I get paid for this?

Well, summer has arrived at the Ice Gardens. In other words, the hockey camps have started. The hockey camps run during the daytime Sunday to Friday each week, and one Guest Services staffperson (who am I kidding...lady...there are no guys in Guest Services...though there are gals on the Facilities crew) is scheduled for a day shift on each of those days. Today, that lady was me. I got to work a day shift on a weekday for a change (I've worked day shifts on Saturdays before but never on a weekday, seeing as they weren't available on weekdays before), working 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Now, I should explain one thing at this point: the only people at the Ice Gardens from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. other than staff are the people who are there to participate in the camps. The people who are there to participate in camps were confined to 2 rinks today (adults on one rink, kids on another) and hence had no need to ask me for directions. It seems their dressing rooms don't get locked, either, so they had no need to ask me for dressing room keys. In fact, absolutely no one from the camps interacted with me at all today, other than one person who came real early and wanted to know if the camp people were going to be out to check everyone in again like yesterday (umm...I don't know, I wasn't here yesterday, and you're the first non-Facilities and non-Tim-Horton's person I've spoken to here today), and two of our staff who didn't interact with me for very long. My interacting with other people today was limited to some people (well, mostly one guy) from Facilities who kept stopping by to chat, a few people who wanted to know where they could find the payphones/real estate college classrooms (yes, there is a real estate college that runs some classes at the Ice Gardens and some classes at the nearby tennis court known as the Rexall Centre at which the Rogers Cup takes place)/washrooms/cigarette vendor (you want to buy cigarettes at a sports facility? do you sense any irony in this?)/etc., a dozen or so people who called on the phone and needed transferring to other people or to know when their game time was, the staff at our facility's Tim Horton's where I got lunch, and the mailman. Oh, and I got greetings/quick small talk from a few other random staffpeople, such as the general manager, one of the league coordinators, a couple of the financial people, and our marketing person. It's nice to be in a facility where the higher-ups like the general manager know the name of the Guest Services girl and stop to chat with her, and where the staff is small enough to pretty much know each other.

Okay, so here is what I did at work today that was work-related:

• clocked in
  
• checked the phone messages and forwarded them as appropriate; continued to answer the phone as needed throughout the day...it wasn't needed much
  
• checked my business (internal) e-mail
• checked to see if we had all our keys
  
• registered some spare players for some teams by entering their waivers (left from last night) into the system (don't remember how many, but I could count 'em on the fingers of one or two hands)
  
• entered the 7 game sheets left from last night into the system...rolled my eyes when I saw that one team of guys, when signing in, decided to sign their names as things like "Ray Borque" and "Bobby Hull" (yeah, you're not that great, buddy, and this is a legal document you're signing)
• counted the float (twice, because it was an odd amount...and I had nothing better to do)
• ensured I was signed off from the computer and the front window was locked any time I left the office (but that the door was propped just a little bit open so I could get back in without having to get Facilities to unlock it...common albeit admittedly silly way of doing things at Guest Services)
• got the mail from the mailman and gave it to one of the financial ladies (all without leaving my seat)
  
• at the end of my shift: counted the float again, checked to see if we still had all our keys, e-mailed my report to my boss ("Everything was fine this morning. Thanks, Joy." I don't know why, but we have to e-mail her every shift to tell her how things went), took one payment over the phone (left it for my coworker to log), and signed off the computer
• clocked out. Yep, pretty sure that was everything.
  

Here is what I did at work today that was not work-related:

• surfed the Internet to remember how to do half-double crochet and treble crochet stitches without bugging my mom
• two rows on my current crochet project (and I could have done more except I needed to change colours and had only brought one colour with me)
• checked all my non-Hotmail (and non-maiden-name, but I think that account has totally lapsed now anyway) e-mail accounts; also checked into some of my Yahoo! Groups groups
  
• surfed the Internet as a coworker was trying to show me on Bell's site the cell phone he wants to get
• briefly surfed the Rogers site to see if there is a cheap-but-not-crap phone I can get through them to replace my now-near-crap phone
• read the paper, including the comics
  
• re-read parts of the paper (I went ahead and read some stuff I skipped before)
• considered doing the Sudoku and Jumble and Crossword in the paper; resisted (though I do think I got the first Jumble word since I did look at it just long enough to do so)
  
• tried to log into Blogger and learned that I no longer know my password (as my computer fills it in for me automatically when I go to the Blogger site now); pushed button to get it to remind me of my password; was informed that it would send me an e-mail with a reminder
  
• kept checking e-mail occasionally to see if the password would arrive...no dice
• pulled out Palm and "Office in a Bag" (Flylady's name for a zippered binder cover with a binder and paper and pens and all that good stuff in it) to keep working through an organizational system I've implemented
• looked at clock and hoped coworker wouldn't be too late...I was managing to keep myself entertained, but didn't know how much longer I could keep it up.

Yep, it is well-known around the Ice Gardens that while it is nice when you're a Guest Services gal to get a day shift since it means you can go out at night or otherwise have the evening to yourself (though I am odd among my coworkers in that I would rather use that opportunity to get to bed at a decent hour rather than go out and party), it does mean that you will have a very quiet and boring shift unless you come prepared. I had been warned of this, which is why I came with a couple books and the paper (we get the Toronto Star free at York, so I picked it up on the way in) and my crochet project and my "organizational" project. Even the lady who is acting as our report-to person while our boss is on vacation said she didn't know why "they" made us come in and that it was a waste of money (but she said this nicely; it wasn't a dig at us or anything, but it is more or less true that it is useless for us to be there other than for us to provide a front-end customer service presence during the camps...not like anyone is there to see us doing so). I don't mind having the down time; while on the one hand it would be nice to get some housework done or something rather than just sit there and do nothing, on the other hand this does force me to be away from World of Warcraft and focusing on other things, even if it's just having the better kind of relaxation that comes from crochet and reading (yes, I know that a clinic has been founded in at least one country to treat video game addiction, which goes to show that the stimulation of video games like World of Warcraft really doesn't provide the same kind of relaxation as the other activities I mentioned do). I just can't believe I get paid to do it.

New phrase I learned today: camera knee: the wet spot that results from taking photos of a hockey team from a one-kneed kneeling position on the ice. Heard from a coworker explaining the condition of his pants to me. This explanation came after he had extended his arm to me and told me to feel how cold it was because he'd been taking said photos in the cold (duh) arena. Those of you who know me well know my hands are always freezing anyway so I really didn't notice him feeling that cold, but as he'd been taking said photos while clad in a T-shirt I could still appreciate the sentiment (though those of you who know me also know I tend to have a sweater with me in case of cold conditions--like too-cold A/C in a theatre--so you may figure I wasn't completely sympathetic, but still).

Sigh...alright, must go to bed soon so I can wake up early and get in the "please help me with my OSAP application" line at York before it gets too long. Ciao...