Back to work...

Yes, by the subject line you can see that I'm back working for a few weeks with that great boss, DH. Queenslanders go to the polls March 19; voting in Local Government elections as well as a Referendum on fixed four year terms for our state government. 

On behalf of his employers, DH rents temporary office accommodation and over the years, some places haven't been too 'flash'...no running water, bare concrete floors etc etc. But this time we've got a nice place...

Carpets!!!!

It's a former bank. From this office the running of the election is organised in this particular Council Ward. And for 2 weeks prior to March 19 it is a Prepoll centre where people can vote before 'the day'. 

The old information counter is where I will work from, when people come in to vote.

(The bank moved in May last year and people still come in to withdraw money from the ATM that USED to be in the lobby of the building, but on Friday a young woman came right inside to the counter and thrust her card at DH and said she just wanted some money. We directed her to the bank's new home across the street!)

The bank staff left this stuck this phone number stuck to the counter...it's my favourite local coffee shop too!!

Lots of offices in this place including these 'Customer Studios'. 

Lots of cardboard involved in this job...and those customer studios provide great storage. 

And the next two photos show just a few of the safes...this bank must have handled a LOT of money!

But I guess it wasn't worth their while to take them to their new, very small premises in the new shopping centre across the road...

This time I've got to do some different tasks to what I've done before as DH's assistant...

Folding cardboard into boxes...

Tying the string on the pencils that the voters use to mark the ballot papers...

As well as my more usual jobs of date stamping and counting envelopes. 

When the bank moved they may have taken all the money, but they left furniture and appliances...and this mug! Aussie readers will recognise the bank's symbol...

We have 2 levels in this building...upstairs is the kitchen, lunchroom and restrooms. And some meeting  rooms as well...so lots of room. And those stairs will keep us fit! 

I had been noticing feathers in the ladies restroom. The other day I heard pigeon cooing as I opened the door, and sure enough there were two pigeons fluttering about...I got a photo as the second one went to get out through the louvres.

Better than big spiders in the loo, I suppose. Lol

Are you guys still here...?

That was the question I was asked last Tuesday as I passed one of the hairdressers from a neighbouring shop in the walkway behind the the block of shops where the office is.

In a previous post I had described how my DH was the Returning Officer for a state electoral district in the State election here in Queensland. I have been working as an election assistant in the office. This role entailed clerical duties as well as 'working the counter' for the 2 weeks of pre poll where people could come to our office and vote before the election. Pre poll centres have always existed but this time the service was advertised more in the media and even in social media! Consequently the pre poll staff were 'rushed off their feet' so to speak.

Saturday of last week was election day. DH and his staff, worked all weekend, as the close of polls on Saturday at 6pm is just the start of lots of work in the background. Scrutineers for the political parties watch us in the office as we count  the pre poll votes. The polling booth staff bring in all the equipment they have used after they have counted their ballot papers. So bags of 'stuff' soon filled up the office...and as for that cardboard...it seemed like mountains of the stuff! lol.

This photo shows the backpacks which contained the laptops that were used by the Issuing Officers in the polling booths. This use of technology was a 'first'!

From Sunday morning, absent (declaration) votes from our district (these are votes cast by people from other districts in Qld who voted in this district this election)  are packaged up ready to be sent to the districts from which such voters came. Now our district also gets packages of envelopes from all over the state, containing ballot papers to be included in the count. When people vote outside their own district on polling day,they are not marked off the roll at the time of voting.

I got reasonably adept at putting the sticky peel-off labels on the courier packs :-) two of us got 86 parcels ready to go out by early Monday morning.

When the envelopes are back to the voter's  district these envelopes have to be checked off one by one via the computer and the voter is marked off as having voted.
(Please note...image taken from a training booklet; not a real person! lol)

There are hundreds of these envelopes, plus postal votes that get counted after the election.

The bin soon filled up with these tear off strips!

So my many and varied tasks during this last week have been, packaging up envelopes ready for the Toll man (the courier service used) to pick them up, photocopying pages of figures from polling booths, counting and check counting ballot papers, *counting counting counting, opening envelopes, checking voters off the roll, making cups of tea for the boss, working out the Notional Two Candidate Preferred Count,cleaning up the table where the urn sits, filling the urn, answering the phones.

I also removed string from the pencils that had been used in the polling booth voting screens...

Helped sort the bags of stationery items used by polling booth staff...

And that cardboard 'mountain'? My lovely BiL helped DH take it to the recycle drop at the tip...

* We count the envelopes before we open them; we count the ballot papers that we remove from them...if these don't balance we count again! We put the envelopes into bundles of 20 and the ballot papers into bundles of 50. We use a lot of rubber bands!

Only one more day of work for me and I can go back to being retired. So goodbye to this work mobile phone which completely flummoxed me at first...I hadn't realised how much I'd forgotten how to use this sort of phone since I got a smart phone 3 years ago! It was a sharp 're learning' curve in that first week! Lol

Back to being retired...

Yesterday was my last day working as a temporary office assistant to DH. For the last 3 weeks of the job I worked in an office in the leafy northern suburb of Bridgeman Downs. This office was in a small shopping centre and we had no where near the number of electors that came to the Mitchelton office. In my first week at this office, because of the circumstances, I ended up 'manning' the office on my own for most of the week. And I managed quite ok! lol

I travelled a number of kilometres north to work each day. The roads are lined with trees and wooden fences, behind which are huge, modern housing estates

Now throughout most of the 3 months of this job, I worked with another assistant called Bill. Bill's wife is a former workmate of DH. On our first day working together we naturally chatted. By the end of the first day I found that Bill's dad had been the principal of my high school. It was delightful being able to tell him how much the students had loved his dad. Over the time that we worked together, it was so nice to hear  about
Mr E as a loving family man as Bill told stories of his dad.

'The boys' doing some tidying up. Note the lovely gardens in the carpark of the little shopping centre

The little shopping centre

Those lovely hedges

Another view of the colourful hedges

The shed for the bins and the restrooms on the right at the end of the building

The 2 hardworking assistants

I also discovered that Bill's children attended a primary school where I had been on relief staff for many years in the 1990s.  Some of his boys' teachers are still friends of mine, including the principal. Bill also told stories about his many years working for a large bank, including time working for the bank in PNG. But some of the best stories he told were about his years working in the Queensland Performing Arts Complex huge carparks. But like me, one day he decided that he was ready to retire and that was it! Like DH he takes occasional work since retirement but I suspect he's going to take a bit of a break when he finishes the packing up that DH and he will do next week.

Meanwhile...I'll be off to a 'Knit and Natter' on Monday morning, 'Sit and Stitch' on Monday night, Sisters of Stitch on Wednesday afternoon, Church Sewing Bee Wednesday night, hairdresser Thursday morning...etc Busy busy busy....

Catching up....

I've had a lovely weekend relaxing and doing nothing much in particular. Circumstances meant that I worked all last weekend and I found that working 12 days straight was incredibly tiring. I have nothing but admiration for people who work under such conditions. In recent weeks I've realised again how fortunate I am and that I lead quite a self indulgent life since I retired from my teaching career. The joy of crafting, cooking, gardening, doing some charity work, visiting and maintaining friendships whenever I wish and spending the odd day just doing nothing are all part of my retired life.

When i'm not working I go to several Knit and Natter groups each month

Some of the eggplants from my garden this year; they were used to make moussaka

An old photo now but I still meet these ladies regularly eevn though we left school in the 1960s

So why am I back in the workforce for 12 weeks? I went into this work with a heavy heart and a feeling of foreboding. I dreaded the announcement that would come signalling the state election because I would start this job then. I wasn't frightened of having to work hard; the fear was that I had no background knowledge in this field and that I would let my husband down by not coping with the skills etc needed for the job. Well that hasn't happened. I have been able to do every task set for me including using the computer system. I know that I'm still slow with data entry but there isn't  much of that involved in this job. A lot of the data entry is done via a scanning wand so that makes it easy :-) I've also done a lot of 'lower level' skill work which really amuses my DD2 because it's the kind of work she did when she started work in an office when she was 18. I just can't believe my luck that someone would pay me so well to do such tasks, lol. And that's why DH and I are doing this work...to earn some money for our travelling fund.

One challenging aspect of the job is this flight of stairs up to where the kitchen  and the restrooms are ; it's good exercise though

This time last year we were travelling in the US (we travelled from Mar 5 till April 26) and on this day last year we were in San Francisco where I was so upset by the number of people begging on the streets. We spent extra days in Monterey and then San Francisco as the bad weather had closed Yosemite National Park. Despite the beggars I loved San Francisco, especially the waterfront and those seals! lol

I have 6 more weeks of paid work. We are 'finishing off' all the work necessary after the state election and since last week we've started work on the local government election which will happen on April 28. It's just how things have worked out having 2 elections so close to each other and it's certainly keeping us busy.