Two more weeks until a much needed vacation. I don't think we're gonna go anywhere. We had been planning on going to New York City, but Camille changed her mind and so now we're staying at home. We may go down to Corbin for a day or two and ride some ATVs and hopefully go horseback riding. just looking forward to relaxing for a week before all hell breaks loose with the holiday season.
Officially, we're down three out of 13. When Josh S. quit, human resources let Chicago borrow the requisition for his job or something like that, so essentially we can't hire his replacement. Then the next new guy, Josh P. quit in the middle of his first week of being on call. Lesson to be learned, never hire another Josh. lol.
We just recently lost Chad. He was a good guy and a great tech when he wanted to be. He had stopped caring about the job long ago. But then early this summer someone close to him died and it seems to have hit him really hard. he was showing most of the classic signs of grief. I never saw the denial, but we all saw the anger as for about two months, he was really short tempered and started blowing up at everyone for the littlest stuff. Then he just gave up. He's big in to Disc Golf, and had been playing in tournaments all over the place on the weekends, but he decided it wasn't enough and started playing on the clock. Gotta practice for the weekend. Then came the Mary Jane. Chad was smart enough to not come around the warehouse when any co-workers were around, but according to several people the place reeked of MJ right after he left it.
The thing that really gets me though is just how much our company cares about its employees. I know I had said to at least 10 people, that I thought he needed some sort of psychological help. Can you believe I actually had people laugh when I made that comment?!
Looking at Chad, I was reminded of a lot of stories of veterans of Iraq who come home and either act violently (totally out of character) or try to self medicate with MJ or other drugs. It took a lot of GI's getting kicked out of the service for this behavior before they actually started to listen to people and start treating for PTSD. I just hate how our company only allows for two days bereavement, and mental health care is not included in the insurance plan. Even if it was, the company probably wouldn't give medical leave for a mental issue. They'd rather just be rid of the tech, like they did with Chad.
Now we may lose a fourth due to a customer complaint about a tech. I guess we'll find out in a couple days.
Sigh. I could probably go on but I'm getting tired just thinking about all that has gone on over the past couple weeks and what will go on this holiday season.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Now that's inflation!
Normally the vending machines outside wally world are 50 cents for the 12 oz cans and $1.00 for 20 oz bottles. so me being the tightwad that I am usually go for two cans. 4 more oz for the same price, that is until today. It was bright out so I was thinking that the 99.95 on the machine was a mistake or something. Then I put my 2 quarters in and hit the button, nothing happens except it flashes the 99.95. Looks like someone reprogrammed the machine's price. At least the coin return on this machine worked. Then I had to walk the quarter mile to get to the other side of the store to get a vending machine with the normal price, thank god it wasn't sold out.Monday, October 15, 2007
The Week from HELL!
Monday, a fairly easy morning, the boss is on vacation, call volume is light... Then I start to look for more work to do so I checked the night guys queues and found 4 calls in one of them. Then I thought, Isn't he on vacation this week? pull out the schedule and sure enough he is. So I call the other night guy because his days off this week have been moved to compensate. Nice, he'd not checked the schedule because it is only on super rare occasions that his days off change.
So I called dispatch to find out who was working that night. Turns out, they didn't even know that we had a tech on vacation. When I told them about it and to look at the excel schedule sheet, the comment I got was " we never look at that, we just look at GANT" (our dispatch software). Problem was, someone never updated GANT.
To top that off, Corporate has decided that everyone in the Company has to take a class called Moments Of Truth. All about delighting the customers and stuff. So that means driving an hour north to Dayton for a four hour class. And the 9 of us remaining on the schedule have to all be up there within a three day span. Tuesday morning I had to get up at 5:30 am to make it up to world HQ in time for the 8am class. Now that was a long day but not nearly as bad as it could have been, One of our techs was working and had the Wednesday 8am class. So he left his house at 6am and then because he was on call that week, he wound up working till 10pm and had to be back out working at 8am the next day.
Wednesday afternoon was bad too, I think 6 of our techs all decided to take that same class. Not that they conspired to do so, but it just worked out that way.
Thursday I woke up to find that another of the techs was scheduled for two days vacation (to make a 4 day weekend) So that meant we were down yet another body. To top that, the dispatcher called in sick, so now we've got no TM guiding the dispatcher who isn't familiar with the territory and the calls are just flooding in. I know that the on call guys both worked at least 60 hours this past week
Thursday afternoon, I was working in a Starbucks and my laptop got a hard drive controller error. It took a few times but it finally managed to boot up. Thank god I had my USB flash drive on my keychain that day. I thought I had better save some of my documents that were stored on the drive. I had to leave the store to go get a part and since my batteries are crap, the laptop turned off to never turn on again. sigh. I can't even begin to explain how hard it is to do my job without a laptop. The boss won't even be back until monday so I can't see if he still has a spare laying around. I managed to get through Thursday afternoon and Friday by pestering what was left of my co-workers for part numbers. I tried calling each of them so I wouldn't be repeatedly pestering any one of them.
I wanted to go in over the weekend to get some more work done, but I really gather the willpower to do it. I didn't do diddly this weekend as I was just mentally exhausted.
I'm exhausted just writing all this, goodnight.
So I called dispatch to find out who was working that night. Turns out, they didn't even know that we had a tech on vacation. When I told them about it and to look at the excel schedule sheet, the comment I got was " we never look at that, we just look at GANT" (our dispatch software). Problem was, someone never updated GANT.
To top that off, Corporate has decided that everyone in the Company has to take a class called Moments Of Truth. All about delighting the customers and stuff. So that means driving an hour north to Dayton for a four hour class. And the 9 of us remaining on the schedule have to all be up there within a three day span. Tuesday morning I had to get up at 5:30 am to make it up to world HQ in time for the 8am class. Now that was a long day but not nearly as bad as it could have been, One of our techs was working and had the Wednesday 8am class. So he left his house at 6am and then because he was on call that week, he wound up working till 10pm and had to be back out working at 8am the next day.
Wednesday afternoon was bad too, I think 6 of our techs all decided to take that same class. Not that they conspired to do so, but it just worked out that way.
Thursday I woke up to find that another of the techs was scheduled for two days vacation (to make a 4 day weekend) So that meant we were down yet another body. To top that, the dispatcher called in sick, so now we've got no TM guiding the dispatcher who isn't familiar with the territory and the calls are just flooding in. I know that the on call guys both worked at least 60 hours this past week
Thursday afternoon, I was working in a Starbucks and my laptop got a hard drive controller error. It took a few times but it finally managed to boot up. Thank god I had my USB flash drive on my keychain that day. I thought I had better save some of my documents that were stored on the drive. I had to leave the store to go get a part and since my batteries are crap, the laptop turned off to never turn on again. sigh. I can't even begin to explain how hard it is to do my job without a laptop. The boss won't even be back until monday so I can't see if he still has a spare laying around. I managed to get through Thursday afternoon and Friday by pestering what was left of my co-workers for part numbers. I tried calling each of them so I wouldn't be repeatedly pestering any one of them.
I wanted to go in over the weekend to get some more work done, but I really gather the willpower to do it. I didn't do diddly this weekend as I was just mentally exhausted.
I'm exhausted just writing all this, goodnight.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Iggy Pop
I must confess I didn't know who Iggy Pop was until earlier this week. Sure I'd seen pictures every now and then in some VH1 show, but the current day Iggy Pop doesn't look at all like the guy responsible for the song that is now and forever associated with Carnival Cruises. You can hear some samples of his songs on Amazon. I've also heard a several of his other songs in movies and such but never knew who it was or really cared until I heard and recognized "I wanna be your dog" earlier this week. I recognized the song from Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
Read the bio on his site. I find it pretty funny that Iggy and his band are painted as the pioneers who virtually single-handedly godfathered punk rock, garage rock and American heavy metal more than three decades ago. Why hadn't I heard of him earlier? I don't doubt that there are other, more musically inclined people who count him as one of their early influences, but wow, what an ego.
I also discovered Woxy.com internet radio. I really like a lot of the songs they play and I'm learning the names of some of the bands/songs i've heard growing up.
So Here's a few Iggy Pop songs to look up for those in the same boat as me.
I wanna be your dog.
Lust for Life
Real Wild Child
The Sushi Experience
Last night Camille and I went to a place called Sweet Basil for some sushi. It was an interesting experience to say the least. I wish I had taken my camera to take a picture because the sushi was presented to us on dishes that are little boats. it was really neat. next time I'll remember.
I have no clue what curry is like so I was a little nervous to get a regular entree, so I got a california roll and sushi nigiri (chef's choice). I loved the california roll which was I think crab meat with avacado and cucumber in a seaweed wrap with rice on the outside. This is your basic sushi that you could get in your local supermarket. The chefs choice was much more interesting. There were a couple of white fish that I couldn't identify (not a bad thing), salmon, barbequed eel, shrimp, and crab. I could probably do the sushi thing again but no salmon for me. I was doing good until that point and then I wanted to gag. I'd actually never had salmon before but I had heard about the strong fishy taste. Well, it is just as present when dipped in soy sauce and the pice of fish was a little big to try and eat at once. So that's when the taste + texture combo really got to me. yuck!
The best part of the night however was trying to get Camille to hold her chopsticks right. I've never used chopsticks before but it was surprisingly easy. I swear we worked on her grip for a good 15 minutes before the food came. But it was a lot of fun, and she managed to be able to eat with the chopsticks as well. Maybe I'll try using chopsticks again tomorrow night if we finally get my parents to go to Fuji Steakhouse with us.
I have no clue what curry is like so I was a little nervous to get a regular entree, so I got a california roll and sushi nigiri (chef's choice). I loved the california roll which was I think crab meat with avacado and cucumber in a seaweed wrap with rice on the outside. This is your basic sushi that you could get in your local supermarket. The chefs choice was much more interesting. There were a couple of white fish that I couldn't identify (not a bad thing), salmon, barbequed eel, shrimp, and crab. I could probably do the sushi thing again but no salmon for me. I was doing good until that point and then I wanted to gag. I'd actually never had salmon before but I had heard about the strong fishy taste. Well, it is just as present when dipped in soy sauce and the pice of fish was a little big to try and eat at once. So that's when the taste + texture combo really got to me. yuck!
The best part of the night however was trying to get Camille to hold her chopsticks right. I've never used chopsticks before but it was surprisingly easy. I swear we worked on her grip for a good 15 minutes before the food came. But it was a lot of fun, and she managed to be able to eat with the chopsticks as well. Maybe I'll try using chopsticks again tomorrow night if we finally get my parents to go to Fuji Steakhouse with us.
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