Thursday, January 5th - Happy birthday Caitlin

Conditions at 5:30 am: -9' with a few clouds, heading for a high of -2' and a light dusting of snow on the ground. We may see up to 4 cm of snow this afternoon. Nothing like the 40 cms Caitlin's heading back to in London

I had the pleasure of being invited to the Van Gaals for a delicious supper last night, in honour of Caitlin's birthday. I saw it when I was looking up some information from last year and I meant to go back and double check the date and, of course, I forgot. Then her mom called and invited me for supper and mentioned that it was her birthday. So here's a belated Happy Birthday but  now we have a photo to go with it. Once we get our calendars from the school I'll be able to check it every day and never miss another birthday. 

As I write this, the Van Gaal family are likely already at the airport for Caitlin's 6:00 am departure. Brenda is driving a bus today so she and Bernie plan to go and get some breakfast after the flight is gone before he drops her at the bus.. It's great when a plan comes together. Hope you have a safe and uneventful trip.

It's been a busy couple of days at work and that's a good thing - the time goes by faster. But I had a bit of a revelation yesterday. Several years ago, I was at a conference out west, and was chatting with a girl in our admin group who had moved to PEI from Ontario. She said it took her about 5 years to get used to the pace and I didn't really understand that until now. We've had some issues at work with phone calls bouncing back to reception because they don't get answered at their destination. I've been tracking numbers and trying to help figure out where we can fix the problem. Customers hate getting bounced around, and I don't blame them. Well, yesterday it all fell into place. I put a call through to one department and it came back. I sent it over again, and it bounce back again. I put the person on hold and paged, but to no avail. I can see the front of the counter from my desk and I could see there were no customers there, and I could also see that no one was on the phone. There are 3 people who work at that particular desk so where are they? I took a walk over and one was just standing there chatting with another, who was still chewing something, presumably from a coffee break. It all made sense - they have to finish what they're doing before they can move on to the next thing. Picking up a ringing phone that's right beside you can wait. There seems to be a real lack of what we always referred to as a sense of urgency. I felt like I was being such a nag when I asked " can someone please speak to the customer on line 1?"  Then this girls words came back to me and I realized what she was talking to. This isn't an isolated incident, it happens all the time. I realized that the problem is me - and my expectations. Unfortunately some of our customers have the same expectations. But having come to this realization may make things a little easier to understand. But that doesn't mean I can't keep trying to fix it.