It’s one of those weeks when I seem to be involved in a general overhaul.  On Monday, I went to the dentist for my six monthly check as usual.

My hero had been there recently and returned home with what he referred to as a “school report”, because our dental practice, ever up with the latest recommendations, had embraced a new assessment tool.  So, as I answered the usual questions from the hygienist about my lifestyle and eating habits, all was being recorded by her assistant and sure enough, when I arrived home an email was waiting for me with the results.  The 2 is probably because I admitted to the occasional glass of wine…

I’m generally supportive of such things, maybe because I work in an environment where we struggle to quantify things which aren’t that easy to measure.  I understand that it’s much easier to show improvement or record progress in numerical terms and so was unsurprised to find that all of the hygienist’s findings were translated into scores.  These were added up and shown as a percentage on the last page – I was relieved to find that the outcome didn’t challenge my lifetime low of 21% in third form history by any means and that actually, my mum and dad would have been more than satisfied with these results.  Because yes, it really did feel like I was back at school!

Today it was the turn of my car. 

I turned up first thing, as agreed, and waited with my cup of coffee whilst oil was changed and whatever else they do at an annual service check.  With wifi available in the dealership, I read the paper on my tablet, played a few games and from time to time, checked my email.  Not a great deal of interest until about an hour later, I received one from the workshop engineer with a video attached.

What?  I couldn’t wait to play it!

“Good Morning Mrs Thomas.  My name is xxxxx and I’m working on your car this morning.  I’ve completed my Visual Safety Check and have no problems to report.  Thank you for choosing Lexus Cheltenham”

Well, that was – ermm – interesting !   24 seconds, total.

(forgive me for not embedding the full video here…I didn’t think it fair on the engineer to share his work without permission)

Before I left though, a member of the service team came and went through my car’s report with me, explaining the checks which had been made and the action they’d taken, where necessary.  I’m glad to say it had a clean bill of health too and I left with a folder of reports with the same red, orange and green boxes as my dental records.

Yesterday, was a day for personal maintenance at the hairdressers, where there wasn’t a report form to be seen and the results (I hope) speak for themselves.

Just to round the week off as it started, though, I still  have a bit of this to deal with.  On my desk is a pile of forms and folders to work through so that in the office on Friday, we can do some standardisation.  I have a sneaky suspicion that the old red, orange and green boxes will appear once again and that chocolate buttons might be needed to ease the process.  Oooer.  However, all work and no play makes Gill a dull girl, so if I get on with it first thing in the morning, then there’ll be no problem taking two big sisters out to lunch and then to see the Minions film tomorrow afternoon, will there?

I am not going to write a report or evaluate it in any way.