There are a number of reasons why a temp is required in an office, and usually this is because of a shortage of permanent staff created by sick leave or holiday periods.   This temporarily member of staff isn’t thought to be just there to pick up the shortfall however, often regular office members think temps are there so that the permanent staff get to offload some responsibility that the sick or vacationing member of staff wouldn’t even be doing!  There’s also an office tradition that once the temp has left, anything that goes wrong for the 2-3 weeks immediately afterwards is blamed on something they did.  Next time your office hires a temp, think about the following before assigning them responsibility for something they didn’t do, or did do but not in the right way!

%more%

1.       Not enough office supplies ordered

Unless the temp was given a previous list from which to create a new order, how on earth are they supposed to know how many paper clips and envelopes your office uses? Did you mention that you only order the recycled cups for the vending machine?  If you want the temp to do the supplies order, make sure that someone else provides the information – or alternatively, if it can’t wait until the person who usually does it comes back, or it couldn’t be done before they leave, assign that task to someone else in the office who has more idea about what needs to be ordered. 

2.       The filing isn’t done

Unless they are there to file, the temp probably won’t file.  Would you file stuff if you didn’t have to?  It’s not as if they will need to find any of these papers again.  They don’t care if later down the line its going to turn into one of the many office treasure hunts to find the contact that will save someones bacon.  Be honest, you wouldn’t care about filing papers either if you didn’t think that at some time in the future you might be required to put your hands on them again.  Temps have enough to do remembering who takes milk with their coffee, whose name comes first in the business when they answer the phone and where the bathroom is, they don’t need to be filing stuff that the regular member of staff can do when they return!

3.       Phone calls get transferred to the wrong people

 It’s easy done, especially in a large office environment.  If there are 3 Johns,  2 Susans, 4 Mr Smiths, and any number of people who could be the “person responsible for advertising”, it’s to be expected that a temp on reception is going to transfer calls to the wrong people from time to time.  Either make sure that the temp gets a more detailed telephone list than permanent staff have, or create a cheat-sheet so that they know where to transfer callers who don’t ask for a specific person.

4.        They aren’t the person who’s work they’re covering

 You’d think that was self-evident wouldn’t you?  It should be like having an entirely new member of staff who everyone in the office wants to be friends with and helps them out by giving on-the-ground information about how the office runs etc.  Unfortunately there’s a general misconception that a temporary employee is a clone of the person whose workplace they’re sitting at, and they know all of the information that member of staff knows without being told.  A temp is not clairvoyant. A temp is not a member of the BACD.  A temp is a stranger who needs their hand held almost as much as a new member of staff – almost being because they don’t need to know stuff like who’s in line for promotion or other office politics and gossip.  Treat a temp with the respect and care you’d treat a new permanent member of staff.  Remember there’s always a possibility that a position will come vacant, the temp will become permanent and they will hold a grudge against those of you who walked away leaving them with an unfamiliar paper jammed photocopier to fix!

5.       Not watering plants and washing used coffee cups

There can be very few office jobs where these tasks are part of the job description.  If the permanent member of staff that the temp is covering for usually does these things, don’t naturally expect that the temp will do them.  Use the opportunity of having to do these things yourself as a chance to be more appreciative of the member of staff who usually makes sure that such seemingly trivial things get done without making an issue about it. 

A temp may not be experienced in how your particular office equipment works, or understand the various office systems in place without being shown – but they are used to being at a new workplace and with a bit of induction training can usually adapt quickly to the new environment.  If they don’t, don’t blame the temp – they’re just doing the best they can with what they’ve got, and usually, it’s nowhere near what they need!

This is just a quick shout out to one of our friends at SelfGrowth.com they provide a comprehensive guide to Self Improvement, Personal Growth and Self Help on the web. It has been designed to be an directory formet, with articles and references to hundered of useful vetted websites. Keep up the good work.

One of my mechanisms for relieving stress is to play at a website called Neopets.  My “pets” are now a few years old, and although I don’t visit them every day, they are there when I need something to divert my attention from work.  At this site you create your “pet” and then earn points playing games and use the points to buy food, toys and other stuff.   I’m not really into computer games because most of the ones in the shops involve shooting or some other form of violence, and that’s not for me.  At Neopets however the games are of a different nature, some of them like arcade games, others more educational or skill-based.  Despite my initial thoughts about it when I first visited the site a few years ago, I’m still there and love it. 

A few days ago my eldest son was watching over my shoulder as I fed one of my “pets”.  He wanted to know what it was all about.  So I explained what the site was and how it worked, then demonstrated the kind of thing that members can do on the site.  Naturally, he wanted a pet so we sat down to create him an account, and this is where the site really has an edge over other sites – if you are under 13, you can become a member, you can use the site for all things necessary for the upkeep of your pet, but you aren’t allowed to take part in forums and chat rooms.  This means that it’s a really safe place for kids.  The site allows members to send “gifts”  (food or supplies of some description) to other members, and to trade items – but if you are a child member you aren’t able to access the trade page or receive items from other members.  They are as protected as they can be in this kind of environment.

I’m impressed!  I’m not easy to impress but this site has a well thought out policy when it comes to its younger members.  It is possible to lift these restrictions of course, but only if the parents of the child physically fax (not email – fax) the appropriate release form to the site owners. 

So my son is new fan of the site – he can’t read much yet and so he’s quite restricted in what he can do, but he’s have a great time.  And the best part for me is being able to share something with him, whilst knowing he’s safe to be left playing at the site. 

No-one knows who this lesser known office thief is.They seldom strike when others are around.They keep their actions to times when the office is quiet and everyone’s gone home for the night .However, it’s not unknown for things to go missing during a period of noise and commotion in the office, such as can happen if a bouquet of flowers were to arrive at reception, or someone has a celebration (or catastrophe and other office members cluster around their workspace)!

So what goes missing during these lull periods, or times when the majority of the attention of office staff is directed elsewhere?Is it the pitiful petty cash balance?Or perhaps the dusty oil paintings of the company’s founders?How about a supply of pens and envelopes from the stationery room?Whilst it is possible that cash and office supplies do go astray, those are more criminal acts that are infrequent – the office thief addressed in this article confines their thieving to the kind of activity that has co-workers wondering if they’re going insane!

For example, you’re sure that there was more than enough milk for the morning coffee, but when you arrive at the office, the carton is exactly where you left it last – but it’s empty!You’re sure you wouldn’t have put it back empty, but if you didn’t –.Who did?You’re sure that the franking machine had enough postage on it for the rest of the week, but when you go to frank the evening mail, the machine responds with a sound that reveals it to be empty and needed refilled.You’re certain had pads of post-it notes on your desk, but when you come back from lunch, they’re all gone.You’re fairly sure you had half a tube of mints in your top desk drawer, but there’s only one left amongst the torn wrappers.

All of these things are small niggling circumstances where you can’t actually point your finger at someone and say “you did–.”, or even “someone has–.” - instead they make you doubt your own sanity and ability to recall events.Next time this happens, write it down and keep a journal.Mark the milk carton, record the franking machine numbers (the franking machine thief’s usually most active around Christmas where they may even work in a gang!), and take your mints home.That way you can stop doubting yourself and be more pro-active in tracking down and unmasking the lesser known office thief.

Ever heard of a restylane injections clinic? No, neither had I until this week!

The company has cut a deal with a cosmetic surgery clinic so we can get face lifts and botox and 'restylane injections'(!) at a massive discount to make us

all look more beautiful. Megan should probably do us all a favour and take advantage of it! Good luck to her!

I’m not sure when I first noticed that my health wasn’t doing so well.  It was sometime around the time of our second child’s birth, and with night feeds and then teething, it wasn’t all that strange to be feeling constantly tired.  It’s just part of life for a newborn’s parents.  You live with it.  After the newborn stuff, came the teething and again, the tiredness is dismissed, but slowly the months passed, the baby became an all-night sleeper but my tiredness didn’t disappear. 

Other problems such as headaches, memory loss and confusion had been attributed to the lack of sleep,  but once the sleep was resolved, and these other issues weren’t more medical advice was sought.  The baby is now 4 years old, and my health issues are worse and I’m now under the “care” of a neurologist who has undertaken many tests but still can’t diagnose what the real problem is.  He’s currently got his money on the “epilepsy” button, but it’s so non-typical that I expect that to change soon. 

The lack of diagnosis is frustrating but what is more worrying is that my situation isn’t rare.  There are many people who are living with chronic fatigue, memory loss, co-ordination issues, headaches, vision distortion, audibility issues, etc who are expected to just pull themselves together and get on with their lives as if nothing was wrong because they have no real visible symptoms and no diagnosis that they can offer for their inability to move faster, or remember what happened at yesterday’s meeting.

Neurological issues that can be on this kind of scale could eventually be diagnosed as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Multiple Sclerosis, Epilepsy, Lupus or a list of other less familiar conditions that fit within the same “pick and mix” symptom range.  The main problem is that there is often no test that can be taken that will state with 100% accuracy which, if any, of these conditions you have – or even give a definite 100% accurate “you have not” result.  They have tests that can say that you might have, or might have not, but none of the tests are conclusive for many of these symptoms collectively. 

This makes coping with neuro-related health issues difficult because you aren’t just fighting your body on a daily basis so that it does the things it’s supposed to do, but also you are fighting a medical system that is happy to leave you dangling for months between visits.  If you know someone who has these kind of symptoms, don’t assume there’s nothing wrong with them or they’re hypochondriacs, they’ve got enough to do trying to get answers from their neuro team without dealing with your judgement – it’s not easy to pull yourself together when parts of your body seem to be invisible to the brain at various times of the day!