The back end of the craziness at work
The busy season at work starts at about mid-August and goes 'til about October, though there are a couple weeks that are just crazy insane; we're on the second of those two weeks. And it's Thursday; just about over. This is why I love the placement of Labor Day: It's this quiet, calm, relaxing day (in theory) where one can rest up before being run ragged again. And believe me, we're being run ragged.
YC was complaining she was sick on Tuesday. It was just a cold, but she is young and has no intestinal fortitude, and she called in sick early yesterday. Alas, we had a work thing last night, where she likely would have gone, or fought with me over which of the two of us would have gone with; her absence meant just the boss and our one coworker went, and I had to stay back to mind the business, so in a sense it was a win because I didn't have to go out and about. I would much rather stay back at my workstation, thanks anyway. Unfortunately, it meant I worked a 12-hour day. No breaks. I did bring a couple of protein bars, so I wasn't about to faint or anything, and I wasn't hungry by the end of the evening either, likely due to my late Tuesdays and how I normally eat on those days. But everything I didn't earn by being off on Monday, I made up for yesterday...yay? The problem was that our one room renter met with a client technically after hours, and then ran long with their meeting, and due to what he does, he brings so much gear that it takes him ten minutes to pack it all up and two trips to get it into his car. I didn't leave until 8:48 PM.
...And at that point I went to the other building to check on BBC, as we were in a race to see who would stay later. He lost--he still had a ways to go until he was done. Remember those kits I put together a few weeks back? They've been around to our clients, who've shown them to our mutual clients, and now we're in the process of getting individual items together to take out to people. It's quite the process, time-consuming, and BBC was the person tasked with doing that. It's not hard, per se, but he'd kept asking me questions about what goes with what, double-checking components of things, and overall he did a decent job, but not everything got labeled as to who got what, so that wasn't so good, but he's never done this before so for a first time as a picker-packer sort of person, I'll give him a B+. His grandmother is the one to normally do this sort of thing, but, uh...it's time for her to move on to other things, like retirement, plus she is now a part-time caregiver to BBC's dad as he has reached such a state that he can no longer be left alone. She has tried to have him at work but it's too frustrating for everyone. She has been keeping an eye on him for 2-3 days a week since his wife, who works at a school, returned to her job after summer break.
We have other changes, which was another topic discussed last night. The good doctor has had some changes in his life recently and asked the boss about getting more hours. He is now helping BBC out in the other building for the most part, which is where I think he would be most helpful. He has an interest in learning more of what BBC does, and he has a distinct knowledge about some of the other aspects of that job, and it's better put to use back there. He's been pretty productive from what I can tell, even if right now the main task he has is unpacking boxes--we are getting so much stuff in at work, it's unbelievable, and it all has to be unboxed and checked over and what have you, and he's more than capable of doing that. It also comes at a time when BBC's helper, who'd started off as a college intern, is now going back to school; he took the spring semester off. He'll only be able to work two days a week, and only about five hours those days. He's been a tremendous help and I'm sorry he'll be cutting back, but good for him that he's continuing his education. The good doctor's move to that part of the business comes at a good time. We'd had the boss' son for part of the summer, but he's in high school; our intern only lasted four weeks and, as we discovered, was a costly bargain; we've had to redo a fair amount of the work he'd done. Remember, if someone's free, you get what you pay for. But he's also young and you can't entirely fault him when it's his first job. And then we'd briefly had another teenage boy come work for us; I don't think I mentioned him before aside from his non-interview--he'd shown up to meet with my boss in July on a day my boss up and took off so he could work that Saturday. This was the son of a friend or acquaintance. Anyway, they did end up meeting and the boss said we'd try him out. He worked one week, then was on vacation the following week. That next week, when I was off, was his second week of working. BBC was not impressed and did not wish to keep him on...and then we discovered he'd damaged an expensive piece of equipment while working the last few minutes of a shift in an place he wasn't supposed to be working in, and that was that. (It happened in the front building while the good doctor worked the night shift, and the good doctor suggested he clean something and apparently it got dropped and banged up and considering what was dropped was worth several thousand dollars...that was not good. Worse was that YC and I were the ones to discover what happened, although my brain was elsewhere when the discovery was made, and it wasn't for a few days that other people found out about it. At that point the higher-ups were in a tizzy because, seriously, something should have been said immediately upon when it occurred, but it didn't, and it took a bit of time to tease out all the details. This was not helped by the good doctor being off that following week so that he wasn't there to discuss what happened; we'd had to reach out to him.)
I'm hoping this change of scenery will be good for the good doctor. He's...not been a great fit for my workstation. At this point, YC has been around for a couple years and is very capable of a lot of things, so long as she's healthy. :P (We did get her to come in today, in part by BBC texting her a picture of me with a very sad face, but she's clearly under the weather. She showed up four hours late but would be working the late shift so nobody else would have to.) The thing about the good doctor is that he doesn't work consistently enough to know what he's doing. He doesn't get enough practice in. Combine that with his summer work schedule, where due to his custody arrangement he was off every other week, and it was just terrible. Every time he worked, something would get screwed up. That's just frustrating for everyone. We all like him, too, which is the harder part. With this new work arrangement, he will still have one night a week in the front building, in part so nobody else has to do it, but the rest of his hours will be in the other building, which is more of a manual labor situation. The wrench that BBC and I discussed is that the boss talked about having the good doctor take my Tuesdays. That's fine, except he participates in the Tuesday evening deal where half of the business' employees are each week, which is precisely why I work Tuesdays--nobody else can. It's also a paying gig, though it's more of a stipend than a true working situation; the good doctor could earn more if he worked. Due to his school year custody arrangement, he would be unable to work the other two late nights our business has. Here's the thing: I would be expected to shift to one of those other two nights. Uh, no. At this point I am used to Tuesday nights, and I can work it year-round. It will never conflict with band. I am not looking to work ANY evenings and want to give this night to someone who can take it permanently. There was also some talk about what YC does, as my boss doesn't think she does very much. On the contrary; he just doesn't see it. Believe me, she takes a fair amount of the weight off my shoulders, and I certainly can pass other tasks on to her. She had to be ready to do certain things but she has gotten to that point. It's just a matter of getting her to do tasks on a regular basis. I will give her notes on stuff to do, but she thinks it's just for that day, and she throws the note away when she's finished those tasks. No; those are supposed to be *daily* tasks, or at least weekly. I finally took a note and wrote, "Please do these tasks daily for the next few weeks" so she would hang on to it. I have my own checklist and some days, I need it because I get so overwhelmed with things. There's just not enough hours in the day sometimes. And that's even when I pull open-to-close shifts.
Meanwhile, we had a drama mama drive-by so to speak this week. One of our work things requested a helper who speaks Spanish. The boss reached out to drama mama, who hasn't been heard from in months. (I half expect her to just show up one day, expecting to work. Um...I don't think you're employed here any longer.) I think he tried several times and she never got back to him, so I was asked to email the contact person for the work thing and say, I'm sorry, but we won't have such a person. This was the day of the work thing, mind you. An hour later, the boss heard from drama mama; she can come, though she'd likely be late. Great! Second email to the contact person, apologizing for the confusion. A few hours later--and this was Tuesday, while I was on my break--the boss calls back: Drama mama is sick and cannot make it after all. He is expecting me to email the contact person to backtrack yet again. Um...I am not on the clock...and I am in the other building, where I do not have access to work email... Like, this pissed me off. YC is perfectly capable of sending such an email. AND she was up at our shared workspace as well, and is the one who took his initial phone call, and he easily could have just said, email the person. But no. He had to say to YC, interrupt her on her break and make her do this. Here's the thing: The phone in the break room is busted. YC was able to use the intercom system to call me, but when I went to pick up the boss from being on hold, all I heard was dead air. I figured he'd hung up, and then I tried calling YC via the intercom system, and still heard dead air; she never heard me. There are other phones in the back building that ring through for incoming calls to the business, so within a couple minutes I heard the phone ring again. This time the cousin answered, and she walked back to find me, and at this point I was like, just have YC send the damn email! My God! Just...frustrating. And I guess the other day, the boss had said something to BBC about cutting back YC's hours or letting her go altogether to let the good doctor take over for her, and it's like, NO!!! Why the hell would you even think of doing that? YC is trained. She can be left alone to handle things and she makes few mistakes. She does a good job and needs more stuff to do. Believe me, I can help her find it. We just need to get through these next few weeks so we can find our stasis and go from there. She missed me while I was gone because she had to take on my tasks and was overwhelmed. Yeah, I get it. There's a reason I gave her certain tasks, because that frees me up to do other things.
Well, that was far more than I expected to write tonight, but a lot's been going on. I just need to get through tomorrow, and I'll be done with this week. And I just need to get through the next few weeks, and things will calm down. We still have a few more work things coming up, but nothing will be quite like these past two weeks. It starts to taper off a bit, slowly but surely. I can't wait for the taper.
YC was complaining she was sick on Tuesday. It was just a cold, but she is young and has no intestinal fortitude, and she called in sick early yesterday. Alas, we had a work thing last night, where she likely would have gone, or fought with me over which of the two of us would have gone with; her absence meant just the boss and our one coworker went, and I had to stay back to mind the business, so in a sense it was a win because I didn't have to go out and about. I would much rather stay back at my workstation, thanks anyway. Unfortunately, it meant I worked a 12-hour day. No breaks. I did bring a couple of protein bars, so I wasn't about to faint or anything, and I wasn't hungry by the end of the evening either, likely due to my late Tuesdays and how I normally eat on those days. But everything I didn't earn by being off on Monday, I made up for yesterday...yay? The problem was that our one room renter met with a client technically after hours, and then ran long with their meeting, and due to what he does, he brings so much gear that it takes him ten minutes to pack it all up and two trips to get it into his car. I didn't leave until 8:48 PM.
...And at that point I went to the other building to check on BBC, as we were in a race to see who would stay later. He lost--he still had a ways to go until he was done. Remember those kits I put together a few weeks back? They've been around to our clients, who've shown them to our mutual clients, and now we're in the process of getting individual items together to take out to people. It's quite the process, time-consuming, and BBC was the person tasked with doing that. It's not hard, per se, but he'd kept asking me questions about what goes with what, double-checking components of things, and overall he did a decent job, but not everything got labeled as to who got what, so that wasn't so good, but he's never done this before so for a first time as a picker-packer sort of person, I'll give him a B+. His grandmother is the one to normally do this sort of thing, but, uh...it's time for her to move on to other things, like retirement, plus she is now a part-time caregiver to BBC's dad as he has reached such a state that he can no longer be left alone. She has tried to have him at work but it's too frustrating for everyone. She has been keeping an eye on him for 2-3 days a week since his wife, who works at a school, returned to her job after summer break.
We have other changes, which was another topic discussed last night. The good doctor has had some changes in his life recently and asked the boss about getting more hours. He is now helping BBC out in the other building for the most part, which is where I think he would be most helpful. He has an interest in learning more of what BBC does, and he has a distinct knowledge about some of the other aspects of that job, and it's better put to use back there. He's been pretty productive from what I can tell, even if right now the main task he has is unpacking boxes--we are getting so much stuff in at work, it's unbelievable, and it all has to be unboxed and checked over and what have you, and he's more than capable of doing that. It also comes at a time when BBC's helper, who'd started off as a college intern, is now going back to school; he took the spring semester off. He'll only be able to work two days a week, and only about five hours those days. He's been a tremendous help and I'm sorry he'll be cutting back, but good for him that he's continuing his education. The good doctor's move to that part of the business comes at a good time. We'd had the boss' son for part of the summer, but he's in high school; our intern only lasted four weeks and, as we discovered, was a costly bargain; we've had to redo a fair amount of the work he'd done. Remember, if someone's free, you get what you pay for. But he's also young and you can't entirely fault him when it's his first job. And then we'd briefly had another teenage boy come work for us; I don't think I mentioned him before aside from his non-interview--he'd shown up to meet with my boss in July on a day my boss up and took off so he could work that Saturday. This was the son of a friend or acquaintance. Anyway, they did end up meeting and the boss said we'd try him out. He worked one week, then was on vacation the following week. That next week, when I was off, was his second week of working. BBC was not impressed and did not wish to keep him on...and then we discovered he'd damaged an expensive piece of equipment while working the last few minutes of a shift in an place he wasn't supposed to be working in, and that was that. (It happened in the front building while the good doctor worked the night shift, and the good doctor suggested he clean something and apparently it got dropped and banged up and considering what was dropped was worth several thousand dollars...that was not good. Worse was that YC and I were the ones to discover what happened, although my brain was elsewhere when the discovery was made, and it wasn't for a few days that other people found out about it. At that point the higher-ups were in a tizzy because, seriously, something should have been said immediately upon when it occurred, but it didn't, and it took a bit of time to tease out all the details. This was not helped by the good doctor being off that following week so that he wasn't there to discuss what happened; we'd had to reach out to him.)
I'm hoping this change of scenery will be good for the good doctor. He's...not been a great fit for my workstation. At this point, YC has been around for a couple years and is very capable of a lot of things, so long as she's healthy. :P (We did get her to come in today, in part by BBC texting her a picture of me with a very sad face, but she's clearly under the weather. She showed up four hours late but would be working the late shift so nobody else would have to.) The thing about the good doctor is that he doesn't work consistently enough to know what he's doing. He doesn't get enough practice in. Combine that with his summer work schedule, where due to his custody arrangement he was off every other week, and it was just terrible. Every time he worked, something would get screwed up. That's just frustrating for everyone. We all like him, too, which is the harder part. With this new work arrangement, he will still have one night a week in the front building, in part so nobody else has to do it, but the rest of his hours will be in the other building, which is more of a manual labor situation. The wrench that BBC and I discussed is that the boss talked about having the good doctor take my Tuesdays. That's fine, except he participates in the Tuesday evening deal where half of the business' employees are each week, which is precisely why I work Tuesdays--nobody else can. It's also a paying gig, though it's more of a stipend than a true working situation; the good doctor could earn more if he worked. Due to his school year custody arrangement, he would be unable to work the other two late nights our business has. Here's the thing: I would be expected to shift to one of those other two nights. Uh, no. At this point I am used to Tuesday nights, and I can work it year-round. It will never conflict with band. I am not looking to work ANY evenings and want to give this night to someone who can take it permanently. There was also some talk about what YC does, as my boss doesn't think she does very much. On the contrary; he just doesn't see it. Believe me, she takes a fair amount of the weight off my shoulders, and I certainly can pass other tasks on to her. She had to be ready to do certain things but she has gotten to that point. It's just a matter of getting her to do tasks on a regular basis. I will give her notes on stuff to do, but she thinks it's just for that day, and she throws the note away when she's finished those tasks. No; those are supposed to be *daily* tasks, or at least weekly. I finally took a note and wrote, "Please do these tasks daily for the next few weeks" so she would hang on to it. I have my own checklist and some days, I need it because I get so overwhelmed with things. There's just not enough hours in the day sometimes. And that's even when I pull open-to-close shifts.
Meanwhile, we had a drama mama drive-by so to speak this week. One of our work things requested a helper who speaks Spanish. The boss reached out to drama mama, who hasn't been heard from in months. (I half expect her to just show up one day, expecting to work. Um...I don't think you're employed here any longer.) I think he tried several times and she never got back to him, so I was asked to email the contact person for the work thing and say, I'm sorry, but we won't have such a person. This was the day of the work thing, mind you. An hour later, the boss heard from drama mama; she can come, though she'd likely be late. Great! Second email to the contact person, apologizing for the confusion. A few hours later--and this was Tuesday, while I was on my break--the boss calls back: Drama mama is sick and cannot make it after all. He is expecting me to email the contact person to backtrack yet again. Um...I am not on the clock...and I am in the other building, where I do not have access to work email... Like, this pissed me off. YC is perfectly capable of sending such an email. AND she was up at our shared workspace as well, and is the one who took his initial phone call, and he easily could have just said, email the person. But no. He had to say to YC, interrupt her on her break and make her do this. Here's the thing: The phone in the break room is busted. YC was able to use the intercom system to call me, but when I went to pick up the boss from being on hold, all I heard was dead air. I figured he'd hung up, and then I tried calling YC via the intercom system, and still heard dead air; she never heard me. There are other phones in the back building that ring through for incoming calls to the business, so within a couple minutes I heard the phone ring again. This time the cousin answered, and she walked back to find me, and at this point I was like, just have YC send the damn email! My God! Just...frustrating. And I guess the other day, the boss had said something to BBC about cutting back YC's hours or letting her go altogether to let the good doctor take over for her, and it's like, NO!!! Why the hell would you even think of doing that? YC is trained. She can be left alone to handle things and she makes few mistakes. She does a good job and needs more stuff to do. Believe me, I can help her find it. We just need to get through these next few weeks so we can find our stasis and go from there. She missed me while I was gone because she had to take on my tasks and was overwhelmed. Yeah, I get it. There's a reason I gave her certain tasks, because that frees me up to do other things.
Well, that was far more than I expected to write tonight, but a lot's been going on. I just need to get through tomorrow, and I'll be done with this week. And I just need to get through the next few weeks, and things will calm down. We still have a few more work things coming up, but nothing will be quite like these past two weeks. It starts to taper off a bit, slowly but surely. I can't wait for the taper.