Can see your pass please, sir?

Turkey 2006 - the forgotten week, in Antalya, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

It seems that I am becoming lazier and lazier with regards to this blog. Not surprising really, when one’s work takes up so much of one’s time and attention and things related to work are not exactly what I should be writing on this blog, at least not if I want to keep this job. Funnily enough there is a chap who was recently dismissed from the company. He chose to document, in what is quite an emotional way, the whole process of his dismissal, bringing in names and talking badly about certain people in the company. He was not, from what I can tell, dismissed because he made negative comments about his managers at work, but I don’t suppose he really helped.

I had a bit of a surprise when I arrived at work today as all the clocks were an hour ahead of what they should have been, at least in my view. I had woken up and risen from my bed when the alarm clock went off at 07.17 this morning, and I went on have my shower, a wet shave and some muesli and so on and set off on my bike to the station, as normal. Yet there I was an hour later, in the office and it was already past 10 o’clock. How could that happen? I had lost an hour. I am not one for spending too long under the shower (I never like wasting water) so where had that hour gone?

I am not home yet but I think the explanation lies in the fact that I must have pressed one of the wrong buttons on my alarm clock and put the clock back an hour, which meant that instead of it being 7.17 when I got up, it was already 8.17.

In fact it is probably bebacuse I had this extra hour’s sleep that I have the energy to sit here in the train and write this blog!

I can come and go as I please at my office, as I work alone in my own room and report to somebody the other side of the channel, so I do not have to worry too much about good time keeping. However, we do have electronic keys at the office nowadays, first just to enter and leave the building, but now to enter the corridors, a necessary security measure, I am assured, especially as we share our building with people from another company. Still, I don’t like it. First because it is yet another thing one has to remember to take to work, secondly because t makes one feel a bit as if one is working in a high security prison and thirdly because they can almost control the number of times one goes to the loo or go upstairs for coffee of a day. As usual, I have nothing to hide, I just resent the inappropriate use of modern technology.

At Fred’s school, the teachers and students all need passes. I saw Fred carrying around a red piece of paper. It had the photo of a pupil on it, and it was a ‘te laat briefje’, an absence note. The boy was late for a lesson so had to bring his pass to an administrator where it was read by the machine, which then printed a note of how many times and on what dates this boy had previously been late. Very efficient, just too bloody efficient in my eyes. There has to be a bit of a game in life and the rules have to be fair. Technology gives the people in charge too much of an advantage… and still the crime rate doesn’t decrease… and the number of teachers and pupils who arrive at school too late remains the same whichever way they are registered. Interesting that there is no red card for all the teachers who run into the classroom, all puffed out a minute or three after the bell has rung…

And what do we do with financial controllers who turn up an hour too late?