Disclaimer: I'm totally not naming company names so as not to draw attention to myself in Google searches, but I do feel the need to talk about this stuff somewhere, so here it is. It's been a work in progress for the past month and a half, and is pretty much old news.
Big things have been going on at my job. My employer is handing over control of the warehouses to their parent company (the company who bought them in 2009), so that my current actual employer can concentrate on stuff involving their headquarters and offices on the west coast. So basically, we'll be a (parent company) warehouse that happens to fulfill orders for my current employer's website. I'm kinda holding out judgment on if that's a good or bad thing, but I can tell you that the parent company has already had a negative effect on the warehouse. Last September, they changed "our" picking system over to "their" picking system, and it's pretty terrible. I don't want to go into too much detail, but it keeps us from picking to our full potential, so for the most part it was a step back instead of a step forward. The only good thing I can say about it is that if I need to use the restroom, I can log out of the system, and it won't count against my "rate".
Something that I was hoping might be changed with the change-over is shifts, but I think they'll be keeping the current shifts. I absolutely loathe working Sundays and Wednesdays*, and between that and the crappiness of the picking system, I'm seriously thinking about transferring to a department where I can get a Monday-Tuesday-Thursday-Friday shift. Besides having the choice of that shift, another thing that sets it apart from my current department is that when they have an overtime day, they only have to work eight hours, as opposed to my department where you have to work a full ten-hour day, or even an eleven hour day if we're doing 11s during the holiday peak season. The downside is that their shift starts at 6:30, but I've already been coming in before 6:30 since the Photo and Inbound departments (Inbound being the one I'm thinking about transferring to) come in at 6:00 and 6:30 respectively, thus snatching up the best parking spots, and to get a good spot you have to get there stupid early. I'm already getting up at around 5:20, if I did this transfer, I'd only have to get up at 5:00! But there are things about that department that I'm not sure I could put up with, and I think working that job for ten hours would drive me even battier than my current job. I've also been thinking of staying in Picking, but doing a Sunday-Monday-Tuesday-Thursday shift so I can at least avoid Wednesdays, as well as not have to work more than four days a week on certain months. I've thought more recently about going to night shift. Sure, I would miss out on a lot of evening things and would probably even have to use vacation time just to go to concerts, but I'm seriously sick of having to get up at 5-something in the morning. Plus, it would be an extra 75 cents per hour.
*I don't necessarily mind working on Sundays, I just hate getting up so damn early on Sundays. I hate working Sunday mornings since it ruins my Saturdays, giving it that "Oh, I have to work tomorrow" dread that's usually reserved for Sundays, plus I drag ass at work if I stay up late on a Saturday night. There are two things that I absolutely hate hearing on Sundays when I have to work. The first is my clock radio waking me up to Woody's Roadhouse on 91.9 WFPK. I associate Woody's Roadhouse with ending a night, not beginning a day, and having it wake me up at the start of a work day is just wrong! If I'm lucky, I'm usually awake before the alarm is set to go off, so I can get up and turn it off before it can come on. The other thing I hate hearing is the CBS Sunday Morning theme. It's something that I associate with lazy Sunday mornings at home, or at a home-away-from-home, and hearing it at work is also just wrong. If a TV at work is on CBS on a sunday morning during my first break, I try to leave the room before I hear it. As for Wednesdays, I hate them because we have almost twice the amount of people. Having more people doesn't necessarily help with the way the picking system currently works, and we have a hard enough time trying to get carts and other resources that we need to work with on a regular work day, it becomes nearly impossible to get those things on Wednesdays.
The Photo department (the department I was working in for two and a half years, until I got laid off there the first time) seems to be the most heavily affected. Long story short, some people in that department will have to decide if they're staying in Kentucky, or moving to my direct employer's home in Vegas. If they had asked me four or five years ago if I wanted to take my job to Vegas, I would've totally jumped on it. Now, I'd be more like "maybe", but only because I have a girlfriend here now, and don't necessarily think moving her over there with me would be the greatest idea for her. I have a feeling though that I'd probably rather go to Vegas and continue working for the original employer than stay here and work for The Parent Company.
