A Single Secretarial Flaw

Posted on November 9, 2015 by admin

secretaryI like to think I’m a great secretary. I have a powerful organisational mind, to the point where I just can’t look at a messy desk without tidying it. No one in the office makes better instant coffee, and I’m able to book appointments before the boss even thinks about making them. I just think ahead, you see.

But there’s a problem, and I think it’s getting to the point where I need some help. I’m terribly, awfully, paradoxically, clinically afraid of answering the phone. I just…well, the thought of talking to another person without them being there sends chills up my spine. It hasn’t been a problem thus far, because on my first day I convinced the boss that we should take advantage of one of Melbourne’s call answering services. I could clearly see that sometimes, we get inundated with calls. It happens, right?! Ha ha, we needed to DO something about that. No use our clients not being able to get through because our entire phone board was full. Our company’s potential clients were in jeopardy, so on my very first day, I made the decisive action to call in (via email) a live phone answering service. Everyone congratulated me, the boss said a few more ideas like that will send me right to the top and in the end, we actually needed it. It’s great for everyone who can’t just drop whatever they’re doing to answer the phone.

But then it got complicated. A client mentioned to the boss how I never seemed to answer my calls, and they’re always redirected. Of course, MY reasoning for this is because I’m always on ANOTHER call. But the boss noticed that he’s never seen me on the phone, and…well, the jig may be up. Personally, I think the live answering service does a much better job than me, and that I should never be made to answer calls ever again because I’ve more important things to do. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

-Sandrine

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Accidental dry needling course

Posted on October 18, 2015 by admin

Geez somDry needling courses etimes I wonder how I’m still alive – I’m so vague I would definitely not have survived this long if the lethal combination of modernism, globalisation, and technological advancements had killed of the last remnants of natural selection. All I ever seem to do is deprive myself of sleep and then wander around in a dream like state.

Yesterday was a particularly bad day for me. I was running down the stairs in the economics department, listening to a podcast, when I tripped on my boot and fell down the stairs. I tumbled for a decent two seconds before I landed on my leg, on a platform. I do not exaggerate when I say it hurt – which those kind of falls never used to. Wow I’m getting old. Anywho, all these people just right on by, ignoring the girl lying on the floor moaning in pain. Economics students are mean.

Well, you’d think I’d learn from not paying attention, but apparently not. You see, little to my knowledge, there are two lecture theatres side by side in the Health and Fitness building. I thought both doors lead into the same lecture theatre, and so instead of having my first year lecture on determinants of health, I sat through fifty minutes of a dry needling course. Melbourne has officially produced the vaguest child around. Well done.

On the bright side, I did manage to learn a whole heap and a lot of it was actually pretty interesting. Maybe I should properly look into doing some kind of needling course that leads into that kind of area? It seemed pretty chill. I’m so freaking directionless, I wish someone could just tell me what I’m supposed to do with my life and I could just get on with it. This is just one more option that, all of a sudden, seems quite appealing. I need to stop having so many interests, they’re tearing me apart.

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The dog walking flyer

Posted on October 14, 2015 by admin

I was working todayDog walking Melbourne , in the cafe this time. What I mean is, sometimes I say ‘I was working’ but really I was studying or blogging or working out … it’s a pretty all-encompassing description, okay? Anywho, I was actually at my workplace where I am paid to serve coffee and occasionally a blueberry muffin, when this girl walked in. You really couldn’t help but feel bad for her, she was carrying a ridiculously tall pile of posters in one hand and had a rucksack slung over her shoulder that looked suspiciously bulky. Definitely not a comfortable backpack. She ordered a skinny latte and asked if we wouldn’t mind putting one of her flyers on the poster board.

Like an idiot, I just blinked at the flustered girl. By the way, at my work we have an old cork board where local business can hang advertisements and things. It’s usually jam packed with free yoga classes and the like. Usually my boss handles that kind of thing, so I had no idea how to reply. In the end, I managed a strangled “sure” and took the poster off her.

“ A dog walking service in Melbourne?” I read out loud.

It just wasn’t the kind of thing I was expecting, so the words just tumbled out in that moment of surprise. We got talking about it, and in the end I ended up putting it up on the poster board while I made her coffee. I explained that I didn’t know people actually got paid for something as awesome as dog walking, and she gave a big back story about how she got into it. Apparently, lots of people are so busy they don’t have time to do the dog walking regularly in Melbourne, which I guess makes perfect sense. The thing was, I guess I’d never really thought about how some people do really unconventional jobs, things you wouldn’t normally think about, and have an amazing time. Which is pretty interesting for someone like myself – a humble uni student seriously considering taking a gap year). I wonder what kind of thing I’ll end up doing.

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Ladders can’t get me down

Posted on October 9, 2015 by admin

Aluminium laddersYou know how, sometimes, when you’re in a bad mood absolutely nothing that anyone says or does is enough to turn it around? Well, I’m here to say that thank God the reverse is also true. When you’re in a really good mood, nothing terrible that happens is going to get you down. It’s raining? Well now being wet is hilarious and a sign of cleansing. Someone makes an unnecessarily sexist comment? Oh, well now their ignorance is adorable and their moral backwardness is cute. Walking into aluminium ladders? HYSTERICAL.

But no seriously guys, I walked into a ladder today. Dad’s painting the house (classic) and today I was just casually minding my own business walking into the house when WHACK. To be fair, I was a little preoccupied. You see, today I finally asked Sarah the big question. That question, that no matter how casual your relationship apparently is, you have to ask. And apparently she’s my girlfriend now. Like the dork that I am, I called Hayles straight away, and she came to pick me up from uni so we could gossip about it on the way home. When I was walking in the door, then, I may or may not have been looking the other way. My head swivelled to look through the front door when I collided with one of dads custom made ladders. The impact was so intense that I rebounded so badly I literally fell back onto the ground – looking at the stars that suddenly danced before my eyes. The best part? I couldn’t stop laughing.

I just lay on the ground, with Hayles looking over me, both of us crying we were laughing so hard. I was probably on the ground for a solid three minutes. Eventually Hayles recovered her basic human decency and helped me to my feet. Currently, as I sit here crumpled up like a cat typing up this story, there’s an ice pack pressed to my forehead where, in all likeliness, I huge bruise is forming, but I’m still laughing about it. These kinds of days are my kind of days.

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Pet peeves

Posted on September 28, 2015 by admin

timber window repairsI have a confession. One of my biggest pet peeves is something I know I’m guilty of myself. There, I said it. I’m such a tangled mess of contradictions that sometimes I can’t help hating myself for not making even a tiny little inkling of sense. It all starts with windows replacements, stick with me on this.

Anywho, today’s obvious contradiction, was the fact that I cannot stand those ‘who’s got the worst life’ fights, and yet I’m probably one of the biggest culprits around. A who’s got the worst life fight usually goes like this. You say “gah, I only got like, I dunno, five hours of sleep last night” to someone. And then they say “you got five hours? You’re so lucky! I only got three hours sleep.” And then you say “yeah, but I pulled an all nighter the night before last, so really I only had five hours sleep in the last forty-eight hours.” At the end of that utterly ridiculous conversation, where you try and prove that everything is way harder for you than it is for everyone else (and where, let’s face it, you probably ‘extended the truth’), you not only end up hating yourself, but you still feel like rubbish. I mean, you only had five hours sleep, right?

Well today I got into one of those conversations with my dad. He’s been pretty annoyed recently because all these people keep trying to get him to repair timber windows in Melbourne. Which is fair enough, I mean, he’s a carpenter so you’d think he’d be able to do that, but he’s really specialised in the building of houses. He just doesn’t do that stuff anymore. Besides, as he told me repeatedly, a timber windows repair job in Melbourne is actually quite fiddly. Well, usually I’m pretty content to sit back and nod benignly, but not this morning. Work and uni have been extremely stressful over the last couple of days, and I just needed dad to listen to me the same way he wanted me to listen to him. So, you guessed it, we had a stupid conversation not fit for two teenage girls, let alone two adults.

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A most morbid day

Posted on September 11, 2015 by admin

Last Will and TestamentToday is going to be the essence of an extremely morbid day. Like, when you think about morbid, it really doesn’t get more extreme than this. Why is that, I hear you ask? Because today is the day when we go through my newly deceased grandmother’s last will and testament.

That’s right, folks, my potentially sweet, definitely elderly grandmother finally decided to leave this cruel cruel world for the next life. I say ‘potentially’ sweet, because I never knew her, exactly. Well, I guess I did meet her when I was born, but I have no memory of her whatsoever. Mum and the rest of her family got into this huge fight when I was about two (she still won’t tell me what it was about) and so I actually have never met most of her family. Well, Auntie Dora comes around for afternoon tea once every few years, but she’s crazy, so no one takes any notice of her.

Anywho, now that grandma’s dead, it’s all about the practicalities of the affair – first and foremost, the will. We’re not even going to the funeral. Like I said, morbid. I guess the hope is that, hidden in all that estate planning and other clauses, there’s something in it for us. Legend has it that grandma comes from money (mum never talks about it) and, even though they don’t like to admit it, I know my parents are going to try and get some. They’re even hoping there might be something about the unknown grandkids, which is why me and Hayles have been roped in to all of this. If you think about, it’s a pretty shameless exploitation on mum and dad’s half. Actually, since they’re usually up on their moral high horse, it’s kind of fun to see them conniving. I think dad’s struggling with it more than mum, and roping us into this is low.

Having said that, I wouldn’t mind coming into some inheritance. So I guess I’ll just have to lay off making too many sly remarks, and just power through, hoping for the best. Like I always do.

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Outsourcing the mattress cleaning

Posted on September 11, 2015 by admin

Mattress cleaningRoad trip time again! Now I’m sorry to any of you out there that thought that that explanation mark signified something exciting. Because, unlike your regular, run of the mill exclamation mark, it does not. In fact, what it signifies is sarcasm. Intense sarcasm. This is a road trip to Woop Woop, in which we will be helping my grandmother with her spring cleaning. Please. Kill me.

I always thought that ‘spring cleaning’ was a phrase used by housebound students and mothers alike, not an annual tradition of turning out the old to bring in the new. However, it appears I was gravely wrong, as spring cleaning is precisely about that. So now Hayles, mum, dad, and me are on our way to Grandma’s house, bringing a basket full of sweets to complete the cliche. According to mum, this day of wonders has everything from washing the sheets to upholstery cleaning. Doesn’t that sound delightful?

I’ve heard that to whistle while you work you can cheerfully tidy up the place, but my tone deaf whistle would be enough to make even the most encouraging family members cringe. Alas, you can be sure I’ll be asking for the wifi password (Grandma set one up last year), putting Spotify on, and plugging those headphones in.

The thing is, I don’t see why we need to do all of this ourselves. There are places where you can hire people to do the mattress cleaning in Melbourne, why can’t someone just pay someone else to do this? In all honesty, I would be happy putting in 50 bucks to outsource this unenviable task to another poor soul. They say outsourcing is the way of the future, after all. And you know that all I really want to be doing this afternoon is binge-watching some season of long forgotten television buried in the recesses of the internet. Alas, that will have to wait until tomorrow.

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Dad and the Web Designers

Posted on August 31, 2015 by admin

Website designI’m a pessimistic optimistic. What that means is that I like to think people are just the worst. Like, they just actually suck, and make you want to put your head in your hands and ask why you must really belong to such a soul-sucking species of leeches. To give this a little bit of context, you should probably know that I have been very worried about something. Yes, okay, maybe that was obvious, but I was scared.

My dad is one of the most honest men around. He wears his heart on his sleeve, knows the name of everyone he’s ever worked with, is always ready for a chat, and just generally gets on well with anyone. He’s a carpenter, contracts himself out most of the time, but is always willing to help a friend or a neighbour out. The thing is, though, he thinks everyone is as great. And that was why when we started talking to these fancy website design people in Melbourne, I started getting really worried. He’d been burnt by tech gurus before, but it didn’t look like his trusting nature had learnt its lesson. I didn’t want to see him get done over again.

To my surprise, that wasn’t what happened at all. I expected people to be the leeches they always are, but these guys were surprisingly honest and up front. Dad’s really needed someone to walk him through the uses of ecommerce websites in Melbourne (he’s not even sure he should really be on the internet, which is just totally crazy) and how his website can be a shop front for his whole business. They stressed that all they really wanted to do was help grow his business, which he really needs at the moment.

So I guess just this once people turned out to be alright. Huh. Fancy that.

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Me vs. dad over sustainable home building

Posted on August 31, 2015 by admin

Stitch me up: how my dad the carpenter is making a sustainable house for this cool couple, he hated it at first, but now feels wonderful doing something for the environment

Energy efficient homes I’m telling you, my house has been a rough place to live over the past couple of days. My dad is sort of like the barometer in our house. If he’s happy then life is wonderful and dandy and a glorious rainbows of puppies and kittens shines over the rest of the world. On the flip side, if dad is mad or upset, then so are the rest of us. That’s why this week has been so tough. Dad’s newest clients – according to him – are a real piece of work. All week he’s been moaning about how this hippie couple from who-knows-where have their hearts set on building one of the most cutting edge sustainable homes in Melbourne. He wouldn’t stop moping around complaining about how hard it is to do anything right when everything doesn’t just have to be perfect, it has to be “green” as well (his air quotations, not mine). The thing is, though, it’s pretty rough to bite my tongue and nod along when dad goes on his rants when I don’t agree. Because that’s just the thing. I don’t agree.

I guess you could say it’s a little stereotypical of me to want to save the planet, but I do. I really think that the way forward in a world that is literally drowning in fossil fumes is to have more ‘hippie’ couples, who take a good hard look and the present day’s consumerism at all costs and say enough is enough. Bringing energy efficient homes to Melbourne are the way forward in our backwards society, and the more people who can think that way, the better.

So when my dad decided to complain about how much work it was and how hard it was and yadda yadda yadda, I decided that we needed to talk. I told him how I felt about the issue and the weird thing is that I think I may actually have changed his mind. Well, at least he’s stopped complaining about it. Which is a good thing. Right?

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From Bad to Okay

Posted on August 24, 2015 by admin

I have to admit it, last night had one of the biggest comebacks I’ve ever seen. At the beginning, it looked like it was going to be a train wreck. Uni insists on having all these balls twice a year (don’t ask, I don’t know why) and I am just not a ball type of girl. I mean don’t get me wrong, I sometimes decide to ‘make-up’, and I have been known to wear a dress. But I’m much more inclined to stay at home with my indie-flick/series and order a pizza. I mean come one. Pizza. But I knew this girl Limousine hireI have a thing for was going. And so I wanted to go. Cue depressive music.

So when I got a facebook message at 5 asking me if I wanted to go, I flipped. It was with a whole heap of her friends, of course, but still. Baby steps. So of course I shrugged a nonchalant yeah and asked where we were meeting. We’ll pick you up, she said. Cool. I love a lift. So, all in a flurry, I picked out the perfect dress, with Hayles sitting on the bed critiquing in a very sister-like way. And then the car arrived. And it was a limo.

Hiring a limousine in Melbourne is something of a tradition. Everyone does it for that sweet sixteenth, and maybe/probably for formal, but since then it’s pretty reserved for special occasions. Like maybe you Melbourne couples hire a limo for their wedding. I don’t know. Basically, you don’t see it very often. After my surprise dissipated, I squished in kick-ass dress and all, sitting next to Sarah (score!). So yes, there was a panic over the last minute invite and the dress. Yes, the limo was a surprise. Yes, I knew they were going and I wasn’t invited – but everything worked out well. For the best, actually. And I may have gotten a kiss from Sarah at the end of the night. But I’m not one to kiss n tell. Better leave that for blogging!

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