Long Day

I was scheduled to work 10:00 - 4:30 yesterday. Not really all that long a shift, but a busy one. On Fridays it involves "putting away the truck", i.e. rotating old stock and shelving new stock that arrives that day, washing dishes, all the usual driving prep jobs like stocking soda and folding pizza boxes and, of course, delivering pizzas. It was hot for Green Bay. Like, 90 degrees most of the day. Hot weather generally means increased deliveries and sure enough, deliveries were pretty busy. Kids eat free at the afternoon buffet, so that was busy too, which doesn't directly involve me, but means a huge amount of dishes.

I ended up going home a little after 5:00. Still not exactly a long shift, but it was a busy, busy, busy, work-your-butt-off seven hours. I hadn't finished dishes yet, hadn't even started soda and boxes. The only reasons I got to leave when I did is that other drivers arrived to work their butts off and I guess since I was on call from 7:00 - 9:00 the manager, Kayla, decided I should get a break before possibly being called back in.

Well, things must have slowed down enough that the scheduled drivers could handle it just fine. When I called about 6:45, Kayla said I could stay home. I was so happy. Becky and I planned to watch Flight Plan, eat some popcorn. It was going to be a nice relaxing evening. About 8:45, as we were getting Tabby in bed, I had just commented how much I was looking forward to it when the phone rang. The closing driver had fallen, injured his knee and was going to the emergency room. Could I come in and finish his shift? Uhg. So I went back in to work from 9:00 - 2:00.

I am so looking forward to getting an actuary job.

/disappointed

"A preliminary analysis of your test results shows that you were not successful in achieving the passing score established by the SOA/CAS/CIA for Exam P/1 (Probability)."

Happy Labor Day

The rest of the world celebrates it on May 1st. International Workers' Day, a celebration of the common laborer and the contributions of the labor movement. It had a hard time gaining traction in the US, though. Too much of a commie holiday. Until we had a president who wanted to make nice with labor unions and pushed for the holiday, but celebrated American style. Instead of on May Day, like the rest of the commie world, we'd celebrate at the end of summer. By giving all the white collar guys the day off and telling the blue collar laborers to get back to work. If they're union bastards, they get time-and-a-half and can consider themselves lucky.

Sorry if I seem kinda' cynical today.

I was scheduled to work 10:30am to 8pm. And, no, not as a lucky union bastard. It was busy. Very, very busy. Normal work day? With steady deliveries for 8ish hours? 20ish deliveries. Today? 35. So busy we ran out of hand tossed dough. We ran out of stuffed crust. We ran out of breadsticks. And the whole day we were somewhat understaffed. You want to know why? You ready for this? Because today, of all days, they were worried about labor costs.

I'm not kidding. I didn't make that up.

I ended up working just over 10 hours without a break (there was never time for a break) and with about enough food for an anorexic teen girl. They still shouldn't have let me go. There were dishes, no exaggeration, piled up to my face waiting to be washed. And that was just the beginning of the clean up that had to be done. And delivery orders still being called in. I mean, they should have let me, specifically, go home. But they really needed at least one more employee there instead of me.

Phone Service

I have always been pretty happy with our AT&T service. But man, this has a been a bad week for it. They were supposed to hook up our phones the Friday we moved in. It didn't happen. When I called they said it got put off until the next Monday. No reason. It was really like they just ran out of time on Friday and were taking the weekend off. We have cell phones so it wasn't that big a deal.

Monday they hooked up our service. Tuesday it was dead. A technician came and looked at things Wednesday evening and told us we had a bad jack. When we plugged our phone in, it shorted out the line. Again, not a big deal. We have enough jacks in the house that we plugged the phone into a good one and we'll tell the landlord about the bad jack when we get a chance.

Over the next few days our kids notice that the phone line upstairs (not the bad jack) has no dial tone, but if they unplug the phone and plug it back in again, the dial tone comes back on.

This morning our phone rings, but only the downstairs line. The upstairs line is dead again. When we answer the phone, there's no one there. So I play around with my cell phone and find that I can make outgoing calls from our home phone, but incoming calls are getting a "number has been disconnected" message. I called AT&T, they did their thing where they ping the house to check the signal. No problem. Called our house, they got through fine.

Frustrating. I mean, are prospective employers going to get through? Or get told I no longer have a phone? Fortunately, Pizza Hut got through last night. With an inconsistent problem though . . . who knows if anyone else has tried to call?