30 July 2012

7. Ready... set... go!

Hello, long time no blog post!

The last two or three weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind.  If I carry on with that analogy, then the last 60 hours have been a tornado.  Not quite an A grade twister that rip houses apart, but definitely fast, unpredictable and a shock to the system.
Here's a quick run down of my typical day so far:
- wake up at about 6 or 7 and spend the next few hours trying to get back to proper sleep (yesterday morning being woken up every hour or so with phone calls because people don't know I'm not on shift - last night I turned my phone off) and actually get up out of bed at around 11. 
- try to eat something decent despite the fact that my body doesn't usually feel like eating till about 3 hours after I get up - I have to force myself as I'm only getting two meals in a day, and the second one is not always guaranteed or at the same time each day.
- put on my uniform and roll out the door! I love uniforms.
- spend the next 45 - 50 minutes on trains to get to work. Try not to fall asleep and miss my interchange.
- Go through airport style security screening to get into the venue.  Get to our transport team trailer at about 2pm and grab two radios (different channels), the one for the team I manage with an earpiece so I can always hear what they're up to and step in to help resolve issues quickly, the other one for the transport management team I work with/for clipped on to my belt and turned up a little bit so I can hear my name if it's called but not too loud so that I can also ignore other people's conversations.
- find out what's happened during the morning shift, help answer any questions. - receive my 10 staff for the afternoon shift, allocate them to their roles, brief and deploy them to their posts to relieve the morning shift.
- rest of day, to make a long story short, run around fighting minor fires everywhere around the venue where my people are based, checking up on the quiet ones by radio, phone or in person where possible, and trying to speak to just one person at a time on my two radios, cellphone and face to face.
- look at my watch and realise it's already 6pm and I still haven't managed to get around to all my people so pick up the pace.
- second half of day gets a bit quieter, especially from around 9pm, when I can go to the toilet and get a bite to eat at the workforce break area. The hot food is pretty good (when you can get it).
- grabbing ten minutes with my boss and one or two of my teammates over dinner is something I aim for, but it doesn't always happen. Mostly we talk over radio or phone and only when we need something from the other person. No time for mucking about! If we're lucky we all meet at the trailer at the end of the shift at around 1am.
- I relieve my team at about midnight. They have all done very well over the last two days, considering the pressure situations and having never done anything like this before. It turns out that 80% of the time we are doing customer service and wayfinding roles, which includes copping a lot of flack from irate drivers who are lost (incorrect sat nav instructions, poor signage, not our fault) or a couple of clients who are simply douchebags.
- the finish is dependant on whether other departments have transport needs after 1am. On Saturday there were four boxers who werein an appeal after the last bout, so I had to arrange transport for them back to the Olympic Village. - spend 45 mins getting home by DLR / night bus.
- put my uniform in for a quick wash while I have a shower - those adidas shoes are not bad in terms of comfort but they do nake my feet stink!
- crash at about 3am - 3.30am and put a t-shirt by my bed so I can drag it over my eyes when the sun comes through the window in a couple of hours.

This is after two days of competition, hopefully we just get better at it, and have fewer issues!

I will try to keep a note of some of the good things that have happened for my next blog post :-)