My Friday Five:
1. Only 4 weeks left to go here on Ascension, and as much as I don't really want to have to go back to the UK yet (especially as I'm now going to have to quarantine for 14 days when I get home), I'm also getting really fed up of being here now... mainly because of the people here - the group has gotten really cliquey recently and I'm finding myself just not really wanting to be around them (mainly because I feel like an unwanted third wheel most of the time).
2. My other annoyance about being here at the moment is my new colleague. He's just completely hopeless at the job! I have worked with him before (we did half our shifts together in the Falklands for about 6 weeks), and he annoyed me then, but I had forgotten how frustrating he is to work with until he came here.
Bit of a rant coming up:
His forecasting skills are fine, it's just everything else he seems to be terrible at - there are various admin tasks to complete every day, like collating the data collected during the day, checking the products issued, counting how many products were issued, etc.... and every day I find more and more things he's done wrong. They are really simple things, the instructions for which are clearly written on the spreadsheets and in the job instructions, yet he still does them wrong. And I've told him how to do them several times, but he just doesn't seem to take anything in.
Last night, I had to correct all the admin tasks he did the night before, because he counted the wrong number of products, put incorrect data into a spreadsheet (even though all he had to do was copy the numbers from another sheet), entered the rainfall data in the wrong box, and didn't even do 2 of the mandatory weather observations he was required to do for the US flight - which is a flight safety issue (his product count says he did 9 during the day, but he only did 6!). I don't want to keep nagging him, but I'm not sure what to do when he's still not doing things correctly even after being told 3 times how to do them. Also, on Monday he went to do the weekly inspection of the car and he left the oil dipstick in the MT car bay! Someone from the MT department had to bring it back to me on Tuesday. I'm not even sure how he managed to leave it there, since you check the oil level, then put the dipstick straight back in without putting it down.
3. It's my birthday on Sunday, which will be cool, because we're having a mess BBQ down at the beach, but I'm not convinced it will be a particularly great day, given my numbers 1 and 2. Related to number 1, I'm not sure how comfortable I will be around everyone else there, and related to number 2, it's my colleague's responsibility to sort out a cake for me, which everyone else would then contribute money towards, which is what happened with the 2 other guys who had birthdays in the last couple of weeks (one of the other military guys told me to tell my colleague it was my birthday and that he needed to sort out a cake)... except that as of yesterday, the others didn't even know it was my birthday this weekend, which I can only take to mean that my colleague has not bothered to organise a cake or card for me. I don't mind not getting a cake (I don't like being centre of attention), but I'm just annoyed that he just can't be arsed to remember to do a simple thing for someone else.
4. Since I will be quarantining when I get home, I decided it was time to get a new exercise bike, and given that it's my birthday, and that I also have some vouchers from work (and a small refund on my car insurance), I thought I would splash out on a decent one. I've been trying to order one from Argos, but the stupid website won't process my card payment without sending a code to my mobile. The problem? I have no mobile service here and cannot physically receive a text... which means I can't pay for the exercise bike
. I think I'm going to have to get one of my parents to use their card for it instead.
5. I really, really need to lose some weight. I came here with good intentions, and all was going well in the first couple of months - I lost 1 or 2 kg, but I've been lazy and tired from shifts recently and eating tons of snacks and I definitely feel like I've put on weight again (there are rolls I didn't have before
). So, from today, I will attempt to go to the gym as often as I can, and try to eat healthier for my last 4 weeks. Fingers crossed.
