Back to work, new house, Back to life!

What a couple of days. At the beginning of the week, all I seemed to do was pack, move house and unpack. And there is still more to move! It’s never ending!!!
I returned to work on Thursday after 9 months off in total (not including the 3 weeks I did part time in October). I was working in the Yeovil store for a couple of days with Sarah training me and showing me all of the different things which had changed over the months, which was most of it! My regional manager was working in the same store as me on the Thursday. The first thing he said as I hobbled through the door? “Hi Kelly, welcome back, you look like shit!”
Thanks for that boss! As you may be able to guess, I was ill, very ill! I had literally gotten flu like symptoms the day before and could barely stand up right with out losing my balance. I just hope that he has some respect for me now after seeing that I had dragged myself in for my first day back whilst being rather ill! He said to me, that for the first week back, he would let me take it easy so that I could ease myself back into the business gently… That promise lasted all of one day!
On the Friday I got into work to continue shadowing Sarah and to try out the new stock system. At lunch time she had to finish up and go home as she had a funeral to attend, so I said I would stay and take charge of her store for the afternoon. Would be a good practice run for me before being let loose in my own store again! Like I said, it’s been a while since I had run a store! I had planned to have a quiet afternoon planning for my own store the following week and auditing the store to learn all of the 2008 changes I had missed hearing about.
My plans soon changed. The minute Sarah left the store I was busy. Firstly was a “small job” my regional manager had asked me to do involving me calling each of the managers to confirm review dates which I began quickly. It took much longer than normal though as everyone wanted to catch up with me and hear the entire saga of my leg and how the recovery was going. It would appear that none of them thought I would actually return to work as many people who go onto long term sick leave simply vanish from the company! Oh well, I have changed that trend!
My regional manager then sent me another “small job” via email, meaning that again I had to call each of the store managers to inform them of a new regional policy for each of the sales team to complete and pass an e-learning quiz. They then had to fax me the individuals certificate which would mean a barrage of faxes (approximately 100 for the region), that will be fun to print each and check that I have everyone’s! Not!
As I got half way through calling the region for the second time that day, I checked my own stores email to see a message from the second in command of the region… “Hi Kelly, welcome back. Can you give me a bell when you get a minute?”
I knew exactly what that meant… He had a job for me to do. What joy. I called the store he was in for the day and yes, I was right, he did want me to do a job for him… Call all of the managers! Great, I was calling them all for the third time in one day! It was getting ridiculous, they all knew my voice by this point, I didn’t even need to say “It’s Kelly… Again”. Half of the managers didn’t know about the payments my phone call was regarding. One of them, nobody could get hold of which was a slight problem as the payment he was receiving had to be in the store by close of business Friday… The day I was calling on!
I had several other phone calls to make for the day, meaning the audit I had started on Sarah’s store kind of got pushed back slightly… I managed to complete one out 6 sections and began 2 other sections rather than completing the majority of it! I ended up being completely chocker with work right up until half six when I left!
After leaving work, I got back to my mum’s house to throw some more stuff in my car to take to the new house. I was exhausted so didn’t really hang around much and still had to stop off at the supermarket to pick up some fresh food for the weekend. By the time I got in it was nearly 8pm and I was shattered! I unloaded the car and put everything to one side to be unpacked the following day then just sat and chilled out. I couldn’t be bothered with trying to figure out the oven for the night, so I cheated and micro waved a lasagne! I know, home made is better… but hey, I had just moved in!