Formalities

In a bank, everything is formal. Everyone is polite, customer service orientated- even to each other- in theory. In a call centre in a bank, it's every dog for himself. So much so that when I was in need of the help of one of our complaints team to provide information regarding the arrears status of one of the customers (we rarely, if ever, communicated with any team outside of our own) I sent him a very polite e-mail which started "Dear Mr xxx" and ended "Regards, etc."

The e-mail was as a result of instructions from a senior colleague so to avoid any problems I copied her into it. Within five minutes she (and the rest of the department) were laughing at my formal, polite, restrained language.

As far as I'm concerned though, this kind of communication is one to be observed until the people communicating are at a sufficient level of understanding that they can drop the proper English and reply "Ta!" instead. To that end, all of my job applications, university applications and queries have been addressed in this way.

I really hope that's normal...


In other news, Manchester today acknowledged my application, so I now have a direct contact with the school. In sending my references one of my lecturers accidentally gave me an alternative project title to the one I'd completed. I don't particularly fancy standing in an interview and being asked "So, tell us about your relaxation light unit" and correcting the mistake there and then with "Actually, it was a peak heat moderator, and took substantially more work to design" because it demonstrates that my lecturer couldn't remember my project.

I spoke to said forgetful lecturer today; he seemed unconcerned and took persuading to send a new letter. If I had done that there would be hell to pay. As it is though, I can't afford to annoy him just yet- I haven't received the correct reference.