The office: Chatter about your job

Back to work today. Man, why was I wishing for this? Doing 8 hours of physical toil when you haven't done it in three weeks is far more punishing than it should be. Fortunately all my co-workers were in the same position.

I swear, things got heavier while I wasn't lifting them...

I was in marching band for a summer. We had weekly training for all of June, then we took July off (probably to avoid heatstroke), and came back for thrice-a-week pre-camp training the first week of August and daily Band Camp training the second. They told us to spend ten minutes holding our instruments every day during the break so it wouldn't be as much of a strain when we came back.

More for the security guard list.

Any easy tacky joke that can be said about something obvious will be said by half of the employees who pass your desk.

For example. A teddy bear drop off charity across from the Guard desk. "The Bears are watching you" <giggle/snicker/guffaw:> You will hear it about 20 times by time the time table is gone daily.

Or working New Years Eve. "See you next year" -rolls eyes-

edited 14th Jan '13 6:16:25 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Whenever something in the store does not have a price I have heard some variation of "It must be free" from customers soooo many times.

This is why I haven't written any sketches about retail. It isn't funny, it's just wish fulfillment, and I can't think of anything more clever.

So, I work PRN, which means "as needed." Someone would call me if the schedule wasn't busy enough to justify me coming in, which is all well and good. Except they decided to switch it up and start calling if they actually do need me. But no one told me. So I went to work today because I was scheduled to and no one called to tell me otherwise. And everyone was like "WTF are you doing here? Didn't anyone tell you?" Haha. No. I never get told anything and then I get fussed at when I do things the way they "used to be" instead of the way "they are now" when no one told me there was a change. *grumble*

On the plus side, occasionally we have "lunch and learns" at really nice restaurants when the only price is half listening to whatever spiel they've got going on. Like tonight at ExpensiveSteakHouse for a drug we're already using. Free dinner? Heck yeah!

edited 9th Jan '13 10:28:41 AM by jedimaster91

Bleah. Diarrhoea and muscle aches all day. Was thinking of taking the afternoon off when one of my patients suddenly turns for the worse. No excuse to go home when the patient is sicker than you.

That's a tricky problem. On one hand you don't want to make any patients sicker but on the other you're probably needed.

edited 10th Jan '13 11:47:18 AM by Leradny

Speaking as somebody whose immune system occasionally forgets what its job is supposed to be, I'd advocate going home next time. Particularly if there's a risk that what you've got might, possibly, however remotely, be a slight swipe with the Noro brush ('tis the season).

What's a pain in the arse to you might be somewhat worse for somebody else...

edited 10th Jan '13 12:01:02 PM by Euodiachloris

See, I would've gone home any other time, but by "sick" I meant the "fast AF with heart rate 160 BPM, blood pressure crashing, might die" kind of "sick". (I always forget to clarify that bit.)

Under the circumstances, it was a little hard to excuse myself.

edited 10th Jan '13 6:39:20 PM by Pyrite

Wow. I'm glad my job doesn't involve any matters of life and death. But related to it (job, not life-or-death decisions), I have some happy news.

The District ( the entertainment district of the town I live in) does a thing called a Gallery Hop a couple times a year, where local artists (of all sorts of varying types) strut their stuff in the businesses in The District on a Friday night, when The District is at its busiest. And the owner of the cigar shop has asked if I'd be his artist for the next one, in May. Means I've got to get some stuff made up on spec that demonstrates what I can do. Means there will be people who will see my stuff that ordinarily wouldn't ever know about it. Means I get to do some "I'd love to do this, but no-one has offered to pay me for it, so I can't, yet" stuff.

edited 10th Jan '13 7:17:39 PM by Madrugada

That... that... would have been a bit more helpful. Yes. :| Right choice, there, guv. <tips brim>

Um... isn't it now more along the lines of being filed under "great, I can do this in the very real hope that somebody will pay for it!", rather? Yay!

edited 10th Jan '13 8:21:34 PM by Euodiachloris

That's what it is now. Up til now, though it's been "There might be someone who would pay for this, out there somewhere, but I have no effective way of finding them, so I'd be making it purely for my own pleasure."

I want where I work to hire some more hands.

This is for a specific reason; I'm the only person physically capable of running the torque wrench we use on our glue deck. Now, this thing is a beast...it feeds from a 1 inch air hose and weighs about 50 pounds. My two other co-workers have legitimate excuses for not being able to run it. One has tendonitis in his shoulder, the other just had surgery on his knee and is on light duty. Both acceptable reasons in my book.

But this means I have to do all the gun-work...and goddamn, it's tiring and punishing. (Before this situation existed it was accepted that we shared the duty of tightening the deck down because "running the gun" is really exhausting.)

To give you an idea...the glue deck is 60 feet long. It has bolt-driven clamps every 8 inches. The torque wrench we use weighs at least 50 pounds, maybe more...and the bolts are nearly three feet long (so, you know, we can potentially glue a big pile of stuff at once). The fins weigh about 25 pounds apiece. The bolt shafts are over an inch thick. The socket we use to run them down is a 2 inch hex socket...that weighs more than a four-pack of soda.

So, the gun operator has to scramble around amongst a forest of heavy metal clamps, lugging a 50 pound tool (connected to a bulky air hose) and tighten down the bolts one at a time...without falling off the deck or disturbing the glue lay-up that he has to walk on. (Note: just doing this violates a shit-ton of OSHA rules, but whatever)

Also, the gun puts out a lot of torque...if the bolt is slightly bent (not uncommon) and decides to seize for a second, all that torque goes into the operator's arms. Which hurts a tad, in case you didn't catch that.

Yeah, tired of being the only person who can do this job. Especially because all the contracts in our future involve a lot of gluing.

That's a really complicated situation. My first thought is to suggest a few more capable people should be hired, possibly suggesting that OSHA might get involved if not, but two factors that defeat that are that it would probably get you fired and that I'm pretty sure I recall that your father owns the company, so it'd strain family matters as well.

Oh, I'm not going to be a whiny bitch about it. I just wish that I wasn't the only one doing it. One of those uncomfortable situations that isn't anyone's fault...it just exists and I'm not happy about it.

Neither is my back. Thank the fates for whiskey.

Could just suggest that it'd be helpful to not have only one guy doing this brutal job.

Have done so. He says they'll be more workers when our contract situation is more stable. I can understand that; he doesn't want to hire someone and then have to fire them a few weeks later.

In other news...hey, Employment Security. I know you have computer errors. I know those can delay processing my unemployment claim and therefore delay my receiving my check. But to you, it's a computer error. To me, it is the difference between paying my bills on time and, well, not. Utility companies tend to take issue when you don't pay them. The situation is urgent to me, so can it be urgent to you as well?

Nobody else with the muscle to train? Or are you three it?

@Maddie: we're it. So the big torque wrench is my job until the contract situation stabilizes. Which makes me hope it does, because that thing is a beast.

(If I can get some photos/videos of it at some point, I will.)

Ok, I've seen picture of the kind of rigs you guys have cooked up to take care of odd job requirements before. Can you figure a way to suspend the hose above the glue deck (you know, like one of those hose feed pivot arms that do-it-yourself carwash bays have) so that at least you aren't dragging the hose around as well? There'd have to be some sort of trolley system to allow you to cover the whole sixty foot length, but it might be do-able.

Something either like this -- the thing on the ceiling◊ or even a wheeled frame, along the lines of the last element in this setup, but on wheels or tracks.◊

Hell, you might even be able to figure out some sort of a rig that takes up some of the weight of the wrench itself, if you use the rolling frame design. It's not like this will be a one-time use thing like that peculiar cutting-jig-thing you made for the curved pieces way back when. (You know, this jobber.)

edited 12th Jan '13 8:18:57 PM by Madrugada

Today I had one of more unpleasant experiences with my job. Dealing the possibly or actually terminated employees.

A person who I have no reason to doubt told me a person was terminated and was not allowed on the premises. Now normally this is a no brainer. This means fired and not allowed on the property.

Here is where it gets hairy. In walks one of the HR people with verboten person in tow. I have to stop her cold and explain she is not allowed in under instruction from this person.

Now at this point as per those insructions the person would be asked to leave and informed of how to collect their personal effects at a later time and date set by HR.

However teh HR person gave me a look like I was psycho that had just kicked a puppy and asked for the big security guy of the building. I permitted the person to stay behind the turnstiles on the property as I was sure a phone call was going to be incoming.

Sure enough the name and number of the big dog pops up on my duty phone. And like I thought he said let her in.

Now feeling like a jerk and honestly emberassed and dead certain the ball had been dropped by the time I got the info.

So first the head of HR comes out to talk to me and I have to explain my position and we work out that I had gotten bad info. And it was noted things would get sorted tomorrow. I of course apologized for any problems I caused. I then talked to the other HR person on her way out and apologized for causing embarassment and other issues.

So all in all a fricken rough time.

At least I wasn't escorting an angry terminated employee from the property.

Had a 12-5 shift turn into a 12-8 shift.

Well net total result of the SNAFU. A talking to. One butt chewing (not mine). An honest surprise of a policy never explained but through shear dumb luck to never have come in contact with it. This is one of those things that should have been written down but never was. Draft pages for putting into relevant policy books drafted and awaiting perusal.

edited 16th Jan '13 4:40:24 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Cool: being the cause of belated paperwork in others. Kind of spreads the pain of the "WTF" moments you had while it was happening, eh? ^_^