Carol came up after three-quarters of an hour. Her message turned out to be that Rachel had phoned to say she is no longer able to cover 26 September for me as her daughter's school has an in-set day. She'd offered 3 October instead. Rachel also wanted me to swap onto Christmas Eve for her.
There were a couple of wrinkles there. Christmas Eve is a Monday, and of course by then I'll be working the evening shift every Monday, although Carol said there isn't usually an evening shift on Christmas Eve. If there is, then obviously I won't be able to do the morning for Rachel. And having 10 October off suits me better than 3 October. So at my first mini-break I rang Rachel. She was fine with doing the 10th and accepted my explanation that I'll have to wait until we know if there's a Christmas Eve evening shift before I can commit on that one.
That left a couple of outstanding problems. There's a Women's World Cup semi-final on 26 September, so obviously I don't want to work that day; and I had already worked the shift that Rachel had agreed to swap me for the 26th, so I was going to have to explain the situation to the clerical team. Or so I thought - when I began telling Paul, he told me to go and see one of the line managers. As Pat, my boss, was absent, he advised me to see Sandi. She was most helpful, keeping a copy of my written note to explain that Rachel will now be covering me on 10 October, and immediately booking my request for official holiday on 26 September.
And so back onto the phones. Plain sailing until my last call, at 1.48, where the elderly lady (who, the notes said, had some kind of mental illness) suddenly turned against us when I asked her what line of business her last job had been in. She complained that she was so unhappy at giving out personal information that she no longer wanted to participate. Just for good measure, she followed up by accusing us of passing people's contact details on to companies who try and sell you things or take your money. I told her we have nothing to do with any of that, but she replied that she didn't believe me. Goodbye. The only saving grace was that writing up my report sheet took until 1.58 - time to enter my payclaim and go.
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