Sunday, October 11

Pens


I am a picky sort when it comes to somethings; and of all the things I am picky about, pens. I use a pen as one of my tools on the job. The regular ball point is not my first choice, but that standard, bic ball point is probably as good as anything. What I like is a pen that fits my hand well, and one that glides across the page with ease. Being left handed does come into play with writing tools. A right hander would be pulling the pen across the page where as a lefty would be pushing. Its not a great big difference but is different. I really like the gel pen. It glides across the page with ease, fits in my hand well and writes in a fine line.
The invoice I fill out on each stop is a perforated double, I need to fill in the date, the time, my name as the technician, wind speed, direction, temperature and what materials I applied to the lawn. All this information needs to be noted twice, once for the customer, and once for the office copy. My industry is watched like a hawk by the state agriculture dept and the EPA, comes with the turf, so to speak. I also have a comments section on the customer copy, obviously I end my comments with a thank you. I generally in as few words as possible cover any trouble areas the lawn is experiencing, with recommendations to solve the problem. I also supply what we call the "hanger". A piece of paper with the materials I used, seems redundant, as this is already on the invoice, but state agriculture dept requires me to inform the customer of this information. "The right to know"...essentially how, what, when, etc. As if that isn't enough, the state agriculture dept also requires I keep my work on a 'run sheet'. customer name, the square footage of turf treated, and the price. This does also come in handy at the end of the day as I can use the run sheet to total my day, which the office needs copies of. This also makes it easier to monitor my material usage. At a given time, I total the square footage, do a bag count, do the math and find rate of application.

And then, in addition to all this, I am required to stake a "flag" on the property. The flag, needs to have company name, phone number, date and time on it, to be removed 24 hours later. Unfortunately the gel pen will not write on the flag, a ball point will and then there is the 'sharpy'
So, I think you can see now how important the right writing tool would be important to my job. Seeing my job from the customers view, I would not feel comfortable reading this information in pencil or crayon, and I would expect the hand writing to be legible.
If you should see me out in the field, sitting in my truck, doing nothing, I am probably writing up the paper work that is required for each stop.




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2 comments:

Douglas said...

They (whoever "they" are) should allow lefties to write backwards (from right to left), it only seems fair. And I am not a lefty.

Neo said...

I know how to write right to left, and to look at it does make it almost a foreign language, I will get by pushing the pen