So What's Happening Now?

Today I've been to work, like everyday now for the past six weeks now. It's kind of funny having a job and an office job at that. My actual title is Recruitment Support Professional and I'm working for a firm which we shall refer to as "The Company" a bit like in a legal document. "The Company" are an outsourcing company who do the dirty work for other companies. In my office is the HR department and you often hear people chatting about Tornados and Typhoons because they're recruiting for "An Nationwide Aerospace Firm" (just trying to avoid legal action). That's really what "The Company" would like to do, but I get the task of recruiting for "The Company" itself. It's quite nice really, it makes me feel wanted and I've never found that in a job before. I have a desk by a window, which annoys me because I have to get up and shut the blinds. I try and leave it longer than it needs to be but eventually my squinting at the monitor gives me a sore head because of the reflection and I shut all the light out. I find myself bobbing my head around so as to achieve the best angle where the bright window reflection isn't in the bit of the screen I need to see, and squinting helps but by about 11:00 I've shut it. So I arrive at about 08:30. That's when I start. I get a lift from Halton with a guy called David who lives in Heysham (about 5 miles away). We get our own car parking space because we "lift share". To achieve this early hour I find myself rousing at about 06:40 which I have quite quickly got used to. On arrival I quickly remove my jacket, as I'm wearing a suit, and hang it by the door on the supplied hangars. Next I go to my desk which I have probably just stood up and walked away from and left notes and bits of paper with nothing in particular on the night before and is a complete shit tip. I inspect my mug, which I find a bit disgusting. I've recently got over a cold you see, although the women in my office said it was "Man Flu", and I have, more and more, begun to realise that it was possibly because the mug on my desk didn't get washed. After an evening's festering I would put a tea bag in it and start again regardless, but now I look at it in the morning and there's a weird scum sticking to the edges. I wash it and charge it with an overly hot cup of tea which requires 5 minutes to cool down. I'm a bit of a mug wash fascist now (not that I go around the office frog marching and saluting, although you may find me humming "Spring Time For Hitler" but all in good time) I just have to wash it after every contamination. At least I've not turned into a printer fascist. There's a small room off the office next door to the kitchen. It contains 2 very large printers. I feel I'm quite impressed by the beasts. Today one of the printer hoggers had filled the trays with letter headed paper so everything had "An Nationwide Aerospace Firm" in bold red writing across the top. Not that I got to see my print job as she was printing 900 letters. 900! What kind of evil person are they. I joked with her a little while "900!" I exclaimed. "We've had to get a special delivery of paper in with the right thing written across the top." "Yes I can see that," I exclaimed watching the 424th letter plop into the tray. "We went to Office World and asked for 9000 envelopes." "I thought you said 900 now your saying 9000!" "Yes," she affirmed, "9000." "Well I hope you've got a spare toner cartridge?" "A what?" "A toner cartridge thingy, you know what the ink's kept in." "Why?" she innocently asked as though she'd previously thought pixies were magically blackening the paper. "Will the ink run out?" "No, ink, no. No no no. No it never runs out you see because people aren't stupid enough to print 9000 letters per day and wear the pixies out." I departed swiftly back to my desk and released the job to the other printer. So what do I do? I do the administration surrounding recruitment. I assign it a reference number like IS30; that's a Customer Relationship Manager in Chatham for "The Company". I then log applications to the vacancies and after a week or two send them through to the relevant people to create a shortlist for interview. They then tell me who they'd like to see more of and who they would not. I arrange the interviews between the parties and even book the room. I then get the job offer through and send out the paperwork for the candidate and sit and wait. Next the new hire sends the paperwork back and we put them into the business and they get paid and everybody's happy! Sound's simple doesn't it? It's not a trick question, it is simple. It's as simple as simple could be. I have been there 5 weeks and not once have I seen a single vacancy follow the processes. Not once. Something always goes wrong everytime. I have even got to the end of it all thinking; this is going well perhaps we'll get through this one until the candidate doesn't return his or her eg. personal details. What's their address? who's their next of kin? What's their National Insurance Number? Why can't these people follow instructions. Sometimes it's worse, no bank details: well that's great, lets just conjure them up. I know mr i'm-being-paid-£60k I'll put my bank details in instead of yours and I'll get your wage, thanks. Even better, we just get nothing. Not a single peep. Until 3 months later and lots of nagging for something back they ring us up and complain because they haven't been paid... "oh yeah, I forgot" So it can be a trying time and it keeps me amused but there's so much more to say about work than there is patience in you reading this. If you've got this far, well done. There's more that's not in Preston to be added but I thought I'd set a scene for my daily blogs which reccount day to day stuff. What time is it now? 00:28? A bit late. I'm pretty tired.