THIS ENGLISH SEF...........

I am the assistant service co-ordinator in my branch. The service co-ordinator is on maternity leave, so I'm more or less the co-ordinator for now. Some of my responsibilities include ensuring that my colleagues dress appropriately in line with the bank's dresscode, ensuring that prompt and efficient service delivery is given to customers, ensuring that the environment and banking hall is always neat, that customer complaints are handled professionally and the problem solved. You all get the drift abi.

Every thursday morning, we hold a meeting to deliberate on any branch issues, achievements, train ourselves, etc. This meeting is applicable bankwide. Thursdays are not my favourite days because I have to wake up extra early to make it for the meeting. Lateness or absenteeism from the meeting without any cogent reason attracts a sanction. And been the service co-ordinator, I have to set a good example. At the end of the meeting, the secretary: *Laura* sends the minutes to me to edit before I forward same to our service management group. Sounds pretty easy right, WRONGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!

The mere thought of editing the minutes just makes me tired. Once *Laura* sends it to my mail and I open it, it's almost as if the errors in it just pop out chanting *lalalalala, it's time to give you a headache, lalalalala*. :-(. I'm not saying that I'm perfect in English o, but *Laura's* errors make me shudder. Everyone is allowed to make the occassional error now and then, but when it becomes FULL BLOWN AND CONSTANT, then there is a problem.

She writes almost all through in small letters and omits basic punctuations. She just writes long sentences and jumbles everything up. It's difficult to say where one sentence ends and another begins. *phew*. If I wasn't there for the meeting, I would not have any idea of what she typed in the minutes. It gets so bad that I have to reread a sentence over and over again to grasp what she is trying to say. I read sentences like:

 "the poor elimination of the banking hall is very poor and does not befit a banking hall", "you need to volunteer your time by working with an extra time especially when you have pending work to do at your working place", "the link in his office is going on and off due to the foltty pot", "the security men should make sure that all customers who walk into the branch to see any officer should not just be allowed to walk passed them and barge into the staff office without prior information to the staff concern".

 SAY WHATTTTTTT........... Let me spare you all the horror. This is actually just a tip of what I have to edit every week.

Sometimes, my colleagues help me to edit it, but most of the time, they are occupied with their different duties. One day I was gisting with a colleague of mine and he said he attended the same school with *Laura*. Oh, really, I said, so what course did she study? He responded: SECRETARIAL STUDIES. I just smiled and said, that's nice o. But in my mind, I'm saying, you don't say.

 As soon as she sends the minutes to me, she starts to disturb me. *Laura* would see me going to eat and ask, Che, have you seen the minutes I sent to you? I would nod at her and say, Yes I have. I will work on it as soon as I'm less busy. She would see me later in the day and remind me 2 or 3 times again. *insert very tired look*. Madam, I don hear na. I'm trying to psyche myself to edit it. Abi you think say na beans?

Sometimes, I think she knows about the errors she makes. Maybe that is why she constantly reminds me to edit the minutes and help save her face. I feel sorry for her and have often wondered if I should tell her or not. So far, I have decided against it because people can be funny. We are not friends like that, just colleagues. She might take it the wrong way, and I no want wahala. Or what do you guys think?

WELCOME TO THIS BEAUTIFUL WORLD

My sister *Nneka* gave birth this morning. yaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy *dancing around*. I'm super excited to be an aunty again. We thank God for a safe delivery. Mother, son and father are all doing great. What adds to my excitement sef is that he is the fourth October kid in my family. Yeah, you heard me right. We are four super special, warm and large hearted October children in my family. Lemme break it down for you. I was born on the 9th of October. My sister (the latest mum in town :-)) was born on the 15th. My brother: on the 24th and now my nephew: on the 22nd. Isn't that totally AWESOME.

I remember asking *Nneka* when her expected month of delivery was and she said October, i let out a whoop and danced round my room. I told her that she has to give birth on either of our birthdays. *grins*. I also told her that even if labour starts, she should hold the baby in until it's any of our birthday, then she can drop. :-D.

Sometime last week, she sent me a pix of her preggy tommy via bb chat. I went all ewwwwww, I don't want to see that. I want to see my little nephew. She said she had taken some pictures with her hubby while pregnant, but she didn't have any nice one to send to me. I told her no worries, that they could always go to a studio and take some pretty shots and she could send it later. I woke up this morning and saw her ping that said " no more hubby and me snapping while preggers, because we are on our way to the hospital". I said a word of prayer for her and wished her God's speed and strength. I thank God for His faithfulness in my sister's life. Below is my adorable nephew:

May God protect you. May He cause His face to shine upon you. May you be a source of pride and joy to your family and to the world. May you fulfil your purpose here on earth. May you not shut the womb of your mother. May you grow in the knowledge, wisdom and favour of the Lord. Your name shall be mentioned among the great men in this world. In Jesus Mighty Name. AMENNNNNNNNNN. Nnnnoooooo my darling nephew. *MUAH*

I will be taking my remaining 10 days leave from work next week. I can't wait to get to Abuja to do omugwo. :-D

P.S: I would like to wish everyone born in October a very happy birthday. They are too numerous to mention and I wouldn't like to omit any name. We sure are special people. God bless you all.

MY FIRST BLOG AWARD *grinning happily*

I received the Versatile Blogger Award from Toinlicious and Jemima and the Stylish and Versatile Blog Award from HoneyDame and I feel so excited because this is my very first award. It means a lot to me to know that people take out time to read what i wrote. It's more amazing because these are people that I don't know but they already feel like family. Thanks a lot dearies *HUGGGSSSSS*.

The rules of the awards are quite simple:

• Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them in your post.
• Share 7 things about yourself.
• Pass this award to 15 recently discovered blogs and let them know about it. 

I have done the first one. Here goes the second rule:

Hmmmmm, what 7 seven things about me should I share? Well, here we go:

1) I love to sing: I sing to myself anytime and anywhere. I learn the lyrics of songs easily and can start to sing along after listening to a song once. I was in the choir in school, but somehow, have not gotten round to joining my church choir.

2) I am a girlie girl. I love to dress up and do the whole matching colors stuff, from jewelry (beads and any kind of jewelry) to eye-shadow, to nail colors, to clothes and even my undies. The whole works. ;-)

3) I love the Lord and try to please Him in all I do. I marvel each day at God's faithfulness in my life.

4) I get irritated at people that ask silly questions: For eg., You see me dressing up and carrying my bag to go out and you ask me if I'm going out. I tell such a person, no, I'm about to go and take my bath. It's obvious  that I'm going out na. *kmt*

5) I have battled pimples and acne on my face since I was in secondary school. I took a lot of fried groundnuts while in secondary school and I guess it contributed to it. I have used all sorts of things, visited dermatologists and heeded to the advise of many. I don tire abeg. Sometimes, it clears and I feel like one very pretty babe. Other times, it just comes all out as if they want to wage a war on my face. I guess I react to somethings. I have stopped using all those different things on my face and try not to let it bother me.

6) I feel hot easily and so do not like been out in the sun. My  friends say it's because I'm used to the air-conditions at home, work and everywhere. Of course that does not mean that I don't go out under the sun. I just get irritated when I'm hot. I tell my siblings that I will have an air-conditon in my kitchen and we would all laugh. 

7) I love to sleep. I no fit shout am enough sef. As in,  I sleep in the bus on my way back from work. If I'm following my colleague, it's better sef, because the air-condition go dey cool my borri. If I'm bored, hungry, angry, happy, sad, anything, and anywhere, I can just sleep. It's crazy. :-D. Surprisingly, I'm not a deep sleeper.

Now to the final part:

I am a newbie on blogsville, but had been following some blogs silently even before I started blogging. These are a few of the blogs I discovered:

• Gee
• Esco
• RemiRoy
• Ema Leecious
• @ilola
• CherryWine
• Priscy
• exschoolnerd
• A-9ja-Great
• Nonye
• P.E.T Projects
• temiville
• Coy-Introvert
• singlenaijamum
• Dee Dee

I discover new blogs everyday and will be following them too. You all rock. *HUGGGSSSS*

NOTE TO SELF

I love traditional attires. The different types of materials with their colors are so attractive, and the fact that I am able to sew whatever I want with them is simply oh la lacious. I have a lot of them in different trendy styles and rock them whenever an opportunity presents itself. I have however noticed something about most if not all of my traditional wears. The zips on the tops or gowns are sewn in such a way that I always need help with them. Luckily for me, I always have my brother around whenever I have had to wear such traditional attires. He would always grumble and say that he doesn't understand why I can't sew clothes that I can zip by myself. It's either that the top is really fitting and I would need him to help me with the zip, or somehow my hands cannot reach the zip. I always used to laugh and tell him that he should count it as a privilege that he is able to help me: his big sis.

As is the norm with me, I arrange the clothes I want to wear a day before, so that I won't waste time in the morning. I had decided at night that I would wear a mint green french lace long skirt and blouse to church today. I woke up this morning and started preparing for church. I took my time to apply my green eyeshadow to match my attire. I had also laid out my green and cream matching beads on the bed. Only for me to wear the blouse and realised that I couldn't zip it up. Chai, I tried my best, but no way. And being that I was the only one at home, I had to take it off. It was either I looked for something else that had green on it to wear because I couldn't imagine starting the process of making up all over, or I just wear anything even if it doesn't match my green eyeshadow (all of them na fashion na :-) ). And I didn't have a lot of time on my hands because I didn't want to be late for church.

Luckily for me, I saw my green skirt (thankfully, it was clean and ironed) and paired it with a cream short sleeved jacket and hurriedly left for church. I missed out on the praise & worship at the beginning of service, but God had greater things in mind for me. The message today was AWESOME, I needed to hear God speak to me about His GRACE. I re learnt that it's God's Grace and Favour that has kept me and brought me thus far. It became clearer to me that God is never too late. His ways are definitely not our ways. He will show up when He wants to and all the Glory will be to Him alone. I therefore choose to speak forth Favour into my life, my family, my career, business, finances, health, and all that concerns me. I grow in levels of Grace. Where many have tried and failed, therein will I succeed, because I have the Grace and Favour of God at work in me. Hallelujah.

In the middle of service, there was an unexpected anointing service and I also had a glorious time worshiping and extolling the name of the Lord. Indeed, He is worthy of our praise.

I have made a mental note however, not to ever sew my traditional attires in such a way that I cannot zip them myself. It's either the zip is by the side or I don't even know sef.  No be the one I will have a wedding to attend and will have a problem wearing the ashoebi because I will need someone to help me with the zip. ;-D

Hope you all had a wonderful Sunday service.....

PATIENCE: A VIRTUE INDEED

I haven't blogged in a long while and I sincerely apologize for that. I have been so so busy in the office and pretty much occupied over the weekends. I always told myself to write, even if it was just a short post, but i never got around to doing that. Well, that is until now. For the past one month, I have been relieving my Customer Service Officer (CSO) in the office. That desk is FULL. And to worsen matters, I had no real knowledge of the job functions required of me. Let me just take you all back a little. At first, the plan was that I would be the one to relieve her. So everyday when I returned to the main branch from my cash center, I quickly went over to her desk and tried to learn one or two things. It was tedious to say the least because at that time, I am so tired and everyone is in a hurry to close and leave the office. After a while, my boss said that i wouldn't be the one to relieve her, so i jejeli relaxed on the learning and continued my normal job. A few days to when she was to begin her leave, my boss changes his mind and decides that i would be the one to relieve her after all. Na so i picked up my notebook again and resumed the "come back from my cash center and learn thingy".

While on the CSO desk, I constantly need to pad myself with extra doses of patience both for internal customers (my colleagues) and external customers. It's almost as if some customers are sent to try your patience. Once, an elderly man came to make a deposit. After filling his deposit slip, he asked me to confirm the account number on the system to know if it was correct. I checked it and it wasn't correct. I told him. He instantly flared up and said: "I have been paying money into this account almost everyday and to simply  confirm the account number on the system, you cannot. You are a novice, bla bla bla". I was just looking at the man and didn't say a word. Upon checking the text message on his phone, he realised that he wrote a figure wrongly. He corrected it and I confirmed that it was the correct account number and he left. I just shook my head.

For some people, they will enter the bank and forget the account number they want to make the deposit into. Such people walk over to the CSO's desk and ask the officer to check on the system and assist them in getting the account number. It is possible to do that, but it can be difficult especially when the names are common. For instance, a guy walks in and says: "Madam, please help me look for the account number of Mr Adamu Abubakar, he opened his account in this branch", sometimes, they will not know the branch. Helloooooo, there can be a million and one Adamu Abubakar names as account holders in the branch. I no fit abeg, before I give you the wrong Adamu Abubakar's account number and you will say na me give you. I politely explain to such people and tell them to call the owner of the account to re-text his account number.

There is so much to do that some times, I don't get to eat until after the close of work. I remain very grateful to the CSO's in our other branches who would always respond via office chat or calls to rescue me. "massive hugs to you guys". I knew nothing about how to open accounts, issue ATM cards, cheque books and all that.
But, I'm proud to say that i learnt them albeit under a lot of pressure. Sometimes, customers are delayed, especially if there are lots of them that need my attention. I adopt the first come, first served basis and apologize profusely for the delay.

Now on to my colleagues: the marketers. Hmmmm, this ones give me headache almost on a daily basis. I got to see some of them in a whole new light. Before I became the relief CSO, my relationship with them was just there: Hi, Hello, Could you help me check my customer's balance?, things like that. But being on that CSO desk, I have realized that some of them are just not it at all. We all know their major duty is to convince people to open accounts and maintain a relationship with such customers. I know it's tough out there with the competition and all and I appreciate the effort they all put. I would however like to appeal to the marketers out there to do a thorough job on the account opening packages before handing them over to the CSO to open. Help us to do our own jobs ehnnn abeg. We are there to serve these your customers when they come in to transact business with the bank.

I always have issues with two of our marketers. Once I see an account package and either of there names is there as the account officer, my EXTRA CAREFUL antennae goes up. :-). There is always something wrong with the packages they bring in. I always find errors such as the intended account holder not signing in the required places or not filling the spaces on the account opening form where basic things like "date of birth", "occupation", "next of kin" etc are supposed to be. And my dearly beloved marketers will rush and drop the account package for me to quickly open the account. They would always say "Che, please hurry up with this one, the customer needs his account number and cheque book / ATM card immediately". I hear you. Shay i will formulate "date of birth" and "next of kin" for your customers abi. "smh". I have had to call back these same marketers a lot of times to show them the unfilled parts, and remind them that these information are important.

I understand that they are under a lot of pressure to meet their targets and all that. But I am also under a lot of pressure to deliver quality and prompt service to the customers. I have shouted at and argued with these two ladies and they still repeat the same mistakes. "insert tired look". We always make up, but the cycle continues. Mehnnnnnn, I can't wait for the CSO to resume and take over her duties from me, so I can be rid of the marketers.

This past one month on this desk has been very challenging but interesting too. Unlike the Tellering or Cash Officer's or even the Funds Transfer desk where at the end of the day, you know you have closed your books for that day, on the CSO's desk, work no dey finish at all. I learnt to do my best for the day, handle the ones that are top priority and leave the rest for the next day.

P.S: I throway 3 GBOSA's to all the CSO's out there. Una dey try no be small. And I appeal to every bank marketer and even workers out there. Please do your jobs thoroughly to enable your colleagues do their part without too much stress.

P.P.S: Sorry for the long post. I just needed to rant. :-D