Don't be rude

We all have a job to do

I wear many hats and if you have been reading previous blogs you will be more than aware of this!

I am self-employed, run my own business and help other small businesses. One of the jobs that I do in my business is working as a bat surveyor and this is in collaboration with a local ecology business. It’s very much as and when required and mostly from April - September (thank goodness as it does require working long and unsociable hours). It is however something that I love doing.

(Bat i.d.’ing recently)

Of course this work never happens on your door step (it does occasionally but not often) and we normally have an hour to an hour and a half drive to get to the sites we are surveying. And this is where I get to the title of this blog!

I had a meeting the other morning (an hours drive away) and as I was surveying in the evening, I stayed after the meeting working in an office and then made my way to the location. My colleague also drove up to the location with the plan to carry out the survey together. He arrived before me, met with the occupant who asked why he was there as the survey had been cancelled! It turns out that an email had been sent the night before to cancel us, however instead of being a forwarded email, they had hit reply so we had never received it.

I am now getting to my point! We had already carried out one survey, three weeks ago, why did it take them until the night before to notify us. I could have been at home in the afternoon instead of making a two hour detour to help someone. My colleague could have been at home with his young family instead of wasting an evening.

So when you decide to do something, don’t do it last minute and think of the implications this has on others! It also means that you may incur an expense by wasting someones time!

(a survey where there was plenty of bats and nothing to do with this blog but for interest only)