Sidney was in early on the Monday morning as he had to create twenty-three accounts for new starters in the newly purchased Oxford branch of Pottersgate Paints. Even though the takeover of Tonks Tints had taken place three weeks ago it was only on Friday as he was leaving that Sidney had been informed of the names of the employees who would be joining Pottersgate Paints. Oh, and told they would all need logons and email accounts for 9am Monday. So each one would need a Share creating on the already full shared drive and added to the appropriate group. Why did none of them have easy names to spell? The shortest surname seemed to have nine letters in that could have easily been a conundrum on ‘Countdown’ . Another issue was that Sidney had been given the list of users on a hand written piece of paper from Gwen Gardner. Sidney was convinced she must have been doctor in a previous life as he struggled to make sense of many of the names. Then of course there appeared to be two Malcolm MacDonalds. This posed two questions for Sidney. Firstly, was it the former Newcastle and Arsenal player who once scored five goals for England and was then dropped? Then secondly, how did his naming convention work with duplicate names. This was the last thing he needed on a Monday Morning especially when there was no milk left.
It was just one minute to nine when a stressed Sidney had finished creating the accounts. The morning did not improve though when he finally found time to check his email. Firstly to find an email from Sally Staff, in Personnel, saying that he should not use the list of new starters that Gwen Gardner had supplied him with as this was the wrong list and attached was the correct list of nineteen completely different names. He scrolled through a list of several hundred emails that had arrived in his Inbox and one message jumped out at him. It was from the lovely Hannah Harper. After Sidney had unfortunately not made the Edgar Edmonds party on Thursday night he was not surprised by the tone of the message, although, he was surprised that the ‘Adult Content’ filter had not intercepted the message. She was not happy and appeared to be blaming Sidney for everything that was wrong in her life. The final line in the message stated clearly that she never wanted to see him again. This was emphasised by being in bold, underlined, a bright red font and size twenty four. Sidney was even more taken aback by the lack of kisses at the foot of the message. Just as Sidney was trying to decide whether it was worth a reply Percy Pottersgate stormed in the room followed by a very young looking but muscular lad.
“You lazying around again?”, shouted Pottersgate at a rather startled Sidney. Sidney tied to defend himself at the same time as minimising the email from Hannah. “Anyway, no time for small talk. Here is Peter. Hope you are going to treat him well. I have told him to be my eyes and ears down here”, Percy Pottersgate didn’t seem to see the need to stop to breathe. “Oh, and whatever you do make sure you look after that left leg of his”. In a flash the MD had left the room and it was just Sidney and young Peter Pottersgate.
“Why is your left leg so special then?” Sidney enquired.
“ That’s none of your business. Anyway, where shall I sit?” Peter gave a very hostile response.
Sidney hadn’t really planned the seating arrangements and there wasn’t much room anyway. His IT Assistant Colin Cousins was off this week on holiday so Peter could have his desk. Well, that was the idea but when Sidney offered this to Peter the response was not good.
“No way! That’s in totally the wrong place and too small. I will have that one instead”, the rather annoying boy snarled at Sidney. Despite his protests about it being his desk Sidney was fighting a losing battle. “I think my Uncle would want me to have that desk. Or do you want me to call him and ask him?”
Sidney gave in and let the youngster have his desk but undocked his laptop and moved it to Colin’s desk. He could tell it was going to be a very long three months.
“Have you got any macs?” Peter yelled out.
Luckily Sidney realised he meant Macintosh computers before he went off on one about how take away food was not permitted in the IT Office. Sidney had taken the decision to ban take away food after Colin had somehow got an onion ring jammed in his DVD drive.
The morning did not go well with Peter Pottersgate driving Sidney even madder than he usually was. The continual reference to the fact that ‘my uncle wouldn’t like that’ was really getting to Sidney. At least the nephew’s two and a half hour lunch break gave Sidney some peace and the chance to start to look at the important issue of how best to manage the information of Pottersgate Paints. When he had mentioned this challenge to young Pottersgate earlier in the morning he had been rather unsure what the response was. It sounded like ‘Moss’ but this made no sense at all to Sidney.
Sidney decided to start by listing how many different Shares there were on the different network servers. By the time Peter returned from lunch (with a one foot long subway sandwich) Sidney had listed 183 network shares. These included several similar ones with slightly different spellings, like ‘Commercial’ and ‘Comercial’. Sidney just didn’t know what to do next.
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