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Work Report - Mike Crowl focuses on jobs and work and anything connected to the two.[ February 2007 ] [ April 2007 ]
Work Report - March 2007And the opposite is?March 31st 2007 09:55
Some years ago I wrote a column about the Notes and Queries books, after I’d found the following poem in one:
I know a little man both ept and ert
Waiting for a Rainy DayMarch 30th 2007 09:43
Again I’m going to put aside using this blog as one that deals with words (apart from those I’m using to write here) and talk about work again.
I’ve been working temporarily for a couple of months now, and getting used to the place, its quirks, tensions, humours, language, and attitudes. And it’s technology. But both my wife and I have been struggling quite a lot with the whole unsettledness of it all. Both of us, separately, felt that we should leave aside my quest for a permanent job in the meantime. Instead, we’d take a trip to the UK, where my wife’s family all lives, and spend a few months there, relaxing, getting our energy back and having a real break from the routines we’ve lived with for the last twenty or so years
Changing the mindMarch 28th 2007 08:53
I said I wasn’t going to talk about work anymore, but I’ve changed my mind – in part.
The last couple of days, which might have been a bit of a nightmare, have turned out to be more interesting than I expected. I was anticipating going back to work sans desk, sans computer (‘sans’ being to show that I know my Shakespeare – it was a pseud word in his day, too!) But! The big boss had arranged both a desk and a computer for me – in a different office, but next door to where I was. Not only that but I’ve retained some of the work I’ve been doing, even though the ‘owner’ of those particular jobs has come back from her sick leave. She’s still under par, quite a bit, so they taken some of the pressure off her
All trussed upMarch 25th 2007 09:41
I’m told that the book, Eats Leaves and Shoots (or is it Leaves Shoots and Eats, or, Shoots, Eats and Leaves?) is the book everybody has given someone else for Christmas, but in fact is the one that very few people have actually read.
 I began it and wondered what all the fuss was about. The author, Lynne Truss, goes on at length about the apostrophe, and punctuation, but I think she’s speaking to an audience who isn’t listening. Pedantics, like me, have long since decided that the apostrophe issue, most of all, isn’t worth making any more fuss about. It isn’t the students leaving school who are the problem, it’s the teachers teaching them. These people mostly don’t have a clue about proper punctuation, and couldn’t care less, and so the rot is so thoroughly set in that it’s unlikely this issue will be dealt with in this generation. Down the track, maybe, someone will start a real revolution over it, and it’ll all be sorted out. In the meantime, there are greater things in life to worry about – and I say that as a person who is particular about how things are punctuated
Ites, Ers and Ians?March 24th 2007 04:20
I've posted an article on Quazen called Crowl or Crawl?, and I'm mentioning it here because it's very much in line with the direction I'm planning to take with this blog...that is, it relates to words and their uses, and to wordplay. I discovered, one day when trawling the blog world, that many people thought my name, Crowl , is the correct spelling for the word, crawl. Maybe it's the way it's pronounced in some parts of the world. Anyway, the article shows what happens when your command of English is somewhat less than it should be.
Dunedinites
Change of PaceMarch 23rd 2007 23:38
 For the time being I think it’s done its dash as far as my work and the search for it goes. I’m not definitely settled in the place I’m in – I'm still called The Temp – and it’s up in the air as to whether I can stay there long-term or not, but I want to look at something different in this blog for a while. Back in the days before the word ‘blog’ existed, I used to write what might be called a ‘pre-blog’. It was officially a column in a weekly newspaper, and I was given free rein to write on anything I fancied. That suited the editor of the time, who had a sense of humour, but not his successor, who didn’t, and who promptly dispatched me from the paper at the first opportunity. Nevertheless, I survived five and a half years, and enjoyed taking a tongue-in-cheek approach to all manner of topics
Mr C TempMarch 20th 2007 11:17
Still don't know whether I'm going to be in this job long-term. I talked to the boss today and the person I'm replacing is coming back next week, but she has still got chemotherapy to go, so she may be coming and going a bit, depending on how she copes with it.
The boss is happy to keep me on, but what I'll actually be doing is the issue. Cleaning out the storage cupboard nobody else wants to clean out, probably. I'm still very much 'the Temp' round the place, although obviously they call me by name. (Not sure that any of them know my surname, though!). On the in and out board I'm 'Temp.' My email address is contracting.temp@etc... and I appear as contracting temp in a number of other places. (Contracting because I work in the contracting administration section
Bottom Menu SectionMarch 20th 2007 05:07
Paperless SocietyMarch 17th 2007 07:26
Back in the 80s, I suppose it was, there was a great deal of talk about the Paperless Society. The increased use of computers in offices was supposed to rid us of paper.
Perhaps it was the discovery that yesterday's technology often became inaccessible today that caused office workers to be more cautious of computers in terms of storage, but whatever the reason, the paperless society has never managed to make it. In fact we use paper with more abandon than ever. I cringe every time I see people at work using the photo copier. It's a marvellous machine that can multi-task with ease, and it can often be 
Kafka at WorkMarch 14th 2007 04:25
I was thinking about the open-plan approach to offices that's the norm for most places these days: people working with a bunch of other people at other desks or workstations all around them, no privacy, no place to have a quiet conversation with another member of staff, sometimes no place to hang your hat - if you still wore one.
And then I remembered my horror at the local Work and Income Offices when I first walked in there - I was looking to see if I could enrol as unemployed at the time. A vast acreage of desks - the building was formerly a supermarket, so there's plenty of open space. Each desk exactly so many feet from its neighbour on every side; each desk with its own telephone, its own 
Sorting the FeetMarch 10th 2007 01:43
I’m beginning to see some point in Imelda Marcos’ large collection of shoes. Since I came to this new job I’ve been having trouble with my toes getting so sweaty that by the end of the day they’re soaked. By late afternoon all I’m longing for is to get home and get my shoes and socks off.
I’ve tried Gran’s Remedy, which sort of worked in terms of drying them out, and, when I ran out of that, baby talcum powder. The latter turned out to work better than Gran’s, but still doesn’t do the whole job. And then I went to my evening job last week – in my slippers. They’re not big fluffy ones so they weren’t obvious, but the advantage was I could slip them on and off easily and keep my feet cool
Checks and more checksMarch 6th 2007 09:31
Part of what I'm doing in my day-time job, now, is some of the time-sheets. What a complicated system of checking goes into these. First they're handwritten by the employees - in many cases - or, for those who present weekly timesheets as opposed to daily ones, they're printed off the computers.
Then the information on these is entered into a system which I won't name, but which seems to me to be incredibly slow. The only advantage is that it stops you from entering data so fast you make mistakes. (Although, being a novice on this, I still make mistakes.) Not only is it slow, it's complicated, and it's made more complicated by the system in use at this firm, where absolutely everything, including how often you breathe, is given a job number
Other WorkMarch 2nd 2007 23:32
I haven’t been writing here for some days, between working full-time and trying to get other things done in the evenings.
I’ve always worked at other stuff, but this week has reminded me that my evenings are seldom as free as I’d like. I had to record some song accompaniments for a friend, a thing I do on a regular basis. She uses them in singing lessons with her pupils. The pay is relatively small per song, but it’s good overall. And then the pastor of our church has asked me to do a writing job. Not from scratch, which might be easier, but an adaptation of Andrew Murray’s With Christ in the School of Prayer. The language is rather stilted in this book, and rather preachy, and my job is to bring it up to date and make it readable for people in 2007. Not too difficult a task –except that this is a full book, and they want it done by Easter. But writing is my thing, and editing other people’s stuff has never bothered me. It won’t bother Mr Murray either, since he’s long gone from this earth, and I’m sure he’d appreciate his words still being read, even if it is a la Crowl
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