The office: Chatter about your job

Yep.

Sounds like a business plan.

I am an hourly employee at the store I work at, but a part of me would not mind if they put me as a salaried employee (So I do not have to worry about overtime, which they do not like to pay out) but paid me roughly what I make now and just let me come in and work on stuff for my department and did not pull me to other areas of the store.

Galeros: The problem with being salaried is companies rarely resist the urge to abuse the salaried workers.

I know, I have seen the crazy hours the salaried managers work.

Which is why I said "A part of me", not all of me.

edited 10th Mar '14 8:39:11 PM by Galeros

Lol. Fair enough. Though if the pay is good enough I wouldn't mind but the pay would have to be pretty good.

You know, most people have to pay money to get a 2.5hr upper body workout.

Me, not only don't I pay, I get paid, and they even cover most of the workout clothing. [YakovSmirnoff]What a country![/YakovSmirnoff]

^Explanation One of the positions is setting tires in a queue for the cars as they're completed, after putting a BMW emblem in the middle of the wheel. There's a mechanical lift to help lift the 50+ pound wheel assembly, but it's kind of like one of those arcade machines with the claw used to grab prizes, only the control of the movement is via the user with grabber at the end, which is solely muscle-powered for horizontal movement, connected to a chain you can use a control switch to pull up or down on the grabber and its payload (if any). As anyone with a basic physics knowledge can tell you, Newton's First law of Motion can be a cast-iron bitch.

I shouldn't have said anything.

Sometime in January, after the post-holiday downshift, my work schedule hiccupped into a high amount of regularity. A four-hour closing food service shift from Sunday through Wednesday, sometimes off Mondays. (Well, at first there were Saturdays, but I asked for alternating Saturday evenings off through February and March, so they stopped scheduling me on any Saturdays)

Then a Bible study for 20-somethings started meeting on Sunday nights, and since post-high school through marriage is an under-supported area in any church, I wanted to be a part of it. But I couldn't when they met at 6 every Sunday and I worked until 8 every Sunday.

So I put in an availability change request, and was informed that I couldn't take availability away from the weekends anymore, which was a policy change I hadn't heard about. In talking with my superiors about it, I underscored how much I like the consistency itself, but the fact that the consistency is "four evenings a week" makes it difficult to do things outside of work, but I really like the consistency.

Next week, I'm working Sunday 4-8, Tuesday 2-10, Wednesday 4-8, and Saturday 9am-1pm. So much for consistency. So much for having a shred of the evening. So much for mornings.

I have been staring at EKG strips for the last two days. My eyes hurt, my brain hurts, and I'm seeing squiggly lines everywhere. And I have to test on it sometime next week. *sob*

After training last week, I was scheduled for 40 hours at my new job. I'm an expert at bagging chicken wings, and I can wrap meat like a pro now. I started operating the cash register my first day and got retroactive permission to do it on Wednesday. I stabbed myself in the finger with my razor and I've got muscle aches and pains from toting and hauling but, that'll go away if I work smarter.

I'm still teaching but this job is in such a totally different direction that it is like I am two different people.

Might have a second job with a this local linen company. Family friend owns the joint.

I really hope I get it, I'm seriously hurting for money now

Jedi, you have my sympathy: ECG was made to make eyes cross. <_< There must be a better way to use that flipping needle!

So, I'm basically unemployed now.

Slightly panicking

Three calls yesterday: one automatic fire alarm accidentally activated, one report of a fire in a field from somebody who must be new to the rural life and doesn't know what stubble-burning is and one out-of-control garden bonfire-cum-brushfire that we spotted on the way home from the previous call, so we got to run about and squirt blue stuff on red stuff after all.

I love this job.

"Squirt blue stuff on red stuff": very technical, there, mate. Mind bogglingly so: you about lost me with the jargon, there.

But, seriously: uh... how does one not know about burn-off? <_< By never watching documentaries about deforestation and logging, or something? <scratches head>

That's the thing; all the farmers are burning stubble just now. Sure, they're meant to call in and warn control, but you wouldn't think somebody living out there would see a cloud of white smoke coming from the middle of an empty field at this time of year and think 'Argh! Fiery death!', would you?

That said, it's just as well we happened to drive past that other guy whose handiwork I'm sure most folk nearby took for stubble burning; the fire had escaped from the pile of sticks he was burning and was making its way out in every direction, already being over the boundaries of his land in places.

Bonfires on land covered in dry, dead ferns on windy days are a bad idea.

edited 18th Mar '14 2:31:06 AM by InverurieJones

Sure, you phone it in when you notice that it's a stack smoking ominously (that... can get tricky). Or a barn — or, worse, a silo. But, a field? Nah: that's normal.

I once reported a fence post on fire. I was driving into town and noticed smoke coming up from a fence post. I thought "hmm weird" and went on my way. Several hours later I was returning home and I noticed a red glow from the same post. Still burning. Got home, called the sheriff and said "there's a fence post on fire on Leo Road. You don't need the fire department, an officer with a fire extinguisher could take care of it." Four seconds later I heard the volunteer fire department siren go off.

Next day when I drove by I saw that the top of the post was intact and the bottom of the post was intact and the middle was absent. So the fence was holding the post up instead of the other way around. It stayed like that for a very long time.

...It self-combusted out of pure embarrassment at being totally pointless?

There's "doesn't know about stubble burn-off" and then there's also "saw it driving by and thought, "hmmm, there shouldn't ought to be smoke there." but didn't stop to take a good look." The area I grew up in didn't generally do stubble burns (the farmers plowed it back under rather than burning it off) but the big springtime brush-and-general-winter-detritus fire piles were a normal sight. The big problem with figuring out whether to report those was that often they were in places where from the road, it looked like the fire was in among the outbuildings, when it was really out in the field beyond the furthest outbuilding.

Most fire departments I've had dealings with would rather deal with a call to someplace they weren't needed than find out later that they were needed somewhere but nobody called them.

It just seemed odd to me that somebody living in such a remote rural area (there are maybe four or five houses in a small, secluded valley far from the main road) wouldn't have seen that happen in the same place this time last year and the year before and would be so alarmed by it as to call us out twice in a week. We suspect some kind of neighbourly feud is afoot. Maybe somebody is miffed about their washing getting smelly on the line?

Mind you, we always prefer to be called out than not (not least because we get paid by the hour) and this one led to us spotting a real fire on the way home before it got completely out of hand.

So, in addition of having a third leak on the ceiling in this year alone, our office might be infested with bedbugs.

And we are not located in the middle of nowhere! We can almost see Kremlin from our windows

Bugs and leaks near the Kremlin... who'd've thought? Spin it right, and it sounds like a thriller — not getting in the pest control guys.

edited 19th Mar '14 5:14:29 PM by Euodiachloris

While Euo's comment is amusing, I'm thinking more "shoddy Soviet workmanship" or "corruption-induced corner cutting" (depending on pre- or post-1991 construction).

Hehe, yep, that didn't sound right :)

Pretty much. It is an old residential building, and it seems that recent renovations left it in even worse shape. So it's both

edited 19th Mar '14 9:28:27 PM by Beholderess