Wednesday, October 11, 2017

What Day Is This?

     We're short-handed and over-projected at work.  We had people on vacation and that was pretty well covered -- until one of the operating techs when to the doctor for a checkup and got an ambulance ride and immediate surgery.  Prognosis is good but returning to work is weeks away.

     That left Engineering with more tasks to cover than we have people.  There was no one move that could be made to cover what needed to be covered.  There were, however, a lot of little ones--  Everyone picked up a little overtime, an hour or so per day wherever our skill sets fit.

     But we were still short.  We needed to cover multiple locations at multiple different times of the day, doing everything from sitting at a console recording video and remotely steering cameras to supervising a crew doing dangerous work high above ground.  We needed someone with a wide array of skills.  Someone who could work three hours here, catnap, and go work two hours there, with a stop at a third location later.  Someone who could use some overtime pay.

     It turns out that I am someone.  Where I will be at any given time is difficult to predict -- home?  Work?  The North Campus?  It should all add up to at least my normal hours plus a little extra.

     I'm using Blogger's scheduled posting ability to at least give my writing here some semblance of regularity. 

    

5 comments:

Drang said...

Hopefully this flexibility translates into "indispensability" and "a little something extra at bonus time."

Blackwing1 said...

Good grief! What kind of ailment has someone going to the doctor for a check-up, and resulting in an immediate operation?

P.S.: I hope you and Roberta-mom are both doing better.

Merle said...

just be careful you don't burn yourself out.....

Merle

Roberta X said...

Blackwing1, a heart condition. My Mom is better, after several days in the hospital, as long as her oxygen level can be maintained.

Merle, I don't have any choice. My employer likes to talk about "work-life balance," and even introduced a new holiday, the Friday after Thanksgiving (my family, despite my telling them over and over that we only got the holiday itself off work, kept scheduling the extended-family dinner on that day and then being affronted that I didn't attend), but they have cut my department back to the point where it is difficult to accommodate vacations and if the wrong two people are off at once, we're all working overtime. Three or four off is a disaster, and all that will take will be someone out of town on vacation during a bad flu season. Even that "extra" holiday won't change much; we'll still need to cover three shifts that day.

D.W., as a matter of company policy, we get neither merit increases nor bonus pay. Salaried employees get Christmas bonuses and can negotiate individual raises. Or at least try to.

Blackwing1 said...

I'm glad to hear your mom's better.

You and I are of an age (coming up hard and fast on 60 this winter) and we lost our mom 3 years ago to complications of a heart attack while in the hospital. Our dad went 6 years ago of complications due to Alzheimer's.

I'm happy I got out to see her every weekend while she was still with us, which was the best I could do given our locations.

I hope your mom continues to improve and can get back to the assisted living (or whatever they termed it) and out of the hospital.

Best of luck with your work schedule; it sounds exhausting.