I may have used that title before ... if so, I apologise, but that's how this week feels from where I'm sitting now. Let's dispense with the statistical evidence first. The week involved thirteen jobs, seven of which filled the last two days, with only one job in the first three days exceeding 70 miles; and by the end of that third evening, I had achieved less than two days' expected income.
It's been a strange week for where I've been, too. The one job I did on Monday, from a customer in Letchworth to one of their regular deliveries in Bedford, was exactly repeated on Tuesday, but an even stranger occurance happened later in the week. Crawley isn't a place I get sent to often; just thirty-eight times in the whole period up to Christmas 2014, i.e. in the nearly thirteen years that I've been doing this work. Already in 2015, I've been there four times. The second of these was on Wednesday morning, when I took some steelwork to a building site in the town centre. The next afternoon, I was asked to collect a CD from an office near my home to go to a large defence establishment there: a routine sort of job, with a simple hand-over in the security office at the gate.
Yesterday afternoon, I was sent to a different customer in Bedford, who had something to be taken to the very same location - three visits in three days, compared to an average of about three in a year normally. On the way back I refuelled at the same filling station, and was served by the same cashier ... to whom I was just another face, of course, so he didn't recognise me second time around.
As regards visiting the same destination for different customers ... it does happen occasionally. There was one a few months ago, although I don't recall the details, simply having the thought that it was a delivery point that I'd been to for someone else fairly recently. I think the strangest incidence like that was several years ago, when I collected something in Hitchin for Canary Wharf (London E16). Just as I got there, I had a phone call saying that another customer in the same road also had something for Canary Wharf. When I made the second collection, not only was it for the same road, but for the same man at the same building!
The 'all up one end' feeling was also true in respect of the location of the week's deliveries, Only one job took me north rather than south from my home area, when I went to Redditch on Thursday. My resentment of an 'overdose of M25' was exacerbated by the fact that my Friday visit to Crawley came hot on the heels of an early start that morning. I had been asked on my way home on Thursday to divert to Houghton Regis, to collect some display material for a location in Carshalton. This was to be delivered by 7.30 am next day, and I was determined that it wouldn't overshadow the day by getting me caught in the rush-hour traffic in either direction. Consequently, I limited my Thursday evening activities to the bare essentials, had an early night, and set off just before 5.0 am. I had expected an hour or so to 'chill out' (in more ways than one!) upon my arrival but, to my amazement, there was already someone there, so by 6.40 I was on my return journey, and looking for breakfast on the way!
Life for me now takes on a slightly different, and hopefully more relaxed, aspect; this weekend sees the start of my much-heralded plan of tapered retirement. I fully expect that it will feel just like any other week of holiday from work, but it will carry with it many thoughts of how these non-working weeks will begin to form a pattern in the coming months, and I shall endeavour to sow some seeds of a new routine to life. Time alone will reveal how successful this plan will prove.
Showing posts with label statistics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label statistics. Show all posts
Saturday, 24 January 2015
Saturday, 29 November 2014
The Present Reality... with Echoes from the Past
It's been an interesting week. Let's begin with some statistics: it's only the second time since the take-over that I've done 20 jobs in a week; and yesterday was only the eleventh time in my twelve-and-a-half-year career that a single day has provided seven jobs! All five days this week have involved early starts, most needing me to leave home at 6.0 or earlier, and some evenings I wasn't home until quite late. These extensions to the working day play havoc with any kind of food planning, to say nothing of actual food intake! One evening 'meal' consisted of a (large) sausage roll! It's true what some say: this is not a job for a family man!
And before we consign the statistics to the past, let me just add that only the first and last jobs of the week went further north than Cambridge, and only two further west than Southampton. All in all, the week has been very much concentrated in the south-east of the country. Four of the seven jobs yesterday formed a neat chain, beginning with a collection in Letchworth for Harrow; then came a leap-frog sequence, with a Harrow collection for St Albans, a Watford collection for a customer in Stevenage, and a Hatfield collection for Cambridge.
The collection in Hatfield was one of those visits that took twenty minutes when three would have sufficed, had the full information been provided. It was one of those office blocks accommodating two or more companies. When I announced my purpose at the reception desk inside the door, I was asked 'which company are you collecting from?', and then 'which floor?' I could answer the first, but not the second, so I was directed to their own reception just down the passage. Here, a well-meaning, girl who seemed totally out of her depth tried to help me. As she looked through a number of items apparently awaiting collection, she asked, 'Do you have a contact name?' 'No,' I told her, 'only the name of the recipient, Cassy T.......' (who, incidentally, later turned out to be Cathy!) 'Where is it you're going?' I had already told her Cambridge, so I told her the post code CB4. She clearly thought I was offering the name of a company, for she said hopelessly, 'I don't recognise that name.' At a total loss, she suggested I try first floor reception. I made for the lifts.
I emerged on the first floor, and found a locked door with no obvious means of attracting attention. As I looked around helplessly, someone emerged from another lift. I explained my problem, and was told there was no reception on this floor - try the third floor. I could feel my hackles rising as I returned to the lift. As I opened the door on the third floor - which was encouragingly marked 'Reception' - I didn't need to explain again what I was there for. The young lady at the desk spotted the ID badge around my neck, told me I was going to Cambridge, and handed me a large envelope. What a difference two extra words would have made!
After Cambridge there came two local deliveries for an engineering firm in Letchworth, and then I collected a pallet of recycled electronic components for Milton Keynes. This latter was to be accompanied by a pick-up in Hitchin for Castle Bromwich, a repeat of a job I did one evening a few weeks ago. As before, I arrived after the factory there had closed; as a result of that earlier experience, I knew where to look for the canteen window, and was pleased to see the same security man inside. This time, however, the gates of the site were locked, and I wondered how I could let him know I was there. I tried rattling the gate. In a deserted street, it's quite amazing how much noise can be made by steel gates 3 metres high! His face looked up; I held aloft the box I was delivering; he opened the door, and then opened the gate in order to complete the formalities. As before, no one had thought to tell him that I was on my way, and we shared this frustration as he signed my PDA.
It was a week that saw visits to a number of places I'd not been to for some while. On Monday I made a return visit to Whittington Hospital, the first time for nine or ten years; and on then to Canning Town, through London streets which had become familiar to me in those far-off days before our joining operations with another company relieved us of most of the London work. I'd been before to the firm to whom I delivered in Harrow yesterday, but I didn't realise this until I entered their yard, at which point I remembered having to go round a tight blind corner to reach the goods-in door, which opens onto the rear car park.
It all goes to show that what goes around does, sooner or later, come round again.
And before we consign the statistics to the past, let me just add that only the first and last jobs of the week went further north than Cambridge, and only two further west than Southampton. All in all, the week has been very much concentrated in the south-east of the country. Four of the seven jobs yesterday formed a neat chain, beginning with a collection in Letchworth for Harrow; then came a leap-frog sequence, with a Harrow collection for St Albans, a Watford collection for a customer in Stevenage, and a Hatfield collection for Cambridge.
The collection in Hatfield was one of those visits that took twenty minutes when three would have sufficed, had the full information been provided. It was one of those office blocks accommodating two or more companies. When I announced my purpose at the reception desk inside the door, I was asked 'which company are you collecting from?', and then 'which floor?' I could answer the first, but not the second, so I was directed to their own reception just down the passage. Here, a well-meaning, girl who seemed totally out of her depth tried to help me. As she looked through a number of items apparently awaiting collection, she asked, 'Do you have a contact name?' 'No,' I told her, 'only the name of the recipient, Cassy T.......' (who, incidentally, later turned out to be Cathy!) 'Where is it you're going?' I had already told her Cambridge, so I told her the post code CB4. She clearly thought I was offering the name of a company, for she said hopelessly, 'I don't recognise that name.' At a total loss, she suggested I try first floor reception. I made for the lifts.
I emerged on the first floor, and found a locked door with no obvious means of attracting attention. As I looked around helplessly, someone emerged from another lift. I explained my problem, and was told there was no reception on this floor - try the third floor. I could feel my hackles rising as I returned to the lift. As I opened the door on the third floor - which was encouragingly marked 'Reception' - I didn't need to explain again what I was there for. The young lady at the desk spotted the ID badge around my neck, told me I was going to Cambridge, and handed me a large envelope. What a difference two extra words would have made!
After Cambridge there came two local deliveries for an engineering firm in Letchworth, and then I collected a pallet of recycled electronic components for Milton Keynes. This latter was to be accompanied by a pick-up in Hitchin for Castle Bromwich, a repeat of a job I did one evening a few weeks ago. As before, I arrived after the factory there had closed; as a result of that earlier experience, I knew where to look for the canteen window, and was pleased to see the same security man inside. This time, however, the gates of the site were locked, and I wondered how I could let him know I was there. I tried rattling the gate. In a deserted street, it's quite amazing how much noise can be made by steel gates 3 metres high! His face looked up; I held aloft the box I was delivering; he opened the door, and then opened the gate in order to complete the formalities. As before, no one had thought to tell him that I was on my way, and we shared this frustration as he signed my PDA.
It was a week that saw visits to a number of places I'd not been to for some while. On Monday I made a return visit to Whittington Hospital, the first time for nine or ten years; and on then to Canning Town, through London streets which had become familiar to me in those far-off days before our joining operations with another company relieved us of most of the London work. I'd been before to the firm to whom I delivered in Harrow yesterday, but I didn't realise this until I entered their yard, at which point I remembered having to go round a tight blind corner to reach the goods-in door, which opens onto the rear car park.
It all goes to show that what goes around does, sooner or later, come round again.
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