The real end of an era

I did do all I planned in the previous post. Unfortunately, the number of my colleagues left for me to say goodbye to was almost zero. So,at just after two I walked out of Babbage for the final time and was met by Hazel and we drove home. Believe it or not, I am still having a certain amount of difficulty adjusting to the change.

And another thing...........................

Believe it or not, the countdown is now officially wrong. I based it on the usual leaving time here at the university on Christmas eve. However, this year we are anticipating having to work right up to five this evening due to a new management regime. As we are on the support desk, it's not unreasonable, just annoying. From my point of view, it's only because it spoils my countdown that I'm annoyed but some of my colleagues have a longish way home tonight and would benefit from the extra time to play with considering the amazing weather conditions over the past couple of days. I decided to break with my usual routine today and I am wearing jogging bottoms and my new Santa T shirt in an attempt to be festive. As my idea of festive is to be at home with the nuts and chocs and ginger beer and turkey and presents and television and family and mince pies. However, at least we have a happy office with plenty of humour  to keep us going. Later today I shall re-image my laptop and have a short wander around saying goodbye to a few other colleagues and then meander home at five. In the meantime, we await the phone calls................

Very last Friday

The office is finally beginning to calm down at last. We still have more calls and emails than expected but we are, at least, managing to stay on top of them. I have begun the round of saying 'goodbye' to my colleagues. Quite a few will not be at work next week so I have already shaken hands with them. The message for my email has been set up to run from Tuesday at five pm and I will be re-imaging my laptop on Tuesday morning in order to pass it over to Dave for investigation. The investigation is because it has never run at the same speed as any other laptop and some of that model are actually quite fast despite the woefully under-powered system. Today has seen more food enter our office than the rest of the year added together I think. We have had pork pies, crisps, chocs, jelly babies and biscuits all day. I haven't bothered with lunch 'cos I'm too full already.

Final Wednesday

So I'm down to four days and counting now. Life at the office is still rushing along with a lot of work to be done. The major difference is that the 'normal' bread and butter calls that we all love have tailed off to almost nothing and the seriously daft calls are taking precedence. All the weird requests and complaints come out of the woodwork at this time of year and they take much longer to log and solve. The team are coping well however. We are all gorging ourselves on mince pies and fancy biscuits and sneering at the idiots who keep us busy.

Nearly down to single figures

As I write, we are at eleven and a half days and counting. Indeed, I have threatened to begin counting hours once I get to less than ten days. I was really pi....annoyed over the weekend. I had a sore throat on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and on Saturday, the whole cold hit me with a thump and I felt rotten all day. Sunday was better but I didn't feel worthwhile until this morning, just in time to return to work.