the background. I apologized profusely, but explained that we had run out of time. He promised to call me as soon as he reached his office - could I re-send him all my documentation. My financial officer was showing a lot of stress and I was feeling it too by this time. Almost 2 pm and almost too late. I was re-keying what I needed to when my phone rang. It was the co-ordinator for the hospital. She needed supplies and answers right now. The question she asked was answered in the manual. I was not willing to stop trying to get the payroll dealt with to dig through that text when it was something that could easily be done by the polling staff at the hospital. It was obvious she didn't catch how serious the problem was and started to debate my response. I finally told her I would send someone with some supplies she had requested but that she would have to go through her book and find it herself. At the same time our trainer popped in and said she needed me immediately to swear in her class. Oi! I explained once again the problem and stated I would be there as soon as possible. It took another ten minutes before I could cover that responsibility, because I had to wait for the authorization number to arrive so my financial officer could complete her work. I apologized to the new hires for leaving them sitting for so long, but I really could not have left the first task to wait until I'd gone through their session with me, thus losing another three quarters of an hour on an already close to the wire deadline. Most were quite gracious about it though and that was good.
Returned after that session and met my special ballot co-ordinator coming back from a home visit he had just completed. His comments about his experience put everything back in its proper perspective. The person he had gone to assist was on life support in the terminal stages of cancer. Their spouse was their care giver and in the medical profession. As the voter marked their ballot the spouse began to cry. It was obvious that they were thinking the dying person was never going to do that one act again before they died. Guess the last few days haven't been that bad after all.
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