How efficiency works

Telephones.

We have refined the current arrangements.

Instead of the bad old days when we spent half our lives answering the 'phone for T.Aldous we spend at least half our lives answering every beggar's 'phone.

• Some people put their 'phones through to Maisie's 'phone. They don't tell her, of course until after she's spent hours fielding their calls.
• The 'phones upstairs are set so that if they aren't answered within four rings they come downstairs to Maisie's 'phone. If that's not available they go to Maudie's 'phone.
• The 'phones down here are set so that if they aren't answered within four rings they get sent into a hunt group.

This last is a barrel of laughs. If you're not paying attention your incoming 'phone call automatically gets switched to somebody else's 'phone. So you try to retrieve your call by trying to pick it up. And pick up the call that rang just the once on somebody else's 'phone.

Say, just as an example of course, that somebody upstairs rings downstairs to tell somebody down here there's a 'phone call from a relative. And that somebody decides to ignore their 'phone because they want to hear more about somebody's holiday. And that it the comes to your 'phone. And you try to put the call through to the person who's been ignoring it. But their 'phone has been put through to the lending office 'phone...

Hilarious consequences.

This morning's capper? Noreen gets a 'phone call. It's somebody ringing somebody in the library, they don't know who as they've just picked up the telephone number from their answerphone. Noreen does a tour of the floor asking if anybody knows him. Nobody in our office has heard of him so we're baffled. An attempt to ring upstairs to see if anyone up there wants this chappie leads to that call coming back down here. In the end, all Noreen can do is take his name and number and apologise for wasting his time.

I look forward to somebody apologising for wasting ours.

Walking through an empty house

The office is like the Mary Celeste without the crowd scenes.

• Maudie and Maisie are attending a meeting about the future of their jobs
• Library Policy & Strategic Management Team (this week) are wherever they are today. Somebody rather tactlessly wrote "Missing In Action" on the staff notice board and there was a bit of a to-do as to whether or not there was a space between n and A.
• The Acquisitions Team (both of them) are in a meeting with Bronwyn to try and work out what on earth is going on with one of the new collections that somebody higher up is supposed to have sorted out.
• Frog is out doing a summer story session with some blind children in Umpty.

So it looks like I'm in charge. That being the case, I wonder if it would be an abuse of executive power to tell the lending library to stop diverting all their 'phones down here.

Sometimes they don't, do they?

So this is where we're up to in the lending library...

After complaints that telephone calls aren't being answered a solution has been determined. Anybody ringing the lending library office at the top of the building finds their call put through to Maisie in the basement. Maisie then tries to put the call through to the lending library office and after three rings it comes back down to Maudie's 'phone, Maudie sitting next to Maisie. Bad words are said by one sotto voce while the other apologises to the caller and tries again. With the same result. Third time lucky, they always say, and as "they" patently have no idea whatsoever Maisie tries to put the call through to the lending counter, that being next to the lending library office. Only to discover that that is no longer a valid number on the switchboard. After apologising to the caller, taking a message and promising to pass it on, Maisie and Maudie draw straws to see whose turn it is this time to run up all those stairs and pass the message on to whoever's up in lending today.

Meanwhile...

Sybil tries to ring the lending counter to try and sort out an inter-library loan request and gets a disconnected tone. Doreen, who is in charge of the lending library inter alia, is passing so Sybil asks a sensible question.

"Is there something wrong with the 'phone upstairs? I keep getting a disconnected tone when I ring it."

Doreen blows a gasket.

"I only had the number changed this morning. All the lending staff know about it."

After a suitable interval, Sybil points out:

"Yes, but we didn't. What number do we need to ring to get through upstairs?"

Doreen blows another gasket.

It turns out that the new number is what was the old Children's Librarian number, back in the days when dear old Betty Rosencrantz was Children's Librarian Of All The Russias. So that's all right then, isn't it.

Sibyl was bitching about this exchange over the lunch table.

"Why didn't you ring extension 18?" asked Maybelle.

"What's extension 18?" we all asked.

"It's the other 'phone on the counter. It's the one the staff use when they want to get through to the counter. It's sort of a secret but everybody knows about it."

I've worked in this building for nearly two decades and it's the first I've heard of it.

No problem, monkeysocks

I really, really shouldn't do this. Not at all. I shouldn't. No.

I pick up a 'phone that's ringing unattended.

"Can I speak to T.Aldous please?"

"I'm sorry, he retired last month."

"But he just rang, leaving a message asking to ring him back."

"Ooh. I wonder if the Communications Team are still having problems with the response times on the voice over internet telephones."

Playing the saxophone so loudly his whiskers vibrate

For the third time today Maisie is hunting down T.Aldous to tell him there's a telephone call for him.

"It's just like he's never been away," says Maisie.

I thought you'd died alone a long, long time ago...

We had rather hoped that the re-opening of Carbootsale Library, which is next week, wouldn't be involving the same nonsense about the telephones as that of Catty Library.

We had rather hoped.

No grind or whistle

"There's something wrong with my 'phone," says T.Aldous.

I'm appalled by the effort of will involved in not saying: "Yes, you've not answered it for twenty years."

An hitherto well-loved favourite

You can tell that Big Chief Whatalumber is back in town. We've spent all day answering 'phone calls for him.

"I keep ringing people and they're not in and then they ring back when Maisie's not at her desk."

The painfully obvious question is: why doesn't T.Aldous answer his own telephone?

The painfully bewildering answer is that he says that he has to put his 'phone through to Maisie so that if anybody rings him while he's on his 'phone he won't miss their call.

So what happens is that Maisie's 'phone rings. Somebody (far too often poor old Maisie herself) then has to trot over to T.Aldous' office, peek in, try and work out whether or not he's on his 'phone, realise that he is, trot back and tell the person who would otherwise have been confronted with an engaged tone:

"Sorry, he's on the 'phone at the moment."

Workin' at a desk with a dumb little placard

Is that the eighth or ninth 'phone call I've taken for T.Aldous and/or Julia about the shelving at Carbootsale Library? I don't know how Maisie stands it, she's had days of it.

Crack open the Aldiss lamps, Mavis!

Maisie's got the day off. T.Aldous' 'phone is still diverted to Maisie's, which in turn is diverted to Maudie's 'phone. Four times in the past hour Maudie has taken a call for T.Aldous, tried to put it through to T.Aldous and had it ring on Maisie's. We're all under instruction to pick up calls from unoccupied desks so one or other of us picks the call up. Maudie then has to run over to T.Aldous' office to tell him that there's a call on whoever's 'phone is now occupied (the call having gone through so many relays that Maudie can't pick it up).

Each time we hear the following:

"Can you put it through to my 'phone?"

"No, it's going through to Maisie's 'phone. x has picked the call up."

"I must take my 'phone back from Maisie's so that I'm not interrupting people's work."

Of course he doesn't. He never does, not in all the nearly two decades we've been in this building. We'll miss it if he ever does.

I would not have called had I remembered it was Monday

I took this telephone call:

"Good morning, Helminthdale Library, Kevin Musgrove
speaking. How can I help you?"

"Were you the person I was speaking to just
now?"

"Err... Who were you speaking to just now?"

"The lady on the desk in the library."

International man of mystery

Warner's on leave and his 'phone's through to Maudie because his secretary is off sick. A bit of an imposition but at least we know where he is and most people who need to contact him know he's on leave.

We think T.Aldous is on leave. We can't be sure because we have no proof, just hearsay evidence (he said something to the effect in passing to Alwyn, who mentioned it to Maudie).

We don't know how long he's apparently on leave so this is day two of "as far as we're aware he's back in tomorrow."

Caught outside Belle Vue Zoo with a branding iron and a box of bird seed

Maudie gets a 'phone call from the council switchboard.

"Is it true that Catty Library's been put onto the switchboard?"

"Apparently so."

"Do you know their extension number?"

"I don't. I was hoping to find out from you."

"We only found out because a member of the public rang us to ask to be put through."

Between us we eventually discovered their new internal 'phone number. Which was three-quarters of an hour well spent.

We then moved onto the next vexed question: what is the public telephone number? (Ordinarily we'd get it off the publicity or the web site but seeing as Maudie's responsible for getting the publicity to the printers and I'm responsible for editing the web site we're on a hiding to nothing there.) T.Aldous' walking past at this point gives me an opportunity for enquiry.

"What's the new public telephone number for Catty Library?"

"It's the same one as the old one."

"No it isn't."

"Yes it is. I arranged it."

"If you ring that number you get a message telling you that line is no longer in use."

"No you don't."

So I dialled the number, gave him the handset and proved my point.

"It should move seamlessly to the new 'phone number."

"Which is...?"

"We wouldn't have this problem if the VoIP switch had been delivered on time."

"The new 'phone number...?"

"We ordered that VoIP switch weeks ago. We've been badly let down by IT."

"I know the backstory, T.Aldous. What is the public telephone number for Catty Library?"

"Well, it would have been sorted by now if it had been installed on time."

"I am a member of the public. I don't care about the backstory about the VoIP switch. I want to ring Catty Library. I want to talk to somebody there about something. What number do I ring?"

"It should be the old number."

"Well it isn't, the library's been open two days and I'm a member of the public trying to contact them by telephone. I dial what number?"

"I really don't like your attitude. I'll get Julia to send out an email to all staff with it on."

Which she could have done weeks ago. When we put together the publicity that never happened either.

Roughly the bit which keeps the pie crust up

Joy be unconfined! The refurbishment of Catty Library - which has, like World War One, been promised to be 'over by Christmas' - is done and dusted as far as the outside world is concerned (we'll draw a veil over the leaky children's library and the fact that there's no telephone) and it's to re-open on Monday.

"The 'phone should be going in tomorrow, so it'll probably be Monday afternoon," says Milton.

"I'll have to update the web site over the weekend. What's the new 'phone number?"

"I don't know. I asked Julia but didn't really get a useful answer."

Despite his suggestion that I don't do it, I have a go at this myself. Julia's not available so I ask T.Aldous.

"What's Catty Library's new 'phone number? Nobody seems to know."

"Everybody knows it: it's pinned up on the staff noticeboard at Catty. Given them a ring and find out."

More kicks than ha'porth

We were wondering what the ranting and raving and shouting was... It turns out to be Julia, giving Daisy Duck a bollocking for asking for a new telephone at Dutch Bend because the existing one is broken. Not the style of management I'd adopt personally but then I'm not A Professional.

What's my line?

I catch Milton in an unguarded moment (he'd just had one of those conversation with T.Aldous where you wonder which of you stepped out of an aeroplane without a parachute).

"Why didn't they put a 'phone line in at Catty the same time as they put in the fax?"

"Because T.Aldous has decided that it's going onto the council switchboard."

"I thought we were putting it onto the switchboard at the end of next year as part of the council's VoIP roll-out."

"We were."

"What happened?"

"A couple of weeks ago T.Aldous was talking to somebody in the Town Hall lift who said that it should be possible to put a VoIP line into Catty to put it onto the switchboard. So that's what we're doing."

"Why?"

"So that it won't cost anything for T.Aldous and Julia to ring Catty Library."

"Have we sorted out the publicity for the new 'phone number?"

"No."

"I'll need to know the number so's I can make the changes in the web site."

"Good luck to you."

"We don't know the number?"

"Not yet we don't."

"So what's the plan?"

"I've told them that if they're going to change the arrangements at this late stage of the game they can sort out the consequences themselves."

Sounds like our way of doing things... If you don't like the answer you get, keep asking people until somebody gives you the answer you want, however much it screws up your project.

Can you hear the Trappists sing?

'Phone call from Julia, who's busy lurking at Catty Library well out of the way of T.Aldous.

"I've had a telephone call from the Catty Examiner. How many items do we have in stock here?"

"I'll just check the figures... here we go it's... hello? Is anyone there? Hello? Hello? Is there anybody there? ..."

I can hear the noises off of Julia wandering round the library messing round with shelves and telling people which boxes to unpack.

I shouted the number.

(eventually) "I can't hear you, what did you say?"

On balance I decided to just repeat the number.

The Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald of the telecommunications world

A colleague writes:

"Can anybody, even Helminthdale, match a telephone bill 823 pages long? We have just received one. It's for our computerised energy line. A fault on the heating system triggers off a 'phone message to the computer centre who should then deal with the fault. Unfortunately, a second fault at the computer centre means their computer is unaware of the message. So for three long months our heating system has sent a 20 second call to the computer every 10 minutes and for three long months it has been ignored. Unfortunately, no-one can yet trace the cause and so our bill is already mounting. Will it top 823 pages? See next months thrilling installment!

"P.S. We have our phone bills in triplicate for administrative purposes!"

Season's bleatings

The Acq. Team and the Admin Team (all four people in total) got into talking about perhaps having a Christmas lunch some time this year. They'd barely got as far as: "we could get a menu from The Spotted Dog," when Mary drifted over and piped up:

"Well, somebody will have to stay behind to answer the 'phones."

Frog's already bought the humbugs.

Groan...

This sort of thing drives me barmy...

Betty's picked up a call from Maudie's 'phone. It's Julia wanting T.Aldous. Rather than waiting for Betty to get him she tells her:

"I won't hang on. Can you ask him to ring me on my mobile 'phone. I'm at Catty and need to speak to him in the next five minutes."

So far, so bad. Unfortunately it turns out that T.Aldous is gone.

"I didn't even see him go out," says Betty who's got plenty enough work to do without acting as Checkpoint Charlie. "What shall I do? I don't know her mobile 'phone number so I can't ring her to tell her he's not in."

"All you can do is make a note of the message and stick it on his door so that he'll see it when he comes back."

Oh no. This isn't all Betty can do. She spends the next ten minutes ringing round libraries trying to get hold of anyone who might know Julia's mobile 'phone number. In the end she gets hold of Doreen, who promises to ring Julia to let her know he's not in.

It's a good job Noreen's at home waiting for the gas man. She's got even less patience for this type of nonsense than I have. Unfortunately, this behaviour's been countenanced (and even encouraged) for so long that it's not worth the tears before bedtime involved in trying to challenge it.