More farewells!

Tonight was our last UK Slimming World Oscars! It was so lovely to see everyone before we go (albeit very emotional!). You may have seen us on stage?! The horses are keeping well thank you! A great night (and a late one!) was had by all!!

Passionate about parcels!

Spent time in the Stock dept today learning about stock control, courtesy of Gail Draper. I can tell that Carol is going to be a stickler for her paperclips! This evening we were taken out to dinner by two very nice chaps from CityLink, who were happy to discuss the ins and outs of parcel distribution, as well as golf, football and lots of other blokey things! After dinner we visited the CityLink Hub in Birmingham. I'd always wondered how all of the thousands and thousands of parcels that we send each year ended up at the right Consultants house - well now I know! It's quite an amazing sight to see - all of the lorries from the local depots arriving at the hub and very quickly being unloaded and re-loaded to drive back to their depot with the right parcels. They had something like 425 staff working tonight between 10pm and 2am - it was chaos! We were given a guided tour and commentary by the General Manager - I have never known anyone talk so passionately about parcels - your stock is in good hands!!

Cowboys and an Indian!

WOW what a party!! For the evening of the District Managers meeting, Lisa Salmon had kindly arranged a line dancing leaving "do" for us. Everyone was dressed as cowboys (except for Deborah Sanderson who was our token Indian!), the room was decorated and even the food was themed Texas style - delicious!! The great Mr O even made an appearance!! I don't think anyone knew how tiring line dancing could be and there were a few aching limbs (and heads!) the next day. A great time was had by all!

Nuns!

Today Carol and I went on a field trip with Stuart Cope (Stock dept Manager) to the printers that Slimming World use and to the "pick and pack" warehouse that stores, picks and delivers Hifi and Scanbran to our Consultants in the UK. The printers was very impressive. I expected dust, dirt and noise as the only printing I've seen is when I visited my Dad at work at the Isle of Wight County Press newspaper, but of course things have evolved in the past 25 years!! The working conditions at the warehouse however were so bad that we wanted to bring all of the staff back to Slimming World Head Office - I think sometimes we forget how lucky we are!! When we arrived back at Head Office, Stuart was acting very suspiciously! After a cup of coffee in the restaurant, we were asked to go into the conference room, where there was a national District Managers meeting taking place. All of the staff from Head Office were also in the room, but I couldn't see my team of UK South District Managers anywhere - where were they?!! Lisa asked us to take a seat at the front and then I heard them!! Out came my 7 lovely "Maria" nuns singing a specially written song (thank you Lynn!) to the tune of "how do you solve a problem like Maria". Tears all round! I was then presented with an amazing leaving book full of stories and messages from my District Managers (more tears!). Caryl Richards presented to all our launch and growth plan, pre-empted by the Dallas theme tune and some very dodgy photos (!) and then made a presentation to both Carol and myself of some very stunningly gorgeous Jasper Conran luggage sets! Thank you everyone!!

Last week down South!

Yvonne's last week with her UK South District Managers this week - I am so going to miss them!

They arrived!

Yvonne's "boys" arrived safely in New York! Good to talk to them as it was really strange having no contact for 6 days. They are now in the car heading to Dallas via Washington, Memphis and other places I can't remember! 1,500 ish miles and I bet Thomas doesn't stop talking for one of them!!

The first of many farewells!

Yvonne and Drew (Yvonne's youngest son) saw Andy, Thomas and Jay (Yvonne's Husband, eldest Son and dog) onto the Queen Mary 2. Jay is 15 years old and we were told by his vet that he was not fit to fly to the USA. No Jay in the USA, no Thomas in the USA - no USA!!! The only way to get a live animal to the USA from the UK if not by air is by sea......and the only way by sea is on the QM2 - lucky things!!! I couldn't believe how massive the ship is when you are next to it! The farewell was hard, but the boys will have the adventure of a lifetime driving from New York to Dallas in their hire car! I must have looked a state when they went, as a woman came over and asked me if there was anything she could do to help me! Drew and I returned to Cowes, Isle of Wight, where at 6.30pm we were stood on the sea wall waving furiously at Andy and Thomas (found out later they had gone inside as Thomas was cold, so goodness knows who we were waving at!!). Returned home to a very empty house and sat on the doorstep (with a G & T) listening to the Stereophonics live, who were playing at the Isle of Wight festival.

We did it!

Three days this week has been spent with the "technical" Xpress Weigh Support Team. We've learnt how to "build" PDA's and laptops so that they have the XpressWeigh and XpressIT programs on them. This was the week I was dreading (technophobe me!) - but we (I!) did it - yeah! Thanks to the professional training skills of Adie, Eddie A and Tammy and words of wisdom from Tom Marvell! What a lovely bunch! If you attended XpressWeigh training this week and have experienced any system errors - it was nothing to do with us.....honest! :)

The only way is XpressWeigh!

We've spent three days this week with the XpressWeigh support team in Head Office learning all about the taking and logging of calls from Consultants and helping them with their questions and fixes. A system is used to log and track "cases" (that's the calls, not the Consultants btw!) called XpressLink and eventually this, along with the Sage accounting system will mean that Consultants have a one stop shop number to call at Head Office for all of their needs - very clever! We're launching our USA groups with XpressWeigh (thank goodness!), and in preparation for this Carol and I have both run a group in the UK using the system. As we will be providing support to Consultants in the USA, we also need to learn the Head Office support side of things. Big thanks this week to Donna, Brodie (what patience!!), Helen, Hayley, Martin and Pat - all stars!