Cautious! Caution is a word that puts us on the alert.
It places checks and removes certain loose attitudes from our work performance.
Have you ever experienced this before, when unawares one of your computer keys are locked inside or your hand is sustained on any of the key? The result is repeated display of the same letters appearing on your monitor.
Have you also realized you had copied a file and repeatedly pasted it on the wrong page? Have you also noticed you copied one word to paste it once only to appear several times? This is why we need caution.
You may find the fault of repeated information but in deleting if you're not careful you will leave some of the unwanted information or happen to mistakenly delete part of the wanted file.
Busily working, you may not be aware you have not properly dealt with the situation and eventually present the document.
I and my senior colleague have in recent times, faced abrupt termination of our work process when human feet touch our rather loose plugs.
We have suffered this from clients and from my own feet.
An attempt to stretch my legs due to tiredness can just result in this heartbreaking interruption that is very difficult to contain when you're in the critical stage of the work process.
You can be sure that, I feel more embarrassed when my feet happen to do the damage to my senior colleagues work.
This experience has therefore taught me how to be cautious and have checked the movement of my legs anytime.
The other day he was in the middle of preparing his monthly report for June 2009 when I happened to cut the process by that same method.
Apologizing does not normally appease the affected person.
I saw disappointment and dejection in his eyes as he walked away from his table waiting for me to repair the damage.
We have long clamored for a more tight and hidden extension cable from our technical department but to no avail.
Let's try to as much as we can to avoid this destructive work measures.
You can lose very vital information that are unsaved if you don't have a computer that can automatically save and recover files.
Wary! Is to be on the guard whiles you work.
Watchmen at people's homes take their guard to stop encroachers and intruders from causing havoc.
In fact their enemy to this goal is sleep.
It is amazing that the robbers and thieves do not come when you're awake but they do when you go asleep.
Sleep or rest brings us a lot of trouble.
You could easily be murdered in your sleep that is why we need to take guard.
It is not surprising therefore that a portion of the bible say, "Our God who watches over us does not sleep nor slumber" so that we escape certain traumas in sleep due to God's protection.
If our God keeps watch over us then we also owe it a duty to our employers to keep watch over their businesses.
That is why staffs must put in every effort not to sleep on the job.
Yes, sometimes we do get so tired the previous night we don't get enough rest and happen to carry it to work the following morning.
This is a natural challenge we need to overcome.
I recently told a new colleague at work to fight sleep with her mind when she communicated to me as early as 8am that she was already feeling sleepy.
And indeed if you're not willing to sleep you will fight it.
My job that I do is very stressful because you can have something doing every time and the body is sometimes indeed overworked.
I am sometimes forced to doze-off but as soon as I get the signal, I walk to the wash room to wash my face.
Do something consciously to avoid the sleep and God will help you.
Sleep sends your work wayward.
Just try dozing whiles you work and you'll see the trash that is displayed on your monitor when you regain consciousness.
There is a time that a file that we had used the day before is conspicuously missing and you wonder where it could be.
A desperate search to locate it is never found.
We only happen to get it later when we have given up on it.
I believe that if we were wary of that file, it wouldn't have moved from its position.
A staff might have definitely used it and left it somewhere.
Watchful! Let me divert a little from strict office duties and spread tentacles to other responsibilities of staffs.
Our jobs do not only end behind our desk but indeed the entire office environment.
Office equipments do wear-out with time and often it is due to the way they're being handled.
You will see a staff sitting in a swivel chair and stretching his weight to the back, weakening the centre of gravity.
If such a chair is damaged within a short interval, where should we put the blame? Obviously, we will place it at the door of the staff responsible and I will not hesitate to point that offender out.
I may create enemies but never mind.
Human beings hate the truth but will never do the right thing.
Staffs go to the wash room urinate and do not direct the urine well into the pan, leaving drains and stains on the floor.
Some do open taps and forget to lock them, clear signs of irresponsibility and abuse of office resources.
People urinate in the closet itself and leave the urine in the water which stinks after sometime.
Some also flush water at will and the closet drain begins to get weaker after sometime.
We must also watch people who come in and go out of the office premise.
Most are outsiders who come to misuse facilities and often do not come with the right intentions.
If you detect something gets missing as soon as a stranger comes in and goes out, follow up, investigate and if he's the culprit get him reported.
Theft cases are even recorded amongst staffs at times so this should not be strange.
Alert! Have you sat by an office table and anticipated a perforator slipping to fall? If you're much alert and fast, you may save it from falling which might break the mechanism.
This is how alert we must be.
For instance in the billing administration office, a client can present a receipt to you for reconnection of his account when the information on the receipt does not belong to him.
I may end up reconnecting a wrong account if I am not alert.
The speed of the internet link does fluctuate at times.
At one moment, it is very speedy at another time, extremely slow.
It is very irritating especially when you're entering payments.
Realizing this, I always remain alert to capitalize on the good times and enter payments quickly before it freezes.
There are times that I realize it's fast at a time but procrastination and being indifferent results in a lackadaisical approach which sends that opportunity away and very soon, the detesting period arrives.
I bite and hit my fingers because I know for sure that, this is an opportunity slipped by.
We need to also be saving our work at short intervals.
We realize this rude time when there is an abrupt light out.
Continuous availability of electricity does not suggest to us that it may go off one day, so we take events for granted and save our work when we choose.
If the unsaved information is not recovered then it is gone forever and you must type again.
Time wasted is never regained.
Suspicious! Anyone who wants to avoid compounding issues is always suspicious of what he sees.
For instance we have worked with the billing software for a long time that we can suspect and sense danger.
We know when it isn't right to post payments when the link is extremely slow.
The suspicion is the loading is slow and eventually hangs completely and would not move.
At that stage the posting portion may even develop errors and will not open.
It is conducive at that stage therefore to halt posting.
There are rush hour periods of my job where clients walk in almost every second to be attended.
By experience and maturity, you can always foresee a busy day beckoning by the client turn-out, early in the morning.
And the suspicion and judgment is indeed true when they start flooding-in.
If I risk and jump to something else, it is my own risk as I will always have to be interrupted to attend to a client.
If the cashier suspects right, she will realize that, there are more payments in Ghana cedis than US dollars so it is ideal to pick more cedi receipts than the dollar ones.
This can also be expressed as human instinct or hunch.
Mondays are very busy days for me due to the long weekend.
I check payments, responds to mails if there is, compile weekly transfer information and if not fortunate, the number of issues that comes up by calls could be intense.
I can never tell when a call may come.
Duly aware of the heat on Monday morning, I have resolved to type all my bank transfer information in the respective excels file and just complete and finalize it on a Monday.
I have managed to reduce the pressure on Mondays by this move.
This is how we handle suspicions that have a high tendency of occurring.
I also know that, invoices do run in the first week of every month so getting details of client's invoices for clarification may not really be possible.
There is the need therefore to do it before the first week of the month that is when such issues arise.
It is solely by client request so am free when there's none.