I love the summer work at school...

[Zourous]

6 whole peaceful weeks to do work, but then I think back to previous summers and remember:

 

I'll take it easy at the beginning as I've got 6 whole weeks, loads of time, but then I'll start umpteen tasks and not finish them due to unforeseen circumstances and at the end of August I'm thinking "I'm running out of time and I've got to get this stuff working now" and I can't remember where all the jobs are that are half done, but you will come the start of term, when staff slowly uncover them and collar you to sort it out.

 

I'll have peace to nip to the loo for a no.2 without the door handle being rattled, oh no wait! the loo roll is out as the cleaners haven't been in to replenish the stock.

 

Staff randomly coming into the school especially to distract you, oh but they won't just bring themselves and their trivial issues, but they'll also bring kids and dogs who just think it's fun to run around the place!!

 

And also don't forget the new staff via email, you help them out the first time and suddenly you've got a new best friend and they'll be back to ask you every other question they can think of.

 

You'll go to re-image a room but no you can't because of one of these reasons:

 

The room will be locked, the caretakers will be impossible to find (and just ignore the radio anyway), and the main key from the office has been lost.

Electricians have turned the power off

Painters are in decorating and splashing paint over the PC's (you didn't know about this of course)

Your boss is just moving the switch from the cabinet, but forgot to tell you

PAT Testers are in the room just plain getting in the way

 

You'll also get collared by various people walking around that include, lift engineers, fire extinguisher checkers, health and safety auditors or just plain auditors auditing something or another, people that are hiring rooms you know nothing about, random parents asking for someone who's not there.

 

You think you'll take a nice short cut with a load of equipment you need to transfer to a room, but no, random doors have been locked along your path, you'll have to go around the houses instead.

 

You'll find other jobs that you weren't particularly going to do until you stumbled across them:

 

Projectors left on, oh better check the bulb life now and turn it off

People logged on to random PC's, I'll just log them out

Pigeon trapped in a room as it got through a dodgy upstairs window and has pooped everywhere, better try and get it out the window again.

 

You'll walk into cobwebs in the parts of the school where no one has been for a few weeks.

 

You'll have rooms where PC's will need to be relocated because of building works or general painting, but of course they will finish on the last day of the summer and then you've got virtually no time to get everything back in order.

 

And then you get to sit down at the inset for the staff meeting exhausted, with people nudging you from behind "saying did you have a good summer" before you can answer it's onto a list of their problems, and then to cap it all, all the work that has been done doesn't get mentioned by the Head although other people are thanked!

 

 

Then I think, no actually I hate the summer.

Edited July 18, 2014 by Zourous

[BassTech]

This is all to familiar! Have some +thanks

[diddylord]

Yep that sums it up brilliantly

[3s-gtech]

Do you work in my school?

 

You missed a reason for "You'll go to re-image a room but no you can't because of one of these reasons":

 

The room will be locked, the caretakers will be impossible to find, and the main key from the office has been lost.

[mrbios]

Well personally i LOVE the summer...

 

Kick around in the yard with a football during lunch breaks

Come in later than usual

Can't leave later than 4 as that's when site team lock up

Work through your list of jobs without interruptions (bar the odd one or two who we often tell we're not interested until September as we're "snowed under")

Down the pub (which is RIGHT next door to the school) every friday, often with the site team and the guy that's here every summer painting

 

There's a lot of work to do, and it's often quite hot and tiring, but overall i love it

 

Biggest frustration has to be keys though. We've got keys for most places but one building is really old and every door has it's own key. PITA if you have to do lots of work over there.

[Zourous]

Do you work in my school?

 

You missed a reason for "You'll go to re-image a room but no you can't because of one of these reasons":

 

The room will be locked, the caretakers will be impossible to find, and the main key from the office has been lost.

 

Thanks @3s-gtech, I've now added it in. You've got to mention keys somewhere, they are the bane of our lives

[abillybob]

Biggest frustration has to be keys though. We've got keys for most places but one building is really old and every door has it's own key. PITA if you have to do lots of work over there.

 

I have a skeleton key that allows me into every door in the building

[Bompalompalomp]

I have a skeleton key that allows me into every door in the building

 

Me and @Garacesh laugh at your key.

 

The caretaker let me pick the lock to a drawer that the receptionist had locked MY keys in last month! Picking a lock to get to my keys was rather surreal.

[Grey-gear]

Summers is always a enjoyable time, just feels good getting some big jobs sorted. But I always keep reminding myself "Better be ready, because Septemeber is coming"

[Oaktech]

I had a key to everywhere, until they changed it... It's taken me a whole term to get my key stash back up.

[Zourous]

I have a skeleton key that allows me into every door in the building

 

Skeleton keys are fine until one is lost, and then suddenly someone (if falls into the wrong hands) could get into any room!

[sonofsanta]

Teachers here have some strange concept that their classrooms are their private rooms and thus they should have a private, unique key to lock it with. Right pain the site manager changes locks to a standard key when he can, but it's a slow process...

 

Best thing about the summer holidays: there's an awful lot of powerful projectors and big sound systems around the school doing nothing for six weeks, and someone may as well use them. So every lunchtime, me and 2 x $techs take our pack ups, pull up some chairs and sit down for an episode of ST:TNG on BluRay. Looking forward to testing the 5000 lumens projector in the new sixth form common room in a couple of weeks

[bladedanny]

Teachers here have some strange concept that their classrooms are their private rooms and thus they should have a private, unique key to lock it with. Right pain the site manager changes locks to a standard key when he can, but it's a slow process...

 

Best thing about the summer holidays: there's an awful lot of powerful projectors and big sound systems around the school doing nothing for six weeks, and someone may as well use them. So every lunchtime, me and 2 x $techs take our pack ups, pull up some chairs and sit down for an episode of ST:TNG on BluRay. Looking forward to testing the 5000 lumens projector in the new sixth form common room in a couple of weeks

 

We used to play rockband on our 7m wide screen in the hall with six speaker surround sound. That was fun.

[jallsop]

Second some of this, but to add

 

Go to re image a room, to find summer school are using it today, because it's too hot on the room they should be in.

Catch up on my filing of documentation (I'm a bit OCD about having printed manuals) only to find that the new image has an updated version, with its updated manuals.

Go to copier to get said manuals, and get clobbered by summer school teacher - can you just get me access to........ (on the internet)

 

On the subject of keys, I'm so grateful (sometimes) about having a complete suite of salto locks on all doors. No more lock change problems.

[Jasbo]

I'm a plus one for the summer work! Love it... Nothing like it in IT support for other industries, I always work the summer - it's the best holiday ever

 

Bring on the lazy mornings, the doughnuts and coffee, the impromptu take away and pub visits, the peace and quiet, the ability to get a good job done, the new toys, your choice of music, shorts and flip flops....

 

The best bit:

 

two cleaning ladies setup a bacon butty bar in the staffroom for the cleaners and site guys, a quid gets you two butties and a choice of red or brown sauce, bring it on!

[timbo343]

We (me and assistant) love summer at our place. Its possibly the best time in the year. A whole 5.5 weeks, not had 6 full weeks for a while but just the whole place is ours and the site teams.

 

We get to leave things around and know that no one will touch things.

 

Start of summer we rush to get things done then fine we could have taken our time.

 

6 weeks seems a long time at the end of july but looking back at the beginning od Sept you think where has time gone.

 

You know that once you have neated something up it will stay neat for the duration of the holiday.

 

Get to do some real physical work like cabling, drilling, get to use our power tools etc.

 

When its results day we hide ourselves away.

 

The banter with our contractors as they are on our level and not looking down their noses at us.

 

Love love love the summer break and the random bbqs that we have.

Edited July 18, 2014 by timbo343

[Garacesh]

Me and @Garacesh laugh at your key.

That we do.. Although if I started picking locks instead of just using my keys, I think a few questions would be asked..

 

Not that keys matter.. When teachers aren't leaving their doors unlocked when the room is unoccupied, they're actively giving their keys to students to run errands/go to the toilet. The phrase "Losing battle" springs to mind.

[sallys1305]

I love summer - early starts, less interruptions, a chance to catch up a little and prepare (ever hopeful) ..... do you think asking for pay as well is to much currently paid 42 wpy - 16 days during hol/over my 830-430 hours already worked 4 days plus numerous add hours ......., Don't work then I hear you cry ..... but then unprepared I will launch myself into the next academic year ......

[E_G_R2]

Once got stuck in a room after the cleaning staff striped and polished a corridor!

[Garacesh]

sledgehammer

[timbo343]

We got locked upstairs after the site staff locked all doors to stair wells as a laugh. They forgot about the lift though.

[howartp]

Been working through the weekend with arrangement that we'd text the nearest caretaker when leaving - we had a temporary key to one outside door to lockup, then they came back later to set alarm.

 

Texted him 3.30 yesterday saying 'just leaving'.

 

Got a call at 5pm - 'when did you send that text? You haven't just left have you cos I locked up and set the alarm an hour ago!'

 

I'm glad he obviously checked we were not in our office and our cars had gone before locking up!

 

Peter

[Frut02]

This just descibed every summer holiday i have ever had working in school.

[CAM]

No milk in the fridge for tea, also run out of coffee. Help! D:

[X-13]

No milk in the fridge for tea, also run out of coffee. Help! D:

 

Go to the shop. Buy some. Get receipts.