A Report from Site
Written at 1:53 p.m. on 2006-11-03
Report from On Site
I am currently sat on site writing this on my laptop. And by mine I do of course mean my mum�s. The site manager is playing very loud online games on his computer and it�s beginning to drive me insane. There�s only so much �Kitty Cannon� a person needs to hear on one day and my limit was about half an hour ago.
So anyway, this week I�ve been on site for three days! I�ve learnt quite a lot, including such things as �If you stand next to a sewage lorry that�s discharging its load and you don�t move before it opens the vents and clears out the gas build up and methane you get enveloped in a cloud of air that smells so strongly of shit that it could fell an elephant�. I have also learnt �If you fall into the aeration tanks then you will drown in sewage because the air being pumped through it means you don�t float and you can�t swim� and I learnt (by climbing a scaffold) that I am not afraid of heights. This was a relief because had I been afraid of heights and got stuck I would have had to be rescued by a man with a mobile platform and that wouldn�t have looked very impressive on my first visit to site would it? According to the site agent and foreman you do get used to the smell of shit that floats in the air of a sewage treatment and eventually you don�t notice it but I have to say I think that�s nonsense because a man with no nose could smell the whiff from the screen rooms (you really don�t want to know what goes on there). Anyway, I�m learning a lot and it�s miles more interesting than spending all week in the office, even if I did have to get up this morning at 5.45am in order to get to Bromborough site for 7.30am (I was late anyway).
Tackled accounts about the issue of mileage. This baffled them slightly but I was eventually put in touch with a snotty and officious bitch called Nicola. No one else in the company claims mileage, everyone else either has a company vehicle or their car has a fuel allowance. So she asked the dreaded Mark for advice. Mark is the very image of what you image the deputy head accountant to be, he�s rude, he�s abrupt, he believes everyone else should be spending their whole working day dotting �i�s and crossing �t�s in order to make things in accounts run easier, he has a very inflated idea of his own importance in relation to everyone else, he has a company car and he hate me with a passion. Anyway, the Inland Revenue approved mileage payment is 40p per mile for the first 10000 then 25p per mile for any others. Nicola informed me that I could only claim 25p for any miles, regardless of the distance, terrain or engine size of the vehicle. I informed her that Westminster pays its staff 20p per mile mileage for a bicycle but she didn�t seem to find it funny so we shall wait and see where that goes. Maybe I could get a company car, Linda says she�ll have a go for me anyway.
Well better go and find my hard hat because I�ll be going out for a nosy round the site in a minute. Also better see if I can find the weekly inspection sheet that I have a nasty suspicion I�ve lost. Shit. Literally. Perhaps I�ll go and have a cig while I think about it.
