Nominations War

Seems like I've never mentioned the nomination program our office has in place.

As a motivation business, our company has some programs in place to motivate and recognize employees who do great job. It is great of course, being recognized by our peer of the good job we have done and even maybe made as the team member of the week.

So, this is how it works. Every week, employees can submit nominations for their colleagues/bosses who they think have done great job, have done the extra miles, have helped them during the week, being a great mentor, or even for little things such as bringing their baking stuffs in to share with their colleagues. Then during our weekly meeting, those nominations would be read out one by one, people clap, and then team of the week as well as team member of the week would be selected. Their photos would be on company intranet that week.

For each nomination made and nomination received, points would be given. Also, if you are the team member of the week, you receive extra points too. These points would be accumulated and the person who has the most points within the month, gets a CD... to select :) I said select, because it's not for that winner to take home. It's to add to the company's CD collection :) you can take it home for a day or two to copy it :) oh, but you can select ANY CD you want, if Superexcited likes your choice or that the CD is appropriate to be played in the office, I.e. no techno stuffs. It's good that Britney spears actually made into the list. I think... :)

Anywayyyyyy unfortunately eventhough being recognized is great and stuffs, everyone in my department is generally busy. Second, we are not the bullshit type of people who write long and funny nominations for people. And third, we can't play the CD in our area anyway, there's no CD player. Fourth, can you imagine making nominations every week? After a while it becomes so redundant. And back to the 2nd point, we just feel it's not worthy of a nomination anymore. As the results, my department hardly nominates.

Until 3 weeks ago when you know who made a comment to our manager about the fact that I've only made 3 nominations this year, and Little Missy only made 2 (and 1 of them was actually a nomination I made for another colleague but I put me, Little Missy and James Bond as the nominators!!). When our manager said that, Tap Water and me kinda got into heated argument as both of us feel that we are underappreciated by the other department.

The thing with these nominations, you can nominate a person, and you can also nominate a team. What tap water and I notice, the other department most of the time nominate IT in a team, I.e. the whole project team which includes IT and the other departments. However, they can nominate their department colleague individually too. But hardly with IT. After I realized that, I feel ripped off to nominate the other department that often. I do still nominate, but I think before I nominate.

Finally the manager said he didn't ask us to nominate other department. Just nominate within us. The other department nominates their colleagues right? So we can also nominate ourselves. It's a bit hard really, since even though we are in the same department, we usually deal with the other department more. So then, from then on we nominate our team mates every week.

So every Thursday, Little Missy and me remind everyone in our department to nominate and even giving suggestions on how to nominate for the others. As the results, last week for example, half or even more than half of the whole nominations were made by us lol. And now Little Missy is number 1 in the leader board, me number 2 and Barbie Girl on 3rd.

So funny really, I wonder what Superexcited thinks. Is he happy that his comment was noted? Does he realise that we do this just for fun and just to take revenge against the other department? I wonder...

GoMastercard Buyer Protection Cover Experience

Last week I finally took advantage of the Buyer Protection Insurance that comes with my GoMastercard Credit Card.

What Buyer Protection does are:
1. If the item you purchase goes on sale or reduced within 6 months after you purchase it, then you can claim the difference in price. Therefore, you don't need to wait until sale to buy things that you want.

2. If the item you purchase is rejected for a refund or stolen within 6 months (i think), you can make a claim.

3. If you become unemployed, then you don't need to pay the full amount of your balance. I can't remember exactly about this point, but something like this.

It costs some little percentage of my balance at the end of the month. I don't need to pay anything if I pay the balance in full before the end of the month too, so sometimes I don't even need to pay the premium.

Eventhough I've been on it for years, I've never claimed anything. This ofcourse due to my habit of only buying things when on special :P but then 2 weeks ago I FINALLY tried it myself :)

Remember those trips I made to IKEA buying furniture for my new home? Those side tables we bought had 20% off 2 weeks ago! Lucky I paid using my GoMastercard, so I could claim the difference. From memory, 5 of them cost $69 each and 1 was $59. Total of $404. 20% of that is $80.8. I could even buy another one for myself! (remember that all those were for my mum and sisters).

So I went to the website to claim. All I needed to do was fill in the form, filled in the date I bought it, how much was it, where did I get it, what brand and model, how much is it now, etc etc. It was pretty easy.

However I was confused when I filled it out since there was no quantity text box. We bought 3 x beige Askvol on our first trip to Ikea, then on the 2nd trip we bought 2x black Askvol and 1 Musken. So I submitted 3 claims, for 3 Askvol, 2 Askvol, and 1 Musken. Since there was no quantity box, I put the quantity in description box. I thought they would read it anyway.

Less than 2 days after, I got emails saying my claims have been approved! Was so happy with the speed and no hassle whatsoever. But when I checked the amount refunded, I frowned. I was only refunded the difference for 1 item in each claim eventhough I put quantity in the description.

I called the customer service whice by the way was very quick to pick up the phone! She was nice and friendly too. She listened and read my claims and said that it seems that the claim team was confused too and thought that the price I put in was the total price, not individual. Therefore only refunded for a single item. She then suggested to submit claims again individually this time for the rest of the items.

Then I submitted 3 claims again. 2 of them were refunded soon enough, but I didn't hear about the other one for almost a week! So I called the customer service number again. The girl who answered listened to me and took her time reading the claim. Apparently I made a mistake when answering a question asking if I've made a price protection claim on this item before. I put yes instead of no. I haven't been refunded for that item yet!

I explained that to her and she said she could fix it for me if I have time to hold on the line. She then did whatever she needed to do and fixed it there while I waited.

Then, done! All sorted out! Eventhough I had to give them a call, but on both occasions the girls were friendly, nice and helpful. And they do know what they are doing and how things supposed to be done. The claims were processed very quickly too.

1 think I noticed was, the 2nd girl I talked on the phone said at the end of the call, "Thank you for calling us to chase it up." It gave me the impression that she cares about the claims, and she sounded genuine too. Not like marketing-call-scripted type.

Overall I'm so pleased with my GoMastercard Buyer Protection experience :)

St Anthony's Day

I'm going to tell you the story I heard when I went to the church yesterday. I haven't gone to church for ages, and yesterday I happened to pass the church and saw a lot of people coming into the church. So I went in.

After the Eucharist, the father told us that yesterday was St Anthony's day, and told us this story:
"St Anthony is the one we pray to for the recovery of lost items (I just knew this btw). I'm sure you heard a lot of great story about how St Anthony's helped a lot of people in recovering their lost items. However, this is the most spectacular one. "

"This happened to me 20 years ago when I was a young priest in Wollstonescraft. I had this bunch of keys, church key, car key, basically everything together. Before the mass, I put these keys on the bench. When I came back to retrieve them, they were gone!!! And do you know what I did once I found out they were not there?? Pray to St Anthony?? NO!!! Just like any other person, I PANICKED!!! Yes I panicked!!! Where are the keys??? Where are the keys??? I went everywhere trying to find them."

"Then, a lady who helped in the church when she found out that I've lost all the keys, she asked me, 'Have you prayed to St Anthony, Father?'. 'Have I prayed to St Anthony? Of course not!! Why would I pray to St Anthony??? I haven't got time to pray!! I have to find my keys!!!!!' Then the lady said, 'Father, I'm going to go inside and pray to St Anthony for the recovery of your keys'. I said to her, 'Fine, fine, if you'd like to do that, thank you', and then I kept on searching. "

"After she left, I had this sudden urge to go inside the little room. You know, the one the Queen refers to when she needs to go to the toilet (LOL!). So I went in, and do you know what I found at the bottom of the bowl???!! The keys!!!!!!!!! I then gingerly retrieved those keys, washed, and from then on, I will never ever doubt St Anthony again!!"

Superexcited Missing in Action

Every Friday morning after the meeting, my most loyal reader always asks if there is any story. Unfortunately there's nothing interesting happening lately :( Superexcited hasn't been doing anything weird lately :l of course it's good for us, but I'm kinda bored -_- though sometimes I wonder if it's really him behaving nicely, or whether we are used to him already :l

Anyway there are some small things I haven't told you about.

Few months ago, we had new carpets for the office. The color is back to how it was years ago, mix of greys with white patches. You-know-who's favorite carpet XP IMO it looks like the carpet constantly needs vacuuming. In his opinion, it blends with dust, paper, etc so people can't see dirt. Oh plus, we had the whole office repainted. Well, I really didn't see the difference. I didn't smell the paint too, so when he told us about it, I was like huh? Where? When? @__@

Then on the first meeting after that, he declared no food and no drinks during the meeting except for water XD no tea or coffee! We have always kept food to minimum, but for drinks we never had restrictions of what to have during meeting. Some people had tea, some people had coffee, and some had coloured juice, it was all ok, no problem. And now, just water XD plus, we were asked to sit at least 1 meter away from the wall hahahahhaa XD oh man...

Another thing was about leave (again). He's really contradicting himself a lot of time. He keeps talking about work life balance rah rah rah... That people should take leave every once in a while to rejuvenate, see the world, or see family. But when we take it, if it's not to his convenience, he complains about how he keeps giving and giving but people don't care. Well hello? Apart from job, I don't think I received anything from him :l giving time out? Meh, when I moved house, I wanted to have a day off, but I couldn't, because I had to go Live.  I wanted to come late, not allowed, needed to go live in the morning. You can leave an hour early. But then when I was about to leave? Not allowed, there was an error. Great. What did u say you kept giving?

That day Superexcited was angry because he just realised that Little Missy was going on holiday for the following 2 weeks. Not only that, tap water was still on paternity leave too. Plus, James Bond would work from home the following 2 weeks as his wife wasn't fit yet to take care of their baby (his mother in law helped all this time, but she's going back that weekend). Let me remind you that all those leaves were already approved. Little Missy's was approved last year, water tap 3 months before, and James Bond's a week before.

Anyway so he was furious. He couldn't do anything about Little Missy and Tap Water, but then he told Lao Er to tell James Bond to find someone to take care of his baby for that week. He had to come in the following week! Of course all expenses paid by James Bond, company won't help anything, surprise surprise! :P

There's no way in Sydney you can find someone to care for a baby for a week with 3 days notice unless you have family. Childcare you say? The queue can be years long. Nanny? $25 an hour. 9 hours for 5 days totals to 45 hours. 45 hours x $25 = $1125. I better just use my annual leave -_- again, James Bond has to pay.

Lao Er told him about him, said try to find someone. But the following day he talked some sense into Superexcited then came to James Bond and said, don't worry about it, as long as you work from home and contactable, that's okay. You don't have to worry. At least he talked to Superexcited.

James Bond ended up extending his mother in law stay for an extra week, so he only needed to work 1 week from home the week after. That week Tap water would start to work, so we have enough people in the office. James Bond only needed to pay around $100 to extend the ticket, so not too bad. Problem solved. And I think after he did that 1 week from home, he's glad he extended his in law's ticket. He said it was HARDWORK working and taking care of his son at the same time! xD