Week Three / Jaci's New Hospital Job
Last Thursday to Saturday was my third week at Maxim, and one of my short weeks as the Wednesday shift alternates every other week. It was my best week so far. Thankfully, most of our machines were finally working again and we were able to get to work. The backlog of work from my second week when those machines were down kept piling up but during those shifts last week we really hammered things away and brought down our work lots from something like 50 to something like 25. Which is a big deal. Each lot can take up to four hours to process and if our machines aren't working but we're continuing to accumulate new work, things pile up. So to be back on track and getting work done was very important.
Plus, we had enough of every kind of lot to continue my training successfully. The variety helped keep the machines going and more and more, my handlers let me take the lead and run the machines by myself. I even got to run the microscopes and spend time looking at the wafers. It's beautiful. I thought to myself that I couldn't believe someone was paying me to marvel at microscopic structures. I wish there were a way to share that with everyone.
So while the upside is that I'm finally understanding everything and being allowed to run the machinery and make decisions about what the group does, the downside is that it's a painful, stressful job that pretty much takes up all of my time. The people are nice but some will turn on you like bullies. It's complicated work that I worry I'll never truly understand. When things go wrong, incident reports are confusing and contacting maintenance is scary because they're either absent, overworked or unfriendly. My coworkers also seem insanely young which makes me feel older than I am. For example, one operator celebrated her twentieth birthday over the weekend. Twenty and we're in the same place doing the same thing. I feel like I've wasted the last decade sometimes. And even though I've got three to four days off every week, I'm on that graveyard schedule so being awake until 7 AM is boring and tedious. Just as my brother warned me, it's like we don't even get a weekend at all before we're right back in those bunny suits for twelve solid, sweaty hours.
Now, these are still just my first impressions of this place. It's all so very new and fresh and I've probably got a settling-in period to continue feeling my way through, so of course my instinct is to worry that everything is wrong or hopeless. I'm hoping that in a few months I'll feel better about things and I'll have made friends and this work won't seem to spooky and stressful. I'll also be in a better mood to spend my weekends socially. Right now I've been so protective of my valuable free time that I simply don't want to hang out with anyone. I'm in my anti-social protected phase. That too will pass.
In other job fronts and seemingly on the opposite side of the emotional spectrum, Jacalyn landed a job with a hospital in South Dakota and she's deeply in love with it. She was initially worried that it would be more of the same crap she did in Boise where she worked for the county and approved or disapproved requests for government assistance from normal people in catastrophic situations. That job broke her heart sometimes and I'm sure it made her a little more disappointed in humanity with each passing day. Fast forward to now. She's been in South Dakota for several months now and it was rough-going there for a while. She begrudgingly accepted this hospital job and although I'm not entirely clear on what exactly she does, she's thrilled with it. Loves her coworkers, loves her two-block daily commute, loves the work, loves the pay-rate. I'm relieved she's finally found a place she can feel she belongs. Now it's my turn apparently.
Plus, we had enough of every kind of lot to continue my training successfully. The variety helped keep the machines going and more and more, my handlers let me take the lead and run the machines by myself. I even got to run the microscopes and spend time looking at the wafers. It's beautiful. I thought to myself that I couldn't believe someone was paying me to marvel at microscopic structures. I wish there were a way to share that with everyone.
So while the upside is that I'm finally understanding everything and being allowed to run the machinery and make decisions about what the group does, the downside is that it's a painful, stressful job that pretty much takes up all of my time. The people are nice but some will turn on you like bullies. It's complicated work that I worry I'll never truly understand. When things go wrong, incident reports are confusing and contacting maintenance is scary because they're either absent, overworked or unfriendly. My coworkers also seem insanely young which makes me feel older than I am. For example, one operator celebrated her twentieth birthday over the weekend. Twenty and we're in the same place doing the same thing. I feel like I've wasted the last decade sometimes. And even though I've got three to four days off every week, I'm on that graveyard schedule so being awake until 7 AM is boring and tedious. Just as my brother warned me, it's like we don't even get a weekend at all before we're right back in those bunny suits for twelve solid, sweaty hours.
Now, these are still just my first impressions of this place. It's all so very new and fresh and I've probably got a settling-in period to continue feeling my way through, so of course my instinct is to worry that everything is wrong or hopeless. I'm hoping that in a few months I'll feel better about things and I'll have made friends and this work won't seem to spooky and stressful. I'll also be in a better mood to spend my weekends socially. Right now I've been so protective of my valuable free time that I simply don't want to hang out with anyone. I'm in my anti-social protected phase. That too will pass.
In other job fronts and seemingly on the opposite side of the emotional spectrum, Jacalyn landed a job with a hospital in South Dakota and she's deeply in love with it. She was initially worried that it would be more of the same crap she did in Boise where she worked for the county and approved or disapproved requests for government assistance from normal people in catastrophic situations. That job broke her heart sometimes and I'm sure it made her a little more disappointed in humanity with each passing day. Fast forward to now. She's been in South Dakota for several months now and it was rough-going there for a while. She begrudgingly accepted this hospital job and although I'm not entirely clear on what exactly she does, she's thrilled with it. Loves her coworkers, loves her two-block daily commute, loves the work, loves the pay-rate. I'm relieved she's finally found a place she can feel she belongs. Now it's my turn apparently.