Report Cards: Many hours of marking / getting in late assignments, entering them into the computer. I have 180 students so it takes awhil
Parent Teacher Interviews: I feel I mark fair and clearly and most parents where I am are on the level so lots of interviews are okay. Still there are a few psychos who would say “My Tom would never do anything bad” despite numerous incidents to the contrary.
Band Concerts: Have you ever said this to your teacher at a concert “I forgot my music!” or “I forgot my instrument!” If you have, you just gave your Band teacher a few more grey hairs. Lets not forget 180 students…
Late spring, for me. That’s school field trip season and also the beginning of tourist season. The museum gets swamped on those days. One of these days I’m actually going to sit down and tally up all the visitors to proce or disprove a dark suspicion that I have: that some cosmic malevolent force actually causes increased visitation on days when we’re already overly-busy.
The week before finals (dead week, no classes) and the two weeks of finals. I work in a law library at my university, and ALL the law students are freaking out. Have you ever had to tell a hysterical 1L that all five copies of O’Connors Civil Forms and the Blue Books are gone, and aren’t due back for another three hours?
I work for a Plumbing/Hazmat Company and for me, the busiest time of year is from end of March/beginning of April until mid-October. That’s when we do the most spill clean up, mostly from one large utility company.
It’s also pretty busy from now until February cleaning roadside duct work etc, but not nearly as crazy as the spill clean up.
Then again, with the other admin off on leave until who knows when, it’s been CRAZY for me since the middle of October.
When I was a research worker, the worst days and weeks were before grant applications were due, before the lab boss left for a conference where he would be presenting research, and August/early September in the alternating years my boss taught a course.
Grant deadlines were the worst. The stakes were high (my salary came out of one of those grants); many people outside the lab itself had to be involved (signing off on budgets, etc) and many parts had to be coordinated; and even getting the application out successfully just meant the start of a waiting period. Conferences were the easiest; however frantic the preparation, you knew there would soon be blessed peace and quiet while the boss was gone.
June: Figure out what might go into the busget next year.
August: Submit finalized budget for my items
October-November 15: Submit all contracts for procurement and fabrication or repair.
At the grocery store this last week is the busiest of the year. Good thing I let that job go. But I’m in the busiest week right now for my current job. Glad am I that I’m well-prepared for it this time.
Property management: the end of the month and the beginning of a new month. The week that overlaps month end/start is always busier, processing notices to vacate, setting up move out/in inspections with new and vacating tenants, putting availabilities up on the website, and answering phone enquiries from all the people who’ve just given their notice to vacate overall.
Over the course of the year, summer is busiest, as our fixed-term tenancies come to an end in the summer months (easier for us to re-rent in summer) and if people aren’t leaving, I have to set up an annual inspection, do up a renewal and/or increase, mail it out, and then follow up on the paperwork’s return. We’re a town with two universities and a college, along with other educational institutions, so August is generally c r a z y.
This last summer, we were not all that c r a z y in August, because we’d rented pretty much everything out already. The rental market was/is quite tight in Victoria now.
November/December/January are the slower times of the year and a chance to get caught up before it all starts again…
Last week, I picked up my phone twice in the mornings to find… no voice mails!
Fridays are busy, as we scramble to get the weekend’s logs done as well as Monday’s (and with any luck, Tuesday’s) and we chase down the agencies who don’t know they’re in flight the next week, and we go back and forth with the sales dept to unsnarl the snarl in communication.
Fridays are magnified at the end of the month (as we get ready for the next broadcast month) and at the end of the quarter (getting ready for the next quarter). The last Friday in September is a mess, as it is the end of the broadcast year and sales scrambles to get as much money back on the books before the year ends. Plus, getting in all the orders for 4q, which starts the next broadcast year.
November through the middle of January is also busy, because although we have company holidays, we still have logs to get out. So we have the same amount of logs to do in less time, as we factor in Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and MLK holidays.
Hurricane season. Winter is generally calm, but spring-summer-fall are all very busy with people cleaning up garages etc but things really get hopping when a hurricane makes landfall.