More time than is strictly necessary

Huge problem with the People's Network at Helminthdale Central. Huge, huge, huge problem. Send for the cavalry. Call for Dick Barton. Batsignals at dusk.

The clocks on the public clients are three minutes slow.

Customers booking an hour's session still get their hour. Just three minutes later than it says on the clocks in the library, all of which are finally set to British Summer Time (three years of work on Seth's part but he got them beaten into submission in the end). Consequently, "lots" of people have been hanging round the enquiry desks waiting three minutes for their session to start. Big problem. Especially as there's obviously no intention of using the three minutes to sell a selection of our services to a captive audience. Seth's made it very clear that he will not be changing the time on the clocks. Especially as the people complaining most loudly are the self-same ones who would kick off the most at the idea of closing the doors three minutes late. So the problem's come to me. I have the same system permissions as the public so I can't over-ride the clock settings.

I promised to ask IT to have a look at it.

• I won't be asking them any time that we need them to get a move on delivering a new client model.
• Nor when we want them to change internet permission policies.
• Nor when we're trying to persuade them to unblock blogs and social networking sites on staff PCs.
• Nor when we need their support for a big capital systems project.