The Thanksgiving calm before the X-mas storm.

This week has turned out much better than I thought it would. My mom and dad told me that I didn't have to go to my uncle's funeral if I didn't want to, which lightened some of my stress load, as did the postponement of the pre-Thanksgiving thing they were supposed to have on Wednesday. I do kind of regret missing my uncle's funeral, but I needed all the energy I could get for work. I would have gone had it landed on a day off, or if I could get bereavement time for people outside my immediate family. I was "lucky" with the last few major family deaths that I was either unemployed or had a job with a flexible schedule. I strongly disagreed with most of his views, but I couldn't help but get a little sad when I saw his obituary picture.

We didn't have a lot of work this week, in fact we got to leave early on Monday and Tuesday, and only volunteers will have to work on Wednesday, and I opted out of working. So, I have Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday off, but I still have to work 11 hours on Black Friday. Boo! I should be getting Holiday Pay for Thursday and Friday.

Do you see what I see?

Written Thursday night (11-15-2012)

I so wish I had had another vacation day to use so I wouldn't have had to work any this week. Work actually wasn't that bad, but it was pretty jarring to come in and see the place in full Peak Mode. Well before I even got there, there were cops at a few intersections directing traffic. Then I found that the parking lot was pretty well congested. There was Christmas music playing in the break area. Ugh. The Christmas music in the break area was a temporary thing, but it plays continuously in the restroom closest to the main entrance/breakroom. If you ask me, no time is a good time for Christmas music. If you want to listen to it all-year-round, more power to you, but I think broadcasting it for a large audience should start no earlier than Black Friday, and should end at 11:59 pm on December 25th. (I can allow some exceptions to these rules, but I don't feel like going into it because fuck you, that's why.) Point blank, it's still too early to be hearing Christmas music. The only joy I've gotten out of it these past couple of nights was hearing the "rooty-toot-toots and rummy-tum-tums" part in "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town." Why must stores and radio stations try to start Christmas earlier and earlier every year?* If they showed that much enthusiasm for other holidays, then they'd probably sell Valentine's Day stuff around Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Week looks like it's going to be stressful. On Wednesday, we're having some of the extended family over for some kind of pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner. Wednesday is a regular work night for me, so I'm not sure if I'll be actively participating in that or not. Since Thursday is my OT night for November, it's looking pretty likely that I'll work on Thanksgiving night. I'd almost bet that they'll have my entire shift crew work on Black Friday instead. All I know is that there WILL be overtime next weekend. (Meanwhile, my girlfriend has Thanksgiving off.)

I've considered leaving this place and applying for similar jobs, especially some places that are supposed to be closer to what Main ex-Employer was like when I first started there, but I don't want to take a chance on getting dumped at the end of the season, and unemployed again. Besides, I really want to get out of this line of work entirely, if possible.

*I actually know the answer, it's just a rhetorical question.

Written Saturday night (11-17-2012)

I didn't think this coming week could get any more stressful. Then I got the news on Saturday morning that one of my uncles died. He had been on his deathbed for a while, so it was a matter of "when" rather than "if". His funeral will be during my work week, and if I go, it will severely affect my routine, mostly in that I'm hellbent on getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep since my work night is so long. The same pretty much goes for if I have to work on Thanksgiving, and that's a night that's not part of my normal work week. I see quite a bit of Lorazepam being consumed in my future. I find it harder to deal with death during the Fall/early Winter holidays.

I know that the routine thing might sound stupid to most people, but that is one of my quirks. It's something that I've brought up with therapists, but for some reason they never seemed to find it as significant as I do.

(Update: Who knew that "Do You Hear What I Hear?" was actually a response to the Cuban Missile Crisis?  Read about it here. To be honest, I've never paid much attention to the lyrics, nor did I know that the song was only written within the past 50 years. I did think when I heard it recently that it would be fun to see someone sing it creepily, like in some serial killer movie.)

Six nights off.

I've had a pretty okay six-day weekend, would've been way better if I didn't have a sinus infection the entire time, and if it hadn't gotten so freaking cold on Monday and Tuesday. I wish every weekend was a six-day weekend, then maybe I could get something accomplished! I didn't get to do everything I intended to do. The lack of stress from not working and the feeling of shittiness from chest congestion sort of demotivated me from updating my resume or putting in applications. I'm sure the anger will return when I go back to work tomorrow night. At least I'll only have to work two nights at the most this week, only one if they call off overtime.

I'd write more, but I want to enjoy the rest of my last night of "vacation".

Little Big Brother, and other stories.

The following was written approximately November 2nd, with some editing tonight.

Here's how the weekend of October 25-27 went. Normally, if I had to work on a Friday, I would stay home and do laundry on Thursday, and go out and hang out with the girlfriend on Saturday. But with last Thursday seeming to be the only "nice" day of the two, I decided to go out. My gf managed to get off work early, and we actually got to hang out. I did laundry on Saturday, and started it right after I got out of bed so I could possibly go out, with or without the gf, but was too exhausted to go anywhere due to sleeping like shit early on Friday followed by working most of that night. I spent the rest of my Saturday watching horror movies, trying to get into the Halloween spirit.

One thing that's struck me about my place of work these past couple of years is how little I actually see the upper management. It's like the more the place has grown, the more they try to seclude themselves from the proletariat. I wouldn't know the upper-upper guy who has forced us to work overtime for the past month if I walked by him. I've been on my shift for three months now, and had never heard the name of my manager's manager until two or three weeks ago. I finally did see him a couple of days ago when he came to our start-up meeting to make an announcement. He didn't even bother to tell us who he was, he just stopped by and made the announcement, and I couldn't help but think, "Who the fuck are you, and why should I listen to you?" I suspected that he was this mythical creature I had heard about, and found out later that it was him. I should note that the main thing that bugged me about him is how he comes off, like he's angry all the time. Despite my initial impressions, I heard rumors that people actually liked him, or never really had a problem with him, so I tried to give him a benefit of a doubt. That changed when I came in to work overtime tonight, and everybody on my shift was told to go to another department per this guy's orders. Things in my department have gotten even slower this week, but overtime is still on. If I didn't hate this guy before, I sure do now. I think I'll refer to him from now on as Little Big Brother. I almost wish I had asked for Halloween night off so I could not only have Halloween off, but avoid the overtime as well. (Basically, if I ask for a Wednesday or Sunday off, I can get out of OT that weekend.) I got to thinking, beginning with the upper-upper guy who is forcing the overtime on us, and continuing with my manager's manager, that this is only one guy, and there are hundreds of us, so what's stopping us from dragging this guy out into the streets by his testicles and demanding we have the weekend off? Then I think about history, and how the company could probably get the National Guard, or worse, some privately owned army, to keep us in line. They could also fire us all and replace us with ease.

While I'm on the subject of upper management, I should note that most of the upper management who had been with Main ex-Employer before the buy-out have jumped ship in the past couple of years, and now I see why.

While I'm not the biggest fan of holidays, I wonder if any holiday, besides Christmas Day, is sacred to them?  With all the overtime from early October through Christmas, it's like, "We'll let you have Christmas Day off, but you can have no life in the three months leading up to it, bwahahahaha!" People who regularly work on Thursdays will have to work on Thanksgiving, and since Thursday is my overtime night for November, there is the possibility that I'll have to work on Thanksgiving as well. I worked there on Thanksgiving night in 2009, and it was really depressing. I wouldn't be surprised if they just had all the OT'ers work on Black Friday instead. Not that I want anything to do with Black Friday from a shopping or working perspective, but I think I'd rather work that night than on Thanksgiving night.

This part was written tonight.

Overtime this week was cancelled for all shifts but mine. Little Big Brother decided to have a good chunk of the people from my shift cross training in Putaway. Now the work load is back up, and my team will have to work OT this weekend. I don't have to work it since I have Sunday off, but I'm still pissed at the management for making us work OT the last weeekend or two when we weren't needed, gutting our shift this week, and then making them work OT this weekend.

Speaking of Little Big Brother, we were about a half hour away from the end of the shift on Sunday night when we got a message on our RF guns from one of our lead people, saying that LBB was watching to make sure we didn't quit picking early, so try to pick until the very end of the shift. I usually don't stop working until five minutes before the end of shift, which is about how long it takes to go return my RF gun and get to the time clock by the end of the shift. But anyway, this was only one night, and the rest of the week was pretty much back to normal, but this pissed me off for the same reason that the "10 minute breaks disguised as 15 minute breaks" ordeal I mentioned a few posts ago does. If I have to work until the very end of the long ass shift, then I won't get to clock out until five minutes after the end end of the shift, and as far as I'm concerned, even though we're not technically clocked out at the end-of-shift time, any time after that is OUR time, not theirs, so they're intruding on our time when they make us stay any later than is absolutely needed.

On Tuesday night, we had a meeting about some policy changes. The one I found most ridiculous was that you'll lose your job if you lose your temper. I understand that there should be some consequences for severe degrees of temper-losing, like actively threatening somebody, but I think it's ridiculous to get fired for more minor forms of venting. If they expect me to go to the breakroom or something every time I need to chill, I'll get nothing done.

I am so glad that this election is over! I was going to do another "Freaking out about the future" post involving the elections, but didn't have time. I'm relieved that Obama was reelected and that the Democrats still have the Senate majority, but not happy that the Republicans still have the majority in the House Of Representatives. I see at least two more years of Tea Party obstruction, but who knows, maybe we'll get something accomplished despite it?

I may elaborate some more on these last two points some other time.