whatever happened to...

good, old-fashioned common sense? or maybe that should read competence?

i mostly do my shopping at iga in st kilda... all of the staff are courteous, and most competent - but i shudder when i'm next in the queue if there's one particular young womon on one of the checkouts - iga's setup is that you just stand in one long queue until called - i watch with dread when i'm getting closer to being called and this particular cashier is getting closer to finishing with her customer...

i have to say here she is a lovely, friendly young womon - always very cheery and chatty (she's doing a creative writing course, hopes to be a writer some day) - but perhaps this is one of her 'problems' - chatting and not taking notice of what she's doing... her weighing of things leaves a lot to be desired - one day i was charged $16.99 for one bulb of garlic when she served me, and if you watch her closely (which i suggest you do) she just rests her hand on the scales while weighing! we weighed the garlic again and it came to $1.89! now that's a big difference - it's not like i've got money i can afford to pay out for nothing - shows the necessity for vigilance (similar 'mistakes' have happened in the past!)...

then there are the fruit and veg items she's unsure of - if you check your docket you'll notice a number of things that appear on it but aren't in your shopping bag - but you'll have other items that don't appear on the docket - pity you're mostly getting charged for more expensive items - apparently anything unrecognisable to her is exotic and costly! personally i prefer someone to ask me "what's this"! call me naive but i'd assume there'd be staff training in food identification if that's part of their job!!

another problem - packing... now i've noticed a few youngsters have a problem in this area - they put the bread and tomatoes and anything squashable into the bag first and anything heavy just goes right on top... what's that all about - surely common sense tells you heavy stuff first, soft squashy stuff on top!!!! is this the secret management plan to do away with staff packing bags altogether?

yeah, you can tell i had a bad supermarket moment today - i got that young womon, after being called to another checkout to be told the young lad couldn't serve me because i had a bottle of wine and he didn't 'have a licence to sell alcohol yet' - that was the first thing i put on the counter but he waited until i had unpacked my basket before telling me - that meant packing everything back up again and going to the end of a now much longer queue... i was really pissed off!!! i suggest if they can't swipe through the alcohol iga sells, instead of calling 'next', they need to qualify it with 'next customer without alcohol'!!!!

sorry, i just had to have that gripe...

and now i'm going to have a glass of that wine while i do some baking - a veggie pie and a chocolate cake - good old (vegan) comfort food! - and then i'm going to settle down and watch some movies - perhaps i'll watch "Splice", about genetic engineering, then maybe "Daybreakers", an australian produced vampire movie with claudia karvan, sam neill, ethan hawke and willem dafoe - should be interesting at the very least!

i'll leave you with an amy winehouse video - a very talented young womon with so much potential and such a beautiful, powerful voice - but sadly a troubled young womon addicted to crack cocaine and alcohol and surrounded by sycophants - dead at 27...  farewell young sister...

a little bit of sorcer-y...

nah, not that type of sorcery -   i'm talking this type of sorcer(y)... our new(ish) web 2.0 catalogue 'experience'...

what does it do? this, from the developers (civica) website... "SORCER is focused at the library patron and, by using a range of Web 2.0 concepts and tools, provides them with a personalized exploration of a library collection integrating social networking and other new features."

in other words it's a more visual, informative, interactive and customizable online library catalogue... i'm in the process of 'learning sorcer' - how to create the containers to display information in various formats - browse clouds, gallery displays, browse lists, etc... doesn't sound too hard does it? but it's like learning a whole new language...

have you ever played around in the template html of your blog? maybe viewed the source code of a web page? because it's that source code that i have to work within when creating one type of container...  this is the source code of the sorcer graphic and first paragraph above - and it's this sort of code that i have to become familiar with... granted, the wheel has already been invented in that there are containers already made that i can copy, paste and edit - but i still have to scan it, work out what needs to be kept, what gets added where, what to get rid of, find the right graphic and then format it to fit, then add it's location into the right place in the code... and then there's the containers that require boolean searching - it needs to be done right to get the right sets of results... all this gets done in a test database and then has to be transferred to the live system - all very 'focused' and 'fiddly' stuff - for me it is anyway - not so for the younger generation who have grown up with computers - guess they grew up with computer-speak their second language...

it is interesting stuff though, but it's been doing my head in all weekend just thinking over what i learnt on friday - i don't want to forget it! the memory doesn't have the same retention and recall it once did (access to the test database from home would be sooo good - the only place where total concentration can really be achieved!)... 

i had ideas of writing a post on a totally different topic - i'd been mulling over a couple of reports of disturbing trends from earlier in the week - but, as you can see, it didn't quite work out that way - perhaps next week...

a significant 60s struggle...

ever heard of dagenham? i certainly hadn’t – so i was totally oblivious to the major chapter of herstory written there in 1968…

well, oblivious until yesterday that is, when i watched a 2010 bbc movie – made in dagenham – a dramatization based on the struggle for equal pay and recognition as skilled workers by the female machinists at the dagenham ford factory…

in 1967 england there were effectively four grades of production workers...

the womyn were at the 'bottom of the ladder' and received only 87% of the unskilled male wage... the industry was rolling out a new classification structure which looked like this..

they were expecting recognition of, and proper remuneration for, their skills but when the industry reclassified their positions to an unacceptable category b, rather than the deserved category c (to which their male counterparts with equivalent skills were regraded) it was time to take action… 



machinists voting to strike in 1968

when ford refused to upgrade them, all 187 machinists walked out and stayed out for three weeks... they were joined by the 195 womyn at ford's halewood plant in merseyside, effectively bringing ford 'to their knees'... oh, i forgot to mention they were also fighting a hostile union in collusion with the ford management...

strikers meet with barbara castle

after meeting with barbara castle, then secretary of state for employment & productivity, negotiations resulted in an immediate 5% pay increase, taking them up to 92% of the male rate, rising to the full category b rate the following year... it wasn't the desired outcome of equal pay and recognition, but it was one they were prepared to accept in the interim...

these courageous womyn and their struggle were instrumental in bringing about the united kingdom's equal pay act of 1970... but their fight didn't end there - it took another 16 years to win the regrading!!!

by the way, i enjoyed the film... there are some inaccuracies, and a bit of 'poetic licence' applied... the main character in the movie, rita o'grady, is a composite character - but played well by sally hawkins... bob hoskins also does a good job as the shop steward... there are also a lot of beehives!!!! all in all it's entertaining and informative (and it inspired me to look for more information!!!)

a dog's tale...

take a dog, a human and throw in some compassion and what do you get? a wonderful, heartwarming story - thought it was worth sharing...

"Naki’o is the first dog to be fitted with a complete set of bionic legs that work naturally to allow him to run, jump and even swim. The prosthetics were designed and fitted in a pioneering procedure by Martin Kaufmann, founder of Orthopets.

Abandoned by a family fleeing their foreclosed home and their mother dead, Naki’o and his brothers and sisters barely survived the harsh Nebraskan winter. Weakened by malnourishment, the red heeler puppy stepped into an icy puddle in the basement and got his four paws stuck in freezing water.

At just five weeks old the litter was taken to an animal rescue center. Under the shelter’s care Naki’o's paws, lost to severe frostbite, healed to rounded stumps.

Veterinary technician Christie Tomlinson was on the look out for a playmate for her Jack Russell terrier mix Poki when she came across Naki’o. Fearful of the pain that walking and playing with other dogs would cause, Naki’o resigned himself to crawling along on his belly at home and at the veterinary clinic’s doggy daycare..." read more of naki'o's story at incrediblefeatures

when all you want to do is...

... curl up and die! i am so sick of being sick - from thursday night to sunday evening i was aching, coughing, spluttering, the head was pounding, i had chills and flushes and spent most of the time in bed - yep, i just wanted a quick death to stop feeling so terrible...

this bug has been going around for ages and just keeps on keeping on... and no, it's not just me - it's affecting other colleagues too... perhaps we're suffering from sick building / sick office syndrome - 'my' office is an open-plan affair  - it's small, i mean really, really small considering there are 5 people sharing it, using computers all day, (along with other testing processors turned on more often than not) and all emitting their electromagnetic radiation (and hey, i'm 'lucky' if i sit a foot away from the back of a minimum of 2 processors!)...

the office also comes complete with air-conditioning (that fluctuates between way too hot or chilly, chilly cold - but alas necessary for 'air movement' when there are 3 young men with their 'boy hygiene' in the office - not casting aspersions here, everyone tells me this, male and female alike!), locked down windows (no fear of anyone falling out an open window here!), fluorescent lights, probably mould spores  and food crumbs in the carpet, etc. etc... we all get sick - perhaps rather than using our own sick leave anything 'flu-ey' should be covered by workers compensation - after all, we probably wouldn't be sick if we worked in a healthier environment...

according to an article Open-plan offices are making workers sick, say Australian scientists some believe we should re-think the open-plan idea and perhaps go back to the old-fashioned small office or partitioned space - wow, noise absorption and the semblance of privacy allowing concentration on your own work (some distractions are more than welcome, but sometimes you need to focus and constant noise and activity can really affect your thought processes!) - now that appeals to me!!! (funny how the majority of top-level managers in most workplaces still have a private office - no wonder they didn't 'join the exodus' to the open plan model, they would have lost their access to natural light, fresh air and personal headspace!)