Our office received a 'Green office award' from the UNDP administrator some time, last year or this. I just did a study on the tap in the bathroom near my office. This tap is left running, as the only way to turn it off is to do yourself an injury. Once I managed to get it down to maybe two drips a second, causing greater physical pain than the soul-pain of leaving it running. The people who mostly use that bathroom are the security guards and the woman who mans reception, and me. It isn't laziness, it's simply unreasonable to expect anyone to turn that tap off. I mentioned it to the building manager several weeks ago (he of the fridge). Apparently, taps are difficult to replace and expensive. He is pathetic. I wonder whether it was also him who decided the best place for a fire escape is out the back of the stairs...
Anyway, now the Green Office Team (which I guess doesn't include him) knows that we are wasting about 730 litres of water a day, and have agreed to do something about it. In an email.
That's the fuel capacity of a Panzer tank, or (more relevantly?) the average annual drinking-water intake of a Canadian.
8 comments:
The woman on reception.
The woman who works on reception.
The woman who staffs reception.
Do Canadians drink more water than everyone else or less?!
sarah, i'm so glad you noticed. avoid using staff as a verb.
as for jess's question, how the bloody hell am i supposed to know? not even google has an answer.
Jess? Surely you've not been away long enough to forget my name yet!
I think canadians probably drink less water than some and more than others. And I generally believe my random thoughts and hunches to be factual.
You cannot know how bad other offices are in terms of waste, though I'm glad you are making sure the little things are covered. I would try and get the borough of enfield up to scratch, when and if I run a library I will take steps, but in general it is horrendous. You wouldn't believe the volume of paper we don't recycle.
And whats Jess talking about? You remembered her name perfectly well, unless she's started expecting everyone to waste more time and type Jessica.
Now to add to that poem:
The man who womans reception.
The woman who womans reception.
The reception that works the man.
The reception that works the woman.
I don't like staffs or mans or works. IMO The woman on reception is the only viable way of putting it.
Staffs is a horrible ugly word. Mans is a gendered word. And works is a none neutral word. Does the person work? Does the reception fail to work without the person. Mans (though gendered like so many things) has a completly different meaning to works or staffs. Also we should try non to dehumanise as we degenderise language. Mind you this is coming from someone who is anti-work and would scrap the work ethic so maybe people can ignore that. Still the point still remains that we have to replace words with words of the same meaning:
to take one's place for service, as at a gun or post: to man the ramparts.
From an online dictionary definition of man as a verb.
Staffing doesn't work, no just because its an ugly word, but because it doesn't have the duty and military connotations.
Also:
–verb (used with object)
14. to provide with a staff of assistants or workers: She staffed her office with excellent secretaries.
15. to serve on the staff of.
16. to send to a staff for study or further work (often fol. by out): The White House will staff out the recommendations before making a decision.
–verb (used without object)
17. to hire employees, as for a new office or project (sometimes fol. by up): Next month we'll begin staffing up for the reelection campaign.
(from the same highly questionable source)
Works is most definately wrong.
Hmmm...
The woman who defends the reception.
The woman who controls the reception.
But I guess leaving the verb out would make the most sense, because its not really particularly relivant to your blog.
Although actually it is sentances like that that contain nice complexities and enjoyments that we will lose if we ever manage to de-genderise stuff.
the woman who mans reception
is lovely I think. A million contradictions in one sentance.
Clearly I have a day off and for the first time in a long time no pressing work. My aplogies...
So that's what a day off looks like. Nice that you spent it commenting on my blog - and the other thirty visitors appreciate it too.
It appears my other comment didn't show up, the one apologising to Jen and promising to write her a natural anthem, familiar it will seem.
De-gendering. Doing so in society makes things more interesting, I would argue. At least less predictable. I think in language, it needn't be true that de-gendering makes things boring. But no time to think now, so don't start such sentences - bad practice!
The woman who runs reception?
How does my natural anthem sound? I want to get it stuck in my head so that people can ask me what I'm singing, and I can say, 'oh nothing, just my natural anthem'. I don't know why.
I did do other things too. I went to lunch with my dad and I rewrote the last episode of my radio series (I am so happy to have that bastard thing done now and the directors problem and not mine) and a bunch of band related stuff.
Oh and I practiced my Ukulele a lot.
But it was nice to have a chance to catch up with what you are up to and to sprawl out loads of words without thinking about them (thats my general attitude to internet stuff for some reason, jen always spell checks her comments and everything! I mean whats that all about?)
Certainly its nice to sprawl words when you;ve been busy making them precise for a few weeks.
Incidently, I miss you, when you gonna be back in the UK?
x
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