Category: Career

Auditor is coming this Tuesday and I’m not quite ready for him. Went into work yesterday, and going back in again today. The filing is a bit of a schemozzle – not so much from Ron’s time but from the couple of months after I took over from him. It was a crazy, busy time and I’d yet to get my bearings.

After the filing, I think I have one return left to do, I have to try and reconcile the balance sheet accounts (I don’t understand what Ron has done with some of them) and update the asset register. That’s it I hope.

Quite liked working on a Saturday. A different atmosphere entirely, not so busy. Few interruptions, no phonecalls.

Think maybe I need my iron levels checked, feeling so worn out lately. Or maybe it is doing 10 hour days without lunch break.

Had shorter day today, went in for meeting with auditor at 11am. Meeting went for an hour. This was just the prelim, I have to get everything ready for him next week and then the audit commences the week after. Only concern really is the first six months of financial reporting from Ron’s time, and when I took over from him and was feeling my way. I’m sure it is a mess. The holidays I’d planned for next week have to be postponed.

By 3pm I was feeling really buggered and wasn’t getting any work done, so I went home.

Think I’ll go lie down for a bit, do some reading.

There was an incident at work the other day during the new intake volunteer course. One of the volunteers displayed symptoms of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). The volunteer course can get a little boring in parts and by mid afternoon you can easily feel yourself fading. It emerged this lady was a diabetic, and she’d been fasting. It was a potentially dangerous situation.

A case of religious observance. The lady, Poojah was newly arrived from India, and felt so happy to be starting her new life in Australia that she decided to give thanks the Hindu way, through fasting.

As luck had it, another of the volunteers was a diabetic specialist and Poojah had mentioned her diabetes condition during a break earlier in the day. It was this volunteer who noticed Poojah becoming hypoglycemic.

Also fortunate that Poojah happened to be in a facility where there are nurses, and it was a nurse leading the particular segment at the time. Ironically Sharon had been covering workplace health and safety, and found herself having to fill out an incident report for real.

All’s well that ends well, Poojah was properly taken care of and returned home with her brother. The course finished a little early for the day but they are all returning for day two.

Looks like management have lined up a new treasurer, and he sounds alright not least because he has commitments until the end of 2009 and will probably leave me to my own devices until next year!

It seems impossible to track down our auditor at this time of year, he must get fed up with so many organisations trying to get hold of him at the same time and doesn’t seem to return any phone calls or emails. Apparently my predecessor had this same problem last year. I’ve tried a different approach and have made an appointment via his receptionist to see Tom tomorrow.

I was planning to take next week off as a holiday, we’ll see. There is still a lot of work on getting last year’s account straightened out, and with AGM brought forward to mid-Sept I’m aiming to have audit completed by the end of August.

I have another week holiday booked for the week after AGM. At least will be able to relax then.

Started out well today with a healthy attitude towards becoming better organised. About halfway through the day it started getting to me and I got a bit stressed, had a brief fallout with one of my co-workers. It kind of surprised me we were at loggerheads about something quite minor and she kept apologising for offending me when I wasn’t offended at all, was just feeling put upon because I had misinterpreted her line of questioning about our budget preparation. More annoying than anything actually, and I mentioned to her that I was feeling stressed and now I’m annoyed at myself for not keeping it together.

I have a lot of respect for this co-worker and sadly she is leaving us. I think she is feeling some measure of stress herself because of this, it would be difficult but she is such a professional that she is determined it is business as usual up until the day she leaves. She is also one of the most highly organised planners I have ever met, her stress comes from a different source to mine.

Some good things happened. I managed to complete a cash handling procedure guide for the reception workers to follow, so they hopefully know what they’re doing and minimise my supervision. I got the week’s cashflow report done (with chairperson practically standing over my shoulder!) I’ve made some progress on my assignment (1 of 18), I’m about a third of the way through and aiming to have this and a second assignment completed by next weekend. I think I’m on track for that.

The biggest achievement for the day was leaving the office before 6pm. I was trying to leave by 5.30 at the latest but dithered around while locking things away. It was 5.45pm when I left, possibly the earliest time I have finished for weeks.