Enfranchisement

I think I've mentioned this before - that the owners of the flats in this building are banding together to buy the building itself (the freehold). Essentially the current management company aren't really doing much managing, apart from sending extortionate bills. Well, the buying up is a go. I've just sent a very hefty deposit to get my shares in the company, and in the next few weeks I'll get an invoice for about £10,000 which will cover my part of buying the building.

Ouch but also yay! Just on its own this fee will increase the value of my flat by quite a bit. And straight after doing this, I will be able to pay £1 for a lease extension which should mean that I have added £20,000-ish to the property value. Not a bad deal all told, plus it will nix the hefty and ridiculous bills that they're sending, and they'll become bills we can control.

Most of the £10,000 will come from redrawing the advance on my personal loan, and the rest from my April pay. My bank said today they can refund all of my advance, touch wood. So all will be within my budget, although I'll be pushed back out to maximum debt. But I had to do this or miss the opportunity. Joining it later would be considerably more expensive. Deciding not to join at all would have ultimately meant my flat lost value.

I will still have to find the money for my share of the roof, which is a whole 'nother interesting quest possibly involving credit cards. We will see. I'll cope somehow even if I have to do that, I do enjoy ramen noodles after all!

Ponderings and Hope

I've just been chatting with Buddy from Sister Store, hoping to convince him to apply for the open role in our store 😊 No guarantees, mind you, but I know he'd be great in the job, and I really think he'll do well at interview too. The only problem is his Boss Man, who excels in destroying confidence, and has led Buddy to believe there's no point applying... 😔

THE WALLS are still taking forever, because I have zero motivation and it's just so un-fun. Today I tackled wall section #5. This has been the worst so far, the one with layers of every wall surface known to humankind. Wash, scrape, prime. As I was priming I could see bubbles appearing all over the surface - really horrifying because if it's lifting, that would mean sanding the entire wall. But now that it's touch dry, it seems flat. I hope this means the wicked-expensive primer has done its job. I am going to give it a second coat just in case.

Lunch: Coleslaw on French bread, choc-chip muffin. And I actually bought the coleslaw 😂

Definition of Excitement?

Getting four free battered cod fillets from work. 😀 You know you've officially become an adult when free stuff is the best thing ever and it's even still awesome when it's fish.

Almost-Pugsley.
Except he isn't this clean.

I washed Pugsley today. I wanted to feel all adult-y and accomplished, which only lasted until I realised that the baked-on bird poop was going nowhere. I now have a sudsy car space and a car looking, well, marginally better. I think he's going to require a machine-clean (or three).

One of my cheery workmates has given me a cold... yay... so that's £15 unplanned spending on medication and a whole load of annoyance and a runny nose and blocked ears. And also some unplanned spending on a ready meal and some ice cream.

My Covid vaccination is booked 👍

I have bought my wall light online, too. I finally found one I liked, with a built-in switch, at a decent price. I hope it's decent quality.

Crazy Days, Lazy Days

This model is called the
Jump Starter Thingy 4000.

So Pugsley just randomly decided not to start this week, at 1pm in the afternoon. No reason, he was cranking over just fine but wouldn't start. Curses... it took me ages to install the road service app, only to be told my policy couldn't be found. Got them on the phone and they took an hour to arrive. I finally rock up to work two hours late - it was lucky that both Boss Lady and Work Bestie were in and could hold the fort.

Nice mechanic man had no reason for me apart from really cold weather, since the battery is fine. I'm unconvinced, his jump starter thingy produced a faster crank noise than Pugsley ever has. I think I will buy my own jump starter thingy. (Yes, that's the technical name for it.)

Then yesterday was One Of Those Days. I walk into work at 5am and the floor is a mess, but it will have to wait because I need to bake the pastries and bread. Before I manage to get them onto the shelves, the delivery arrives. Before we get the delivery finished, reps start arriving - one from a soft drink company, another from a card company. Then a maintenance man turns up and needs to be escorted all over the place. I start trying to get cakes onto the shelves, and the lady from coffee company is here to audit our coffee machine, followed by GrandBoss (surprise visit yay...) who spent quite a bit of time discussing the state of the floor, and general store standards, and giving me instructions on moving shelves about. At this point Boss Lady texted me from home to say that the safety and legal auditor might be in... great, just great. I didn't have much time to worry though because suddenly he arrived, and that meant two hours of blind panic as I worried whether I'd give the right answers.

All this time, Tinkerbell, Poppet and CareBear just got on with things and the store managed to run itself. They even looked after customer enquiries, coordinated their break times between them and kept milk and bread topped up on the shelves. I am so lucky to have a good team of cashiers. Turns out I only answered one thing incorrectly in the audit (which was fairly minor and not a safe or legal issue) and we have absolutely no safety or legal concerns anywhere. Yay team! And ohmigod what a relief.

By then it was 4.30 in the afternoon and I was so tired and mentally exhausted, and, well, starving, that I bought a ready meal. Bad girl. But the next day was a "get stuff done" day and incredibly productive all over the store. So I'm trying to redeem myself tonight by eating from the freezer - dinner was smoked salmon and goat's cheese on a herb wrap with a fresh chocolate éclair (all free). Salmon isn't my favourite thing but the price was right 😁

And, Breathe.

Turns out we did record takings for Easter weekend. Yay team!

I pondered whether to discuss Annoying Face with Boss Lady and decided she was probably sick of hearing it. I did take AF aside and noted that it's important to do things right because the cashiers are watching... she started mumbling and making excuses. Plus ça change.

Another day, another wall worked on. I stripped part of a wall, and filled another part - this particular wall will end up being more filler than actual wall, but it is what it is. I also moved some stuff around and gave the place a good vacuum. The shredded wallpaper, caked in layers of paint, leaves a constant pervasive dust everywhere, and living among it gets it tracked to every part of my apartment, including the kitchen and bathroom. I think I just assumed that oh yes, bits of paper on the floor. I didn't expect it to be like dust!

Dinner: luxury pizza with buffalo mozzarella, semi-sundried tomatoes and pesto (thank you Head Office for accidentally sending us a product we don't sell). Glass of coke. Free Oreo egg from loyalty card offer. A fitting £2.00 celebration dinner for my hard work throughout the weekend, I think 😄

Easter is Insane

It's Bank Holiday weekend and Easter Weekend, so I do understand people "needing" to go out and buy Easter Eggs, or, sweets and crisps and sandwiches for their picnics. I hope they went somewhere nice with their families. I just don't understand the people wandering in for a bottle of drink and that's it, people going shopping just for something to do. On Easter weekend, when shops are heaving with people.

On the plus side we did a roaring trade yesterday, but oh boy, I am knackered, and there's still two days left to survive. Even boss lady (who did a very uncharacteristic late shift last night), admitted that she now understands why we struggle to get all our tasks done of an evening. But yesterday, sigh.

Af overrode me twice in a row, in front of others, on a safety thing. Sigh. I don't want to shout someone down but I don't want customers getting sick. And it all kind of left me fuming afterwards. Food safety is important. And she contradicted me in front of staff members twice in a row, told them to do the wrong thing. Tinker knew the correct procedure and AF tried to tell her not to do it.

I don't need her to respect me for my ego. I need it so that when I say something, the cashiers listen to me. While I am always ok with people asking questions, I can't have AF teaching them that it's ok to argue with me.

I'm just so fed up because UGGGGGHHHHHH. 

Bonus Moneys For March

Prolific Academic £6.45

Switching to HSBC - £125.00 (This took a bit of effort, but was well worth it for the money. I surrendered a bank account that I never used, and now have a bank account with HSBC that I expect I'll never use.)

Hmmm what else is new? Well, I overspent on my grocery budget in March. It was mostly "achieved" by buying up high fibre supplements to take to work. My digestive health has never really recovered since my operation, which is really frustrating, and so I am trying a new regimen. We'll see how that goes.