Early Warning

22 January – Back to work and back to the bridge – a relatively flowing day with only a few mishaps – walked into one office and dropped off an envelope and found myself face to face with our sales manager on a customer relationship binge – uniform was on (sans sleeves) so nothing too worry about but did get a chance to warn him of the perils that will hit the bike fleet if a new dispatcher isn’t sorted by the end of the week.  Did finish on what could have been a sour note – last drop of the day, I’d literally hung up on the dispatcher seconds before discovering that my destination was closed – despite notifying dispatch immediately there was no response whatsoever – Butters must have just walked out the door and there nobody was picking up the phone or monitoring the text chat system.  Managed to get through to the sender and had to listen to her um and ah about all her options – she seemed particularly worried by the the charges that would be incurred - didn’t want me to leave it under the door, was terrified about me keeping it overnight so I could deliver it in the morning and was paranoid about me returning it (extra charge) and then having to pay for it again to be delivered (lady, there’s a reason why the cost of these jobs is a pittance – apart from a myriad of other reasons it means if you f**k up you pay for it).  All was right with the world eventually.  An evening of bicycle maintenance awaited me – found an OCB type workshop seemingly run by the ‘Critical Mass’ crowd who are always people to be wary about but a nice young gentleman trued my wheels then I went home and followed suit with some limited cleaning and my first practice with my new toe-clips.