Blimey. All those customers who gushingly declare that they would love to have my job, it must be such a wonderful place to work, ought to try it on a day like today. It rained. It was windy. It was cold. The plants fell over. There weren't many customers. Those that did come deserved to get a medal.
The new tea area has grown window frames since I was last there, though the windows themselves aren't ready yet, and the holes in the wall are still neatly boarded over. The interior walls have received a fresh coat of brilliant white paint, which will disappoint my colleague who was hoping for something warmer. We were all asked to think of any refreshments that we ought to stock in addition to the tea and cake, and I wrote ginger beer on the list, but refrained from adding 'lashes of'.
The big excitement from my point of view was that the new garden guide arrived from the printers. The owner was disappointed with the front cover, which she had expected to be a brighter shade of green. Apparently her printer told her that it was her own fault for using her web designers to design the booklet, as web designers never understand colour printing. We all thought that the colour, a dark olive, was good, even if unintentional. They used my text almost verbatim (I've just checked against the last draft I sent her). There are a couple of flourishes I suspect the boss of having added, and a couple of mangled substitutions I blame on the web designers, having seen their original wording for the website. Why alter 'the course of the natural stream' to 'the adjoining watercourse'? 'Adjoining' is a word straight out of estate agents' particulars (along with the phrase 'benefits from') and subtly alters the meaning, to something meaningless. And I'm slightly worried that plant names I used in their common sense, like rhododendrons, have been capitalised and put into italics to use them in their botanical sense, while retaining the plural s at the end. Still, overall it is almost exactly what I wrote and I'm quite chuffed to see my words in a printed document that somebody actually paid for.
The annual rainfall at work is even lower than I thought. I'd put it at 570mm, based on the nearest local site I could find records for on the internet, but the boss has revised that down to 510mm. Many garden guides don't bother to include any information about the growing conditions, and that always irritates me. As I go around a garden I like to know what sort of soil it's on and how much rain it gets, to put the planting in context.
A man wearing heavy work boots and a fleece with the logo of another garden on it took away five trees, six tree ties and a pair of gloves, saying they should be invoiced for. I was pretty sure I recognised the name of his garden, and it would be an odd sort of scam, to have a fleece made specially and then use it to take five trees without payment. I didn't know him though, and it is a bit odd that our sales staff are supposed to just let people who say they get invoiced walk off with stock. I asked a while back if we could have a list of customers who were on invoicing terms, but nothing ever materialised. If eventually we are scammed I suppose at that point we'll slam the stable door.
Showing posts with label garden guide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label garden guide. Show all posts
Monday, 5 March 2012
Monday, 23 January 2012
taking stock
The owner and I walked around the garden first thing, with the latest draft of the garden guide, checking that everything mentioned occurred at the point where the text said it would (it did) and adding in extra trees worthy of mention. There was lots to see, with big fat bunches of snowdrops almost fully open, and camellias and witch hazels in bloom. As Monday mornings go, being paid to walk around an interesting garden is well up there as a good way to start the week. The dog came along, and more or less stayed with the owner for the entire tour. Apparently on Saturday she was taken on a shoot and disgraced herself, charging around uncontrollably. Today, truffling about in evergreens against the wall of the plant centre, she flushed out a large muntjac, which ran away in a lumbering and slightly non-urgent fashion. After a long pause the dog followed, without conviction. She is a terrier, not a hound, and doesn't seem to consider that chasing large beasts of the field is part of her remit. It's just as well, really, as she gets lost often enough running after rabbits.
Things went downhill after the positive start, and I was required to scribe for the shop stocktake. Stocktaking the shop is a task of such awful, tedious grimness that I think it is worse than doing my tax return, if that is possible. The stuff in the shop comes from umpteen different suppliers, and we don't have bar-codes. Records of stock brought forward and ordered during the year are entered on an excel spreadsheet so large that the printed version is stapled together in four separate sections, because it is too fat for our staplers to cope as a single document. The person doing the counting announces what the stock item is, and the scribe has to hunt for it in the vast spreadsheet. Sometimes whole minutes elapse between the counter saying how many items, and the wretched scribe finding the right page, by which time both have forgotten the answer and the counter has to count them again.
Insecticides. Fertilisers. Fungicides. Garden lanterns. Lamp oil. String. Gloves. Mugs. Watering cans. Raffia. Hose connectors. Toiletries. Vases. Trugs. Metal obelisks. Garden hand tools. Jam pot covers. Vegetable peeling bins. Bird boxes. Bird feeders. Plant supports. Bird food. Plant supports. Books. Greetings cards. Tea towels. Soil testing kits. Plant labels. Wooden fruit. Notepads. Bridge sets. Candles. Tea cosies. Shopping bags. Swiss army knives. Seeds. Door stops. Boot jacks. Garden kneelers. Beneficial miccorrhizae. Coat hooks. Plastic tubs. Toasting forks. Nutcrackers. Scrubbing brushes. Tissue box holders. Place mats. Seed storage tins. Kitchen roll holders. Gift wrap. Paper napkins.
We sell all of these and more, mostly in multiple sizes and colours and varieties. You wouldn't believe how many different sorts of gardening glove we stock, or how many varieties of string. Sometimes the boss has loaded the stock code on to the spreadsheet, but sometimes there is just a description. Sometimes the boss's description doesn't pick up on the key word that appears on the packaging, so a 'power saw' is recorded as a 'folding saw' (probably a more accurate description, looking at it). The scribe then spends a long time trying to match what the counter has told them to the spreadsheet, without success. Sometimes similar items appear in more than one place on the spreadsheet, so gloves give way to wellington boots, but then over the page there are suddenly some more gloves, as the spreadsheet fails to run in stock code order.
It would be too simple if all of the watering cans were together, or all of the string in one place. To make the shop appear more tempting there are themed tables and ornamental displays. One of my colleagues put together a display of green things. It was quite cute, in a sort of Gardens Illustrated shopping section way, and mixed up string, raffia, candles, vases, watering cans, candles, kitchen waste caddies, bottles for making infusions of herbal oil, gloves and a textile door stop, all coloured different shades of green. In all it ran across at least a dozen different categories of the stock sheet. My colleague would tell me that the next thing was a glove code TML406S. I would spend five minutes trying to find my way back to gloves. She would say 'There's one of those', and on we went, hunting this time for the green metal vertical sided vase.
The new member of staff starts tomorrow. Poor sod, he is going to have a baptism of fire. After the stocktake things can only get better for him.
Things went downhill after the positive start, and I was required to scribe for the shop stocktake. Stocktaking the shop is a task of such awful, tedious grimness that I think it is worse than doing my tax return, if that is possible. The stuff in the shop comes from umpteen different suppliers, and we don't have bar-codes. Records of stock brought forward and ordered during the year are entered on an excel spreadsheet so large that the printed version is stapled together in four separate sections, because it is too fat for our staplers to cope as a single document. The person doing the counting announces what the stock item is, and the scribe has to hunt for it in the vast spreadsheet. Sometimes whole minutes elapse between the counter saying how many items, and the wretched scribe finding the right page, by which time both have forgotten the answer and the counter has to count them again.
Insecticides. Fertilisers. Fungicides. Garden lanterns. Lamp oil. String. Gloves. Mugs. Watering cans. Raffia. Hose connectors. Toiletries. Vases. Trugs. Metal obelisks. Garden hand tools. Jam pot covers. Vegetable peeling bins. Bird boxes. Bird feeders. Plant supports. Bird food. Plant supports. Books. Greetings cards. Tea towels. Soil testing kits. Plant labels. Wooden fruit. Notepads. Bridge sets. Candles. Tea cosies. Shopping bags. Swiss army knives. Seeds. Door stops. Boot jacks. Garden kneelers. Beneficial miccorrhizae. Coat hooks. Plastic tubs. Toasting forks. Nutcrackers. Scrubbing brushes. Tissue box holders. Place mats. Seed storage tins. Kitchen roll holders. Gift wrap. Paper napkins.
We sell all of these and more, mostly in multiple sizes and colours and varieties. You wouldn't believe how many different sorts of gardening glove we stock, or how many varieties of string. Sometimes the boss has loaded the stock code on to the spreadsheet, but sometimes there is just a description. Sometimes the boss's description doesn't pick up on the key word that appears on the packaging, so a 'power saw' is recorded as a 'folding saw' (probably a more accurate description, looking at it). The scribe then spends a long time trying to match what the counter has told them to the spreadsheet, without success. Sometimes similar items appear in more than one place on the spreadsheet, so gloves give way to wellington boots, but then over the page there are suddenly some more gloves, as the spreadsheet fails to run in stock code order.
It would be too simple if all of the watering cans were together, or all of the string in one place. To make the shop appear more tempting there are themed tables and ornamental displays. One of my colleagues put together a display of green things. It was quite cute, in a sort of Gardens Illustrated shopping section way, and mixed up string, raffia, candles, vases, watering cans, candles, kitchen waste caddies, bottles for making infusions of herbal oil, gloves and a textile door stop, all coloured different shades of green. In all it ran across at least a dozen different categories of the stock sheet. My colleague would tell me that the next thing was a glove code TML406S. I would spend five minutes trying to find my way back to gloves. She would say 'There's one of those', and on we went, hunting this time for the green metal vertical sided vase.
The new member of staff starts tomorrow. Poor sod, he is going to have a baptism of fire. After the stocktake things can only get better for him.
Monday, 16 January 2012
the worst day
The alarm clock went off this morning. I lay in bed for a while, grumbling that I had to go and be fumigated with creosote, and that it was not fair, when I was a small fluffy person who ought to be fed ice cream with a spoon, but then I had to get up. According to the Daily Telegraph, the third Monday in January is the most depressing day of the year, as the joyous effects of the Christmas break have completely worn off and people contemplate their credit card bills, the yawning distance until their next holiday, the cold, the dark, and the failure of their New Year Resolutions. Being gassed with creosote didn't make it into the equation.
I pretty much gave up with resolutions a long time ago, though I have so far kept my one modest one for this year, which is only to eat cakes and biscuits made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour and other ingredients I would use if I were making a cake myself, and pass on those containing unidentified vegetable oils, palm oil, whey powder, stabilisers and so on. This policy should be gently slimming in the long run while not depriving me of anything genuinely delicious, though I think I will make an exception for the Tate's muffins on days out in London.
There was a mild air of panic and chaos when I arrived at work. The boss's horse is suffering from some horsey ailment, and is supposed to be resting in its stable. When the owner opened the stable first thing this morning to give it whatever it is that horses eat for breakfast, the horse bolted. And was very reluctant to be caught again and the owner had to summon the boss to help her chase it round the field. By the time they had got it safely locked up again nerves were a little jangled.
This didn't stop us having an impromptu meeting about the garden guide. I think we're working on the right lines now. I wrote the text as a tour around the garden, but the map had numbered areas. The numbered areas all have names, which I used as section headings (the names are descriptive, and most are quite charming, like Primrose Hill. The furthest part of the garden is known for historic reasons as Knicker Alley, and I did change that to The Lower Garden). The round tour of the garden goes through some areas twice, on the out and back legs, and the tour narrative sat awkwardly with the descriptions of the block areas. We've now agreed to drop the section headings (which will also save space in the printed version) and the block areas on the map, and just describe it as a tour, with the suggested route on the map. It is essentially like writing reports in the City, only more flowery. The difficulty is never really in finding the words, but in deciding what it is that you want to say. Once you've established that, the words come.
The poor gardener spent all day creosoting, apart from fetching in some logs first thing, so it probably was the worst day of his year. There were very few customers, so maybe they were having a bad day as well. I'd expected to be scribing for the manager while he started the stock take, but the boss hadn't produced any of the paperwork, so we couldn't do that, and I spent the day cleaning up iris and messing around with fruit netting and bamboo canes in the relative warmth of the shop, instead of sitting in a plastic chair in a polytunnel with an ambient temperature of 5 degrees C. So I didn't do badly at all, for the worst day of the year.
Addendum Happy Birthday Liz xxx
I pretty much gave up with resolutions a long time ago, though I have so far kept my one modest one for this year, which is only to eat cakes and biscuits made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour and other ingredients I would use if I were making a cake myself, and pass on those containing unidentified vegetable oils, palm oil, whey powder, stabilisers and so on. This policy should be gently slimming in the long run while not depriving me of anything genuinely delicious, though I think I will make an exception for the Tate's muffins on days out in London.
There was a mild air of panic and chaos when I arrived at work. The boss's horse is suffering from some horsey ailment, and is supposed to be resting in its stable. When the owner opened the stable first thing this morning to give it whatever it is that horses eat for breakfast, the horse bolted. And was very reluctant to be caught again and the owner had to summon the boss to help her chase it round the field. By the time they had got it safely locked up again nerves were a little jangled.
This didn't stop us having an impromptu meeting about the garden guide. I think we're working on the right lines now. I wrote the text as a tour around the garden, but the map had numbered areas. The numbered areas all have names, which I used as section headings (the names are descriptive, and most are quite charming, like Primrose Hill. The furthest part of the garden is known for historic reasons as Knicker Alley, and I did change that to The Lower Garden). The round tour of the garden goes through some areas twice, on the out and back legs, and the tour narrative sat awkwardly with the descriptions of the block areas. We've now agreed to drop the section headings (which will also save space in the printed version) and the block areas on the map, and just describe it as a tour, with the suggested route on the map. It is essentially like writing reports in the City, only more flowery. The difficulty is never really in finding the words, but in deciding what it is that you want to say. Once you've established that, the words come.
The poor gardener spent all day creosoting, apart from fetching in some logs first thing, so it probably was the worst day of his year. There were very few customers, so maybe they were having a bad day as well. I'd expected to be scribing for the manager while he started the stock take, but the boss hadn't produced any of the paperwork, so we couldn't do that, and I spent the day cleaning up iris and messing around with fruit netting and bamboo canes in the relative warmth of the shop, instead of sitting in a plastic chair in a polytunnel with an ambient temperature of 5 degrees C. So I didn't do badly at all, for the worst day of the year.
Addendum Happy Birthday Liz xxx
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