Communicating with colleagues

Communicating with colleagues at workplace can be a challenge at times. If u miscommunicate with them, your relationship with your colleagues will not be good and you will be lonely during lunch breaks. Lucky for me, I communicate with my colleagues reasonably well. But I am not so sure about that for one temp staff who works in another department.

This temp staff acts weirdly as in the way he speaks to us during lunch breaks. He would often interrupt a conversation with out of the blue remarks or sometimes talks about something unexpectedly odd. I don't know whether he himself has realised about his odd comments or not. But he lately has not joined a group of us for lunch. Maybe he is reflecting on why his relationship with colleagues is not so good. I find myself lucky that I do not need to communicate with any unusual colleagues. Only thing that I missed a little is that I have not worked with another temp staff side by side since January as my department do not plan to hire another temp staff. Maybe when I join a new company next time, I may have to work with more colleagues. Hopefully, my relationship with new colleagues by then will be as good as now. =)

Contract extended

After a few days of thinking, I finally decided to extend my contract at SPH for another 6 months at least. The reason is simple. I like working at SPH. Although there are alot of things to do, but at least it is not brain damaging tasks. I think 6 months later, I probably would review my situation again or start to find a better job with a much better pay then. Cos in due time to come, I may find myself needing to support my ageing parents. So I think it is time to move on in due time and find better challenges. As of now, let me relax a little and work comfortably first before I move up a gear or two in time to come.

Well, I just ended a week of heavy duty WSOs to key in. This time round, its shocking to know that there are still a considerable amount of WSOs not in yet. Dunno whether the contractors will be paying a hefty fine for late returns or not. Anyway, its not within my control whether or not to fine them. I can only hope that those people in charge of bringing in WSOs will not be fined alot. Besides busy with WSOs, I have also been busy photocopying DNs for cold storage and cheers. Just completed photocopying cold storage DNs last week, so now still left with a hefty number of Cheers DNs to photocopy. I think it will take me at least 3 weeks to complete as I still need to key in WSOs for most of the time. Hopefully, the new technology will come in sooner rather than later so that it can free up more time for me to do more things.

New technology wont be implemented too soon

Latest news I received is that new technology will be implemented only end of march instead of mid feb. Upon hearing this news, I am a little bit disappointed to learn that it will be delayed. I dont know whats the reason behind this delay, but I am told by my colleague that there is this trend that whenever there is something new, it will always not be introduced so soon. Oh well, I hope I will still be around by end march to experience this new change then.

Apparently, my contract at SPH ends before mid march. I am told recently that I can't be converted to perm due to the limit in perm headcount in circulation department. If you ask me whether I will renew my contract, I actually half want to and half unwilling to commit to another term of new contract. But at the end of the day, my supervisor says it depends on whether the big boss would still want to recruit my services or not. If I am given the nod to continue another term, I might continue as I like the workplace. But I might also not continue as I heard from others that for the same amount of work elsewhere, I will be paid a higher monthly salary. So sooner or later, I will leave this company as I know there is not much prospects in staying for too long. So at most I will be staying for another 6 months since the prospects for my future in this company is not that high afterall. I will update my blog again maybe next week as to whether I will be starting another new contract soon or there is other new developments. Stay tuned... ...

Barcode technology to be used in scanning WSOs

I heard from my colleague that trials of using the barcode scanning technology is starting in 2 weeks time from now. Actually I wish it can start next week when I have double the workload of WSOs to key in. But my colleague claims that its best to start when its not too busy a week so that I will not fumble too much and hinders the process of getting used to the technology. Oh well, i hope everything will be alright when I start using the technology. Hopefully, it can speed up the process of updating the database that WSO sheets has been received. I think I can cope with it as technology stuffs does not unnerve me much. Till then, I will blog about it on how it goes.

As of feb 4, the cupboards have now been shifted outside the small room and my side have been allocated 4 tables for our own use. Now that the room that is enclosed with false walls is empty, I really wonders what the room will be used for next. If it is used to store goods, I won't be surprised since the other places to store goods like freebies or promotional items looks quite full. I just hope that our cupboards will not be moved again as it will hinder the consoling DNs process. The year of dragon has been good for me so far, hopefully it continues to be like this for the rest of the year. Hmmm... Whats next?

New technology to be introduced soon?

My colleague told me that there might be new technology introduced in the near future so that keying in WSOs will become scanning in WSOs. How it works, I am not so sure. Apparently, there is developments in a device to scan the barcode at the top right hand corner of the WSO. Whether or not it is connected to a PC, it is still a mystery. But if this development turns out to be success, it will definitely shave off some time in keeping track of the WSO entries. I doubt it will be ready for use anytime in this year, so no point rejoicing over it now.

In the meantime, I am always busy with WSOs week in week out. Sometimes, there is split week meaning there is double the stack of normal WSO sheets workload. Just imagine, a week of WSO sheets is around 105 batches of 10. Time spent keying in will then be almost double as well. Double workload normally happens once a month at around the start of the month. I particularly not looking forward to this period but no choice have to endure the hassle of keying in excel without any device yet.

Recently, the cupboards where we store all the DNs is now within a small enclosed room. The walls of the room are false man made walls. I wonder whats the use of creating such a small room. Maybe for added security? Or maybe to separate office desks from cupboards? Who knows? But I will be sure to find out more about the room as I am partly worried about the space constraint posed by the small room. Unless there is a table in the room, consoling the DNs will become an issue as space is needed. That's about it, new year new room but hopefully no new problems.

WSO verification and dragon dolls counting

One thing I dread most but no choice have to do is to complete the WSO verification excel sheet. This is how it goes about. First, I need to look out for small sheets of return chits in WSO big folder. Once I found them, I need to compile 8-10 outlets worth of return chits and then compare them against big sheet of WSO for any discrepancies. Normally, the figures should tally and matches to be the same. Else, the figures when keyed into excel will go to a column that will compute the variance which shows the level of discrepancies. What makes it rather tedious is that I will need to do this process of tallying over again and again with different batches for 7 days. At the end of the verification, the pub codes like ST, NP, WB, SM should be very familiar to you even if you do not know anything about it initially.

Another ad hoc task that I am asked to help out is the counting and packing of the dragon plushies with the chinese words "ji" or "Xiang" on its belly. This task consumes alot of time. Sometimes if the original big box is torn and unable to be resealed again, I and a few other temps will need to find 5 boxes to contain 200 dragon plushies. The counting part is especially daunting as we need to check whether the big box contains exact 200 plushies or there is excess or shortage. As there are many big boxes to count and repacked, one day is not enough. I am not sure how long they finish this task as I only help out for a day and a half. One thing is for sure, after this task I dread to see any flowery patterns or images for a long while.

So far still ok...

I think I did a not too bad job covering the duties for my colleague. Except for the overwhelming void reports, everything else has been adequately done to the best of my effort. The only problems left include settling the returning of Purchase Orders from the contractors to my side and inserting the void reports into the DNs that are bundled according to each delivery day. In total, I only took an extra OT of 1.5 hours to finish off the keying in of DNs besides keying in the WSOs in the day.

For the upcoming week, I think my workload will be back to normal since my colleague is back. The only thing I need to worry is managing the leftover work from last week with keying in the WSOs. Maybe I need another 1.5 hours of OT to clear the workload if I cannot clear it within this upcoming week. I shall see how, afterall a bit of OT is not that bad and I can earn a bit more money.