First Ramble of Two Thousand Eleven.

I hope my friends are all having a decent start to 2011. I would say that I am, but I guess I can't report that a whole lot changed as a result of the Earth returning to the same orbital position [relative to the Sun] that it was at 365 revolutions ago.

Work has returned to a semi-steady pace, hovering around 4,000 orders a day. In spite of all the talk of being light on work, most everyone is working the standard eight hour day (or reasonably close). Of course, as is customary around the beginning of the year, the company is making sweeping reforms leaving many of us in the dark as to what the rules are on various subjects at any given moment...

For instance, on Thursday we were informed of a new policy regarding paid time off (vacation/sick time). In fact, we no longer have specific “vacation” or “sick” time, but it is all simply called PTO and we can use it for whatever reason we want. Of course, they haven't told us what attendance penalties we will be subject to for unscheduled call-offs, but they have said that that policy is changing too – We have been told to expect a new Employee Handbook in the first couple weeks of the year. I guess no one else seems to think it is terribly odd that these policies weren't all approved at the same time, but I don't see the logic in having a policy on paid time off while having no policy (or one that doesn't apply) on attendance...

At least I can take some satisfaction in the fact that on Monday I was asked to operate the turret truck for the first time in nearly six months – and that I actually remember how to do it. Was a nice change in the routine.

In other news, last week I posted about the NERF guns we have been playing with since Christmas. I left out the fact that I'm starting to see some improvement in my Civilization V game, especially since I have broken down and installed it through Steam, the only legitimate way to properly patch/update the game. Aside from my frustration with that, the patching seemed to help [a little] with my system resource problems, but the game still occasionally crashes in the end-game. I believe this has more to do with my graphics adapter than system memory, but until I get a new PC I think I'm kinda stuck with what I have.

You see, I have one of these “thin” towers, and very few graphics cards even fit in the thing. The one I have is not properly installed, actually, as a result of it being too tall, but it works. Further, the card pretty much maxes out the capacity on the power supply, and nearly everything else is even more power hungry. Lets just say that I'll spend the money on a new PC before I'll replace the graphics card [again] AND the power supply.

But I digress... as for Civ V, I've gotten to the point where I'm playing on Warlord level consistently and winning about half the time – and even managed a culture victory in my latest game. While the culture victory doesn't sound terribly difficult, it does seem quite taxing to keep the other civs from killing you while you build up culture for 400 turns. I did have the good fortune to have an abundance of gems to trade – I think that helped, but I have to wonder how this would have gone down on a higher difficulty level.

Alright... I've rambled on long enough for today I suppose.

The Forgotten Employee

My company has been touting a fourth-quarter bonus over the last 10 weeks, repeatedly stressing to us it's basis on our productivity individually and performance as a facility. That is all fine and good, and I appreciate any such bonus simply as a matter of gratitude because clearly there is no reason why a bonus has to be granted in the first place.

Well, yesterday the bosses were meeting with employees one-on-one to inform them of what dollar value their bonuses would be. I wasn't too concerned about it because I'll know on Friday regardless (yay for payday), but I was asked to visit with one of the bosses so I dutifully complied. Of course, it was pointless because the boss in question didn't have any information about me because I apparently don't technically work for him.

Furthermore, I've already been told by “my” boss, who I haven't seen much over the last two months because I don't really work for him either, that he doesn't have any information for me either.

So I guess I'm kinda curious about what sort of bureaucratic crack I've fallen into to be forgotten so completely... I mean, I still draw a paycheck so I am still employed (I guess), but no one knows who the hell my boss really is anymore. No one really ever bothers me about anything unless I make a major mistake (such errors are, thankfully, few and far between), and then it sometimes takes a few days for anyone to bother tracking me down about it.

I suppose I'll be fine as long as I'm not forgotten by the payroll department, right?

Did That Make You Feel Any Better?

There is occasion from time to time when I feel like breaking things. I haven't quite figured out why, especially considering that it doesn't really make me feel any better, nor do I like cleaning up the resultant mess, but it is true all the same. Tonight at work was very much one of those occasions. Of course, the evening progressed well up to a point, and I really could find no fault in anything up until the bitter end... but that end came, and has since went.

It is a reasonable thing to be expected to do a job until it is done. I respect the fact that every day certain things need to be done, and sometimes the occasion call for more things – or all possible things (as pertaining to a series of job functions) to be done, before the work is considered finished. In tonight's case, all on-inventory product had to be put away completely before we could leave because we're going to work tomorrow morning doing inventory counts.

Of course, I use “we” in the above sentence loosely. We as meaning me, mostly, and a few team leads and supervisors. How I ended up in that group is beyond me, but I was left with certain tasks that, with a group, could have been completed within 10-15 minutes. Instead, I spent over 70 minutes because it was decided that I was “already on it,” so no one else was needed.

Of course, I will concede, to my own credit, that very few others would have been willing to take the time to do what I was doing and do it accurately. That said, however, I do not feel that I was given the appropriate level of respect (not to mention compensation) for the hassle involved in completing those tasks and staying until 10:30 PM whilst being expected to go into work tomorrow morning at 9AM.

Completely unacceptable.

Of course, I also must concede, much to my frustration, that I would have probably still been there until 10:30 tonight even if I hadn't been pulled in 10 different directions, expected to do the jobs of others, and talked to as if I'm insignificant. One of the two cars remaining in the parking lot as I sped away belonged to one of my team leads who was still feverishly working on our normal duties, the so-called “Look Fors.” Don't ask. Anyway, I imagine he was just as frustrated as I was...

In fact, I may owe him an apology now that I think of it... I wasn't trying to be a particularly nice person near the end of the shift...