I hate summer, I really do. Much more a winter person, when it's cold, dark, wet, windy and miserable for months on end. Far more my kind of weather than the light rain, stiffling heat and the bright sun overhead. Today British Summertime began, which meant that last night the clocks went forwards an hour. Quite why we bother with this archaic custom anymore I do not know, but we do. Tenacity and stubbornness are traits that run strong in the people of these rainy islands.
I must have been reminded a dozen times yesterday that the clocks were going forward an hour. My boss told me at least twice; there were signs put up in work; it was mentioned on the news and on the BBC News website and... well you get the idea. None of it worked. I still forgot to change the clock, I was still nearly an hour late for work this morning. This wouldn't ordinarily bother me. I mean it catches everyone out at one time or another right?
Except this is the 11th time in a row that it has caught me out. Okay, not strictly in a row, because back in October when the clocks went back an hour, I had the next day off work, so it made no difference to me as I slept in regardless. But on the ten occasions before that, it got me every time. Still, I made it to work and the duty manager was greatly relieved to see that I wasn't sick.
"Huh?" was my response to that.
"Ohh someone phoned in to say that you were sick. Glad to see you're not that ill after all" was the reply I got back.
As it turned out, someone had phoned in to report another Robert as being off sick (I think there are 3 or maybe 4 of us in the store), but it was a couple hours before I found that out and until then I was utterly baffled as to who could have phoned in on my behalf as I was reasonably sure neither Tony or Gareth were awake when I left the house, or if they were they were being really quiet. Whichever was the case, I hadn't seen or talked to either one of them.
The computers of course were all screwy as the clock change messes the system around no end, which is hardly surprising considering how ancient some of the computers in the office are. The pair that the tills run on are practically antique, yet they sit side by side with Pentium 4 PC's. It took a good few hours to get everything working right again and over half an hour of that was spent waiting on the phone (had it on speaker, so I had to endure what felt like an aeon listening to the truly awful music whilst I was on hold), to talk to technical support to get them to send a report down that the Cash Office needed.
Summertime has begun... wake me in October!
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