July 4th fell on a Sunday this year, so my employer technically observed Independence Day on the 5th, meaning that they had nothing scheduled to ship out on the 5th, and those departments that typically work Monday through Friday got the day off. I would've been fine having Sunday off and working Monday. Despite this, they still fucking scheduled us to work on the 4th and 5th! This made no sense, especially since we were miserably slow the week before, and ended up being miserably slow the week of the 4th. We only worked half the day on the 4th, 4 to 5 hours on the 5th, and even got to leave an hour and a half early on the 6th. Hell, we could have had Sunday off, and still probably gotten off an hour or two early on Monday. It really wasn't the worst 4th of July ever or anything, but I was really hoping we'd get that Sunday off so I could actually go out and do something the Saturday night before the 4th. My Saturday nights have been nonexistent since I came back to work, it would've been nice if they could've thrown us a bone.
I found out that it was the warehouse manager's idea to have us work both that Sunday and Monday. It's possible that he might have been pressured by our client, but it was his decision. And guess what? That asshole didn't come in either of those days!
We've been horribly busy since the week after Independence Day. It's not that they have shipments spread out evenly over the entire week, but they seem to concentrate everything on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. They especially like to fuck us on Tuesdays. A lot of time, we'll spend Sunday and Monday working on Tuesday's stuff, then just when we think we're out of the woods, they'll drop another 1,000 to 2,000 picks for Tuesday on us either late on Monday or early Tuesday.
I really, really hate what they've had me doing since I came back, which is doing "dock audits". That's where I have to audit pallets of stuff to make sure that nothing's damaged, they're wrapped up right, etc., before they leave the warehouse. This is sometimes interrupted by having to take pictures of some customers' truck loads before they leave the building. I usually know what's supposed to ship out that day. Where I run into problems is when they decide to mix in stuff that's supposed to go out the next day, or even the day after that, onto a truck that's going out that day. It will cause me to miss out on auditing some of that day's stuff because I'm running around trying to audit tomorrow's stuff that's getting ready to go out. I hope that wasn't too confusing, but that's about the best way I can describe it. I don't know about the woman on B-Shift who is the Dock Audits expert, but there's no way that I or most people can do all this shit all by ourselves.
I don't know how the Hell the temp agencies decide who they think is QA (Quality Assurance) material. I actually had a little experience doing quality audits before I got this job, but I don't think you necessarily need QA experience. What's more important is to be somewhat adequate with computers, and what they end up giving us is a lot of computer illiterate people! I was told about one person in particular that they had trained while I was on leave that, three weeks into the job, still didn't know how to properly press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to unlock the computer.
I had a significant amount of money saved up when I started my apartment search back in April. It shocked me how fast I blazed through it after moving out. I didn't think it would happen this soon, but I had to ask my mom for some grocery money this week. I definitely have to keep a better eye on spending. I've also applied for refinancing my auto loan, I currently pay almost $400 a month!
It's a little too close to the Peak season for my comfort. I would like to find another job before September, when the Blackout period (where we can't take any time off) starts, but I'm kind of afraid to since I can't afford COBRA insurance without subsidies. The U.S. health insurance system is bullshit. The money from the extra hours, and in the case of last year extra pay per hour, from Peak is nice, but it would be nice to be able to have a life during September through December. It would especially be nice to be able to go to the Louder Than Life festival, but even if I could go, I doubt that I'll even have the money to do it right.
