Once Upon a Whine...
Okay, I gotta whine for a minute. Bear with me, or scroll on down to the next entry in your friendslist.
I’ve switched to the 8-5 shift (the closing shift) here, from the 7:30-4:30 shift, because one of my co-workers is a magnet for injury, illness and rogue hockey pucks. She’s had so much time off this year that she’s now applying for FMLA (Family & Medical Leave Act, basically short-term disability) to cover her. On a personal level, because I do like her, I feel bad for her - she’s had blood clots, a broken foot (from the 3 day walk last year), a ruptured ACL (from the Rock’n’Roll walking marathon THIS year), ovarian cysts, unexplained fainting spells, and so on.
Because so many of her appointments are in the afternoon, and because she’s frequently out with general feeling sick/medicinal interactions/etc, I switched to the same hours she was working so that this shift would always be covered. If I worked my original hours, I would be on OT for the last half hour if I suddenly had to stay (yes, I’m salaried, but I get OT too - best of both worlds!). Our “lead,” whom we call “stupidvisor,” can’t stay until 5 consistently, another coworker works 6:30-3:30 and refuses to change because he has to bike home to Issaquah, the plumbing dispatcher has nearly as many medical problems as the one I’m talking about (she’s also applying for FMLA), and the newest member of the team (been here since November), can’t be trusted to cover the closing shift because she is dumber than tits on a nun. So guess who has the only competency and schedule flexibility to allow for the late shift? Me.
To a certain extent, I’m happy to help. What I hate is being here by myself for an hour with 5 phone lines (plus 5 back-up lines) to answer, plus 6 radios to answer if the techs call. By my calculations, that's a potential for 16 ringing instruments to go off at any given moment. It’s because I’m so good at what I do (I should be, by now - I just celebrated 4 years here!) that I CAN do this, and everyone knows it. So when they leave and they make comments like “Oh, hey, sorry to have to hand you 3 radios at once, have a good night!” that I kinda want to smack something. I’m here by "choice" because no one else was an option. And as we all know, a lack of options is not really a choice.
Leaving at 4:30 was a good time for me - plenty of time to get the stuff done that I needed to while most people are working (seriously, the guy who comes in at 6:30? I don’t know WHAT he does), and then I could scoot out before any last minute craziness. But I was often here 15-20 minutes late to chat or follow-up, but it WAS my choice. This just feels an awful lot like it did when I first started, and as the new girl, I got stuck with the closing shift (also because Cory, the dumbletwit fucktarded loser ALSO had problems and was utterly unreliable).
I just… wish I was done and could have left 5 minutes ago. I’m still working the same amount of hours I guess, but for some reason it feels like EONS longer.
Sigh. There’s nothing to be done, though. Someone has to close, and if you want something done right you gotta do it yourself, I suppose!
*puts Big Girl Panties on and off to deal with it!* :\
I’ve switched to the 8-5 shift (the closing shift) here, from the 7:30-4:30 shift, because one of my co-workers is a magnet for injury, illness and rogue hockey pucks. She’s had so much time off this year that she’s now applying for FMLA (Family & Medical Leave Act, basically short-term disability) to cover her. On a personal level, because I do like her, I feel bad for her - she’s had blood clots, a broken foot (from the 3 day walk last year), a ruptured ACL (from the Rock’n’Roll walking marathon THIS year), ovarian cysts, unexplained fainting spells, and so on.
Because so many of her appointments are in the afternoon, and because she’s frequently out with general feeling sick/medicinal interactions/etc, I switched to the same hours she was working so that this shift would always be covered. If I worked my original hours, I would be on OT for the last half hour if I suddenly had to stay (yes, I’m salaried, but I get OT too - best of both worlds!). Our “lead,” whom we call “stupidvisor,” can’t stay until 5 consistently, another coworker works 6:30-3:30 and refuses to change because he has to bike home to Issaquah, the plumbing dispatcher has nearly as many medical problems as the one I’m talking about (she’s also applying for FMLA), and the newest member of the team (been here since November), can’t be trusted to cover the closing shift because she is dumber than tits on a nun. So guess who has the only competency and schedule flexibility to allow for the late shift? Me.
To a certain extent, I’m happy to help. What I hate is being here by myself for an hour with 5 phone lines (plus 5 back-up lines) to answer, plus 6 radios to answer if the techs call. By my calculations, that's a potential for 16 ringing instruments to go off at any given moment. It’s because I’m so good at what I do (I should be, by now - I just celebrated 4 years here!) that I CAN do this, and everyone knows it. So when they leave and they make comments like “Oh, hey, sorry to have to hand you 3 radios at once, have a good night!” that I kinda want to smack something. I’m here by "choice" because no one else was an option. And as we all know, a lack of options is not really a choice.
Leaving at 4:30 was a good time for me - plenty of time to get the stuff done that I needed to while most people are working (seriously, the guy who comes in at 6:30? I don’t know WHAT he does), and then I could scoot out before any last minute craziness. But I was often here 15-20 minutes late to chat or follow-up, but it WAS my choice. This just feels an awful lot like it did when I first started, and as the new girl, I got stuck with the closing shift (also because Cory, the dumbletwit fucktarded loser ALSO had problems and was utterly unreliable).
I just… wish I was done and could have left 5 minutes ago. I’m still working the same amount of hours I guess, but for some reason it feels like EONS longer.
Sigh. There’s nothing to be done, though. Someone has to close, and if you want something done right you gotta do it yourself, I suppose!
*puts Big Girl Panties on and off to deal with it!* :\