"Time Passes"

So you have a little break from blogging and then you come back and Blogger is all different and you can't find your font* and strikethrough is now a legitimate option in the taskbar rather than a secret html trick that only hackers know and maybe all your followers have gone to follow other blogs and what even is a jump break, the mime version of a guitar solo?

It's more afraid of you than you are of it.

Here is what I have been up to:

I now work at GrabOne Store, which is the product division of GrabOne, which is one of those daily deal sites (it is the best one).  The GrabOne Store team is made up of HB (Store Manager), Button (Sales Administrator) and me (Store Co-ordinator).  

Here are some of the things I co-ordinate:

• Deals which are going to run on Store, organising and checking of: "HB, something has gone hideously wrong with the graphics team and now all of Gareth's undies are crudely Photoshopped, in the bad-Photoshop sense, not the ball-sticking-out sense."
• Assisting HB with theme days and product selection: "HB HB HB HB I wanna run 30 baby products on the same day and I wanna run these wrist rattles and I wanna run a onesie and I wanna run -"  HB is the boss so he gets to make the actual decisions, but I make helpful suggestions and see what he says.  Sometimes he says "That's a good idea, Ally" and other times he says "I don't think we really have the market to run a $200 lamp that looks like a horse skeleton" and other times he says "Nice work, Gorgeous" and then has to hastily correct himself and say "Store Co-ordinator!" in case anyone from Upper Management is listening.
• Relations between Store and other departments: "Graphics, please fix these undies or I am going to have to punch everybody in the face, and I do not have time for that much face punching, because I am trying to find someone to supply a lamp that looks like a horse skeleton."
• Facebook for Store - perhaps you could like the page, and enjoy the constant flow of potential savings dropping into your timeline like so many photoshopped underpants.  Or you could like the page and then block the feed and I never even have to know, but my numbers will go up and everyone will love me a little bit more, even when I am threatening to punch them in the face.
• HB and Button 
• General fixing of things 

As an example, here is a thing I fixed the other day:

We were running a deal for an iPhone case, which the copy said was made of "100% PBC."  A commenter with an enquiring mind asked on the discussion board, "What is PBC?"  The sales rep, in a helpful sales rep way**, replied: "It stands for Practice-Based Commissioning". 

Unfortunately, practice-based commissioning is a UK healthcare initiative designed to target financial drivers towards primary care.  It is not a low-cost iPhone case material (which was, in fact, plain old PVC in the hands of a sweaty-fingered copywriter).  I mentioned this to the sales rep and they managed to make a face which somehow implied that they had not made the discussion board post at all, and if they had made it, they had certainly forgotten about it entirely immediately after the event.

Not pictured: international healthcare developments 

It is a very enjoyable job.

I also started playing golf, because HB was going to the driving range every second weekend and I thought while I was there I might as well learn, and pole dancing, which I was roped into by girls at work.  I am rather better at golf.  

The pole dancing instructor and quite a few of the other students manage to look sexy and graceful while swinging round the pole, whereas I look like a small, square child swinging gleefully around a piece of playground equipment.  I would be a terrible stripper.  "Well, she clambered up the pole and took her top off, then sat in the sandpit and made a little hill."

Off to the sandpit!

I promise to attempt to blog more regularly - I have missed it, and if you are still reading, thank you for hanging about.  

*Found it.  Also, speaking of fonts, here are a couple of interesting articles about font choices in the US presidential campaign, if you're into that sort of thing. 

**sales reps often help in the same way as small children in the kitchen, in that their intentions are brilliant and they are keen to be A Part Of The Process, but they end up getting in the way and spilling cocoa everywhere and you have to do everything Very Patiently until either the biscuits are burned and terrible, at which point it becomes All Your Fault, or the biscuits come out brilliantly and they stand back and say proudly, "That is my biscuit".  

Local news segment: if you are from NZ and on Twitter, look up the hashtag "songsfromthesouthisland".  Best so far are "Fraction Too Much Picton" and "I'm Hornby! Hornby Hornby Hornby."