"One Day In Your Life...."

This post was going to be called 'A Day In The Life', but the Michael Jackson song title was too good to resist.

So. Here's the deal. Many friends and family members, and in fact total strangers, frequently ask me about my job, and often ask me what a typical day at work is like for me. I always try to explain, and fail because it's not exactly something you can fit in two sentences without making it sound like the worst job in the world. Which it isn't. So I'm going to explain it in a little more detail using the example of today.... and probably still make it sound like the worst job in the world. But bear with me.

I worked the late shift in our main building today, but I've also included the duties from the start of the day to give you and all-round idea.

8am - Open up the building. Check the night report - an email that goes round from around 7pm the previous night and is updated by each staff member as they leave with details of what has been done and what needs to be done the next day. Put water and glasses in each suite.

8.30am - Cover reception until receptionist/bookings staff arrive at 9.

9-11am (ish) - Take breakfast orders (tea, coffee, toast, fruit, etc) from all suites and serve them. Usually the busiest period of the day - when we're full this is 13 suites-worth of hungry clients all calling you at the same time!

11.30am - Take lunch menus round to clients who are in online suites.

12pm - Go out for lunches - varies but is usually really busy and can sometimes mean going to opposite areas to get various orders. Means rushing around with lots of carrier bags whilst trying to get back before it all goes cold! Serve lunches.

1pm - Early runner goes on lunch break. Sometimes cover reception during this time too if not too busy. Covering reception means answering phones, tranferring calls, organising tapes (logging in, dispatching, moving location on the system, etc.).

2pm - Today I went on a run during this hour, to Talkback Thames on Newman St. Usually never have to go any further than a 15-20min walk away from our main building. Also went on a run to our other building on Margaret St.

3pm - Early runner went to cover the mid-shift runner at our other building. The other building is smaller with 5 online suites (audio, grading, etc), and that shift involves the same job, just slightly different depending on the amount of clients attending/tapes to be organised, as there is no receptionist. Our main building has 11 offline suites and 2 onlines.

4pm - Late runner (me today) goes on lunch break. You get an hour, which I usually spend watching TV on iPlayer or 4OD to unwind a little.

5pm - Early runner leaves. From this point onwards we do general jobs in the quiet periods (cleaning, toilet checks, suite clearing, etc).

6pm - Take, go out for and serve dinner orders.

7pm - 9pm - Mid-shift runner leaves at 7. Clear all suites of empty cups, plates, etc, and tidy them up as much as possible. Clean the kitchen, set the last dishwasher load off and prepare anything for the next morning (e.g. dispatch notes for tapes to be delivered in the morning, putting the next day's daysheet on the wall). As long as everything is done and all the clients are gone, the late runner leaves at 9pm.

Throughout the day we do any runs that need to be done, either between our buildings or to other companys also working on the programmes we are doing. We also generally look after the clients, mainly with drinks and food, but also with other odd-jobs. It means we spend most of our day in the kitchen, and do a LOT of running around throughout the day. The shifts are also not strictly set to the allocated times. Often on the late shift it can run over by half an hour, an hour, or sometimes longer. Before christmas I worked one shift when one of our projects had finished and all of the deliverable tapes needed to be dispatched the next morning. This included 20 episodes, with 3 tapes and 3 DVDs per episode. I had to wait for them all to be done, double check they were all there and create a dispatch note for them all, which ended up with me not leaving until 1.30am. It's all good though, it doesn't happen very often so you just get on with it when it does, and you get a cab home if you miss the last tube, so don't have to worry about getting home safely.

So that's it. Like I said, it probably sounds shit, but it's not. Yeah, sometimes it gets to you a bit that you are just on the bottom ring and generally take people's shit for a living, but all in all it's a great environment to work in, 95% of the people I work with are lovely and good fun, and I get the experience of seeing post-production television happen before my eyes.

Plus, you get to recognise every form of tape by just looking at its cover.... what more could you want to learn in life?