Before this,there was that.

So before I can get away into the Rockies for our second camping expedition there was one last hurdle. A 2 day course and an exam courtesy of my new job and just to put the pressure on one I can’t afford to fail. So off I set  to a conference center out near the Airport to be tutored in the vagaries of ISO 9001:2008 Internal Audit.

Anyone who knows me understands just how much I hate exams, it’s not that I do poorly its just I hate being tested. That extra pressure just totally messes me up. I have been known to get out of a driving test after only 1 Minute and 100 yards from the test center flatly  refusing to carry on. What the hell sort of  stupid question is which way do you turn your wheels on a hill when facing up or down when parking . I am in the prairies not a hill in sight, you would think there were other things to worry about. I can drive, I have for 30 years and back home I have an HGV license and have driven all over the world. On both sides of the road whether I am supposed to or not I can even go the wrong way around roundabouts, no worry….. anyway I got back in the car and completed my test and passed. ( And you know what? Between the 2 years it took me to get the courage to take lessons and the test the Province changed its mind. I could have just swapped my UK driving license for a full Alberta license no questions asked!!!!)

So dramatic scene is set and I take the course the exam and pass and now have a shiny new certificate on my wall. Nothing to worry about at all.

However it does make me worry a bit about what else is lurking within my new job, I am not the worlds best negotiator. I have been known to sell myself a used car and on one occasion insisted on offering more for a Gibson EB3 than the guy selling it wanted. If you want me to do something tell me what it is and I will get on with finding a way of getting it achieved no matter how bizarre or unheard of or how unlikely the chance of success are, I am quite capable of biting off more than I can chew thank you very much.( However you will need to set a time frame or you could be waiting a while.) So when my boss finally sat me down and said do you want to do this new job QA/QC Continuous Improvement Coordinator for more money than you currently get, I went with the yes sounds great answer.

Its asking the little questions that let me down; its my complete disregard for society’s status symbols that has me forgetting to ask the important questions…. I should have asked about an office? ( As it turns out I would have been better off asking for a chair and a desk and possibly some carpet.)

Well I still don’t have any carpet but this raw polished concrete look is pretty industrial and I can live with it actually, the chair swoops and swooshes over it quite beautifully. Now I hear you all asking how could I end up with a promotion  that came without a desk or chair and a refusal to supply me with file cabinets for my extensive mission critical QA/QC records. Well it all started off with high hopes and excitement. The company had finally decided to build a new facility and we were all brainstorming putting in our requests for what our department really needed to head boldly into the future and catapult us into a world class leading company. We plotted, planned, white boarded had meetings and some more  meetings. And finally our baby was there on paper a fantastic versatile production facility fit for the future, beautiful production offices meeting rooms, wash rooms showers it was endless.

At this stage I had a chair ( a leather one) a desk a custom credenza ( file cabinet to most of you but it was real imitation wood). I did not however have my promotion, but the furniture and the job I was doing  had lured me away from my previous position in the company. Hey potential new boss can I order one of them fancy leather chairs like what you have back there in the production office. sure was the reply, sold I said I am yours stolen from supply chain for one leather chair.

So the finalized drawings came back from the big cheese and of course a few of our bells and whistles were missing but on the whole it was a million times better than our crowded old facility, armed with a scale drawing of the new production office and some squared paper and a pair of scissors we undertook the exciting task of transferring a layout of our existing  office furniture to its new location. I am happy to say we waste many productive hours in this way.

I should have known how futile this exercise was having been the doubter who had laughingly said to a newer colleague, who felt the obvious result of a state of the art new building would be new custom furniture. I suggested we should  find a way of using our existing very new matching and nice furniture in the new location.

Even my years of experience and caution and deep understanding of the companies business practices did not prepare me for what happened next and I am ashamed to say I got very upset, completely Librarian Poo as they say in the real world. There in my office space was this guy with a tape measure! Its OK I say we have already done the measuring layouts all completed. Change of plan guv all this furniture going into the front office to keep it unified the moneys run out you ain’t gettin no furniture, tough do do, if you don’t like it I don’t care. And that’s the point where I lost my sense of humor, you must be joking,  “what the ****-ass  **** of a bum-****  shithole town is this?”

I apologized later explaining that if you try and measure someone for their coffin whilst they are still alive you are going to get some negative feedback. So how come in the photos below I have a awesome workspace and a leather chair? I am pleased to say its that project orientated no holds barred solution finding adaptive character qualities I was telling you all about earlier. First of all come the move I put my leather chair in the back of the car and changed the tags onto one of our spare chairs, next I raided the engineers and with permission made off with 2 of the surplus IKEA  summer student tables. Stashed them in the back of the Blazer next I half hinched an unused lamp from my neighbor found the only mini file cabinet with a surplus sticker on it and drove it all over to the new building myself. Soon after I dismantled my IKEA cabinets from home and together with the help of # 1 Daughter spent a weekend installing them together with a personal selection of my collectables as motivation. Finishing touch I hi-jacked some unused speakers and an IKEA speaker stand from home for my I Pad. My Moose mug was a gift for kindly lending out my Parks Canada Pass. and there you have it. If you want to know more about the curated displays in my cabinets subscribe as I am sure I will get round to it as soon as I give myself a deadline.

 

 

 

Comments are closed.