Paper can be heavy

Today I did not arrange to have any sessions with clients at all. My morning was spent on retrieving information required for the data-entry personnel to key in to a database cum application system.

Even though I am not employed to do administrative job, I shall do it anyway. Time is tight, and this project has to be completed soon. Furthermore, I am the person-in-charge to oversee this project.

Thank goodness that the authorities were understanding in giving us more grace to complete this project more effectively. I do not like the idea of rushing to get things done and end up compromising on the quality. I suppose the authorities realised that we do have some limitations in our resources to be able to complete the project within such short time-frame. The fact is: data-preparation took up a lot of time compared to data-entry. I reckon that the authorities had not realise that data-preparation could take more time than they had expected.

So the entire morning was spent doing paperwork and administrative matters. I am not quite an administrator. If you put me to do administration for a year, I may end up sullen and bored. But I guess I won't mind doing it occassionally, if seeing to administrative matters is an inevitable part of the job.

I was scheduled to be the officer-in-charge of providing Information and Referral Services for the afternoon. In short, the officer-in-charge has to attend to enquiries that our centre receives. This includes walk-in, phone calls and referral letters.

The nature of the duty is different from answering phone calls and directing it to the relevant staff. The job of answering phone calls and redirecting the calls is done by our admin assistant. On the other hand, the officer-in-charge of the Information and Referral Services for the day (for my case, half the day) may need to provide information and even professional consultation to those who have made enquiries. We make preliminary assessment about the needs of the caller, and then try to link them to the appropriate services where possible.

After handling each enquiry, the officer-in-charge will enter and record the enquiry (into an online application system). The information are kept confidential with limited access to certain professionals (e.g. our director). My goodness, there were a total of six enquiries that I had handled within the span of about four hours this afternoon. So in the end, my entire afternoon was spent handling enquiries. Six enquiries for half-a-day is considered quite a lot. There are times whereby there are no enquiry for the entire work day.

Paper can be heavy. If you have weighed a stack of paper, it can be heavy. In this case, I am referring to the point that paperwork can be a load for one. I spent ten minutes talking to a caller over the phone, and I spent just as much time (ten minutes) trying to record the enquiry.

In the evening, after the official office hours had ended, I stayed in office to clear work. I was not even seeing any client. I was just doing paperwork.

Halfway in the evening, I had conversations with a few friends over MSN. That was a pleasant short break from work. Then I had to stay focused on continuing with what I have been doing this morning. I am relieved that progress for the project has been satisfactory. If not, you won't probably find any sense of relief in my writing.

That is it, remember that paper is heavy, and remember to save enough energy to carry the load from the paper. Similarly, one may simply need to remind oneself to set some time aside for paperwork. So today, I did. I spent the entire day on paperwork, and some couple of hours talking to callers to answer their enquiries as best as I could.

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I don't know if it is the weight of the paper. My left arm is aching. I think it must have been due to my straining of my arms after carrying the instruments yesterday. Next time, I may have to do warm-up exercises before carrying heavy instruments.