The Anchorage, Part 3

[Lorraine]

Evening all! My six days of hard work took its toll and today I've been very weary and sore. Kept nodding off in my chair and had to put myself to bed twice. Now it's just after 10.30 and I'm wide awake so shall get up and read some more of my book. A nice cuppa appeals too.

 

[Dreamer]

Yep, now I just have the joy of seams to look forward too lol Oh and trying to paint makeup

 

[Terre]

Evening all! My six days of hard work took its toll and today I've been very weary and sore. Kept nodding off in my chair and had to put myself to bed twice. Now it's just after 10.30 and I'm wide awake so shall get up and read some more of my book. A nice cuppa appeals too.

It looks like the work was well worth the effort.

 

[Dreamer]

Hehe hi Lorraine, my boy is away for the weekend so I have been staying up late and sleeping in late

 

[Dreamer]

Your boat is looking good, I am longing for the day I have some where I can call my own and do that sorta thing too

 

[Lorraine]

Thanks, Terre it is worth all the hard work and I'm very thankful to have got all I wanted done before my body said "NUFF!" I'll give it a few days rest before the next project.

And thank you, Dreamer I'm quite partial to my old girl though someone said it looks more like a bach than a boat these days And I remember the days when my boy went away for weekends and hols and I kicked back, now I do it all the time!!

 

[Dreamer]

Yeah my boy is a real morning bird and I am a night owl lol

 

[Satira Capriccio]

Oh yeah. Oddly, I'm so exhausted when on the days I telecommute. Since I'm awake at 7:30 am, I start work then rather than waiting until 9 am. But I find that by 3ish ... I'm sooo tired and just can't wait until 4 pm when I can submit my timesheet (seriously ?!? timesheets when we are salaried and not hourly?!?), email my supervisor I'm done working for the day (seriously ?!? We have to email when we start and when we end?!?), and finally ... log off and shut down the laptop. Then too, I find laptops harder to work on. Especially with their smaller screens and smaller keyboards. I may eventually purchase a KVM switch so I can use my keyboard and monitor. But they aren't cheap.

Anyway ... I collapsed on the couch yesterday after logging off and promptly fell asleep. I stumbled awake about 7:30 pm and grabbed a glass of milk and graham crackers for dinner.

I think telecommuting is more exhausting because of the lack of distractions and the limited interaction with my coworkers. Even though I take an hour break for lunch when I work at home, and I only take a lunch break on Wednesday otherwise, I spend more time away from my desk when I'm in the office.

 

[Miss B]

Oh I did timesheets even though I was salaried rather than hourly, but in our case, Accounting Dept. needed to know what client(s) to charge the time to. That's how all law firms, large or small, work. Luckily for me though, I only did them once a week, usually on Monday mornings for the previous week.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

Our programs pay a set amount for support which includes Accounting, IS (and development), and HR. So, there isn't a need to bill our "clients."

It's so funny how nickle and dimie employers can be. If we work more than 7.5 hours in a day it's as if it never happened. But if we come in late or need to leave early, we have to use vacation time or make up the time the next day.

 

[Terre]

"it's as if it never happened"
That is something that the Feds are trying to put an end to.

 

[Terre]

This was Super Smart Buy (IE: HUGE batch of warehouse TPRs) weekend. The boss wanted me to pull the old tags Saturday night instead of morning to get the most out of the batch going off as this is also the weekend on the 1st. I said OK and told Jim that I was going to have a double shift on Sat. I'd also been asked to save some hours (I'm hourly not salaried). I had managed to save a couple of hours by the time I clocked out Thursday.

Then.......

Just after I finished breakfast Fri morning (normally one of my two days off) I get a call from the meat manager saying they have an emergency and only I can handle it. He wasn't exaggerating. If he hadn't called me we wouldn't have gotten most of the stuff we needed delivered on Sat.
So what happened? Thursday afternoon the PHONE COMPANY in Lubbock cut the fiber optic line between them and Amarillo where AFI is. This resulted in LOTS of AFI supplied stores not being able to transmit orders in both NM and Tex. They were originally going to try and get me to email an order using an xcel spread sheet. While I was trying to figure out how I'd manage that since my options for email are an ipad (which has to use xcel online) and my home compy which is an XP (and doesn't have a paid xcel license) they realized that the store was set up for web ordering. So I log into their site after having been given the store's user name and password and have the computer tell me that the site wasn't responding when I clicked the retailer login button. Called TrueNo, Eventually the tech realized what I was sure of from the start which is that he needed to call MD Tech to tell the firewall to let it through. So then we start getting a mix of being able to get through and "internal server error' messages. They call AFI. AFI was having issues with that server and working on it while we were trying to get me in. Over two hours after I got to work I finally could start typing in the more than 1500 items that needed to be entered in using their order numbers, quantity, and department in every entry. The system is actually set up as a quick order on so each file was only 15 items long. Click on "add to truck" and continue. I had to read the numbers and quantities from the little screens on the two telsons that the orders had been scanned into. Eventually I got done. I put in about 5.5 hours total on Fri. Some numbers wouldn't go in so I wasn't surprised when we were missing some items that were expected. The bad ones included a couple of pallets that had been ordered for a three day sale that started today. This stuff will be on an emergency order arriving tomorrow morning. At least it better.
Saturday I tried to put in a short morning but only left maybe an hour or so earlier than usual. New items etc, Went back at 6pm and spent a little over two hours walking all over the store looking at expiration dates on little yellow tags and pulling the ones with 10/01/16. Had 49.39 hours on the clock for that week when I left.
Go in today and had to make the three day sale my first project then help with the TPRs then mess with the weekly price changes. Fortunately I'm allowed to ask for help with the big batches of TPRs so that got done by late morning. I got everything but hanging the new base price tags done today and will go back tomorrow morning (also usually my day off). Meanwhile we started having EBT foodstamps say the com line was down while other cards were fine. Called TrueNo. The NM server which handles foodstamps had lost power.

Maybe the rest of the week will go smoother? Hopefully?

 

[Dreamer]

Bloomin heck Terre that sounds like one hell of a week!

 

[Dreamer]

Gah have discovered a new "Ihatethispartofcreating" step, painting transmaps for hair Thank the stars that once its done I don't need to redo it for every colour

 

[Pendraia]

Evening all! My six days of hard work took its toll and today I've been very weary and sore. Kept nodding off in my chair and had to put myself to bed twice. Now it's just after 10.30 and I'm wide awake so shall get up and read some more of my book. A nice cuppa appeals too.

Cuppa sounds good Lorraine...nothing quite like finishing a task. Hope the weariness and soreness goes soon.

Yep, now I just have the joy of seams to look forward too lol Oh and trying to paint makeup

Yep...I know that feeling well...makeup and me have arguments all the time when painting textures. Nothing ever quite works how I expect.

I feel your pain Satira and Terre...back to work this week and teachers are in the same boat Satira...we don't have to do timesheets thank goodness or sign in(I did at my old school though). Never any acknowledgement for the extra time I do in the mornings (works out as 4 and half hours each week extra time at school...not to mention any work done at home) but I do it to save my sanity as much as anything...there is always something that needs doing. Fun term as we write reports...I'll wager there will be 3-4 weeks teaching this term and the rest will be testing while teaching...always fun.

 

[Terre]

My sympathies, Pen.

Gah have discovered a new "Ihatethispartofcreating" step, painting transmaps for hair Thank the stars that once its done I don't need to redo it for every colour

That sounds like it would be a huge pain.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

Unfortunately, part of the problem was caused by the change years ago in who could qualify for comp time. My previous employer used to give us comp time, even though we were hourly. But the changes in comp time required they pay us overtime instead. Too much fed tax was being lost when employees take comp time instead of being paid overtime. Now it seems no one wants to officially use comp time in case they get their hands slapped.

Personally, I'd far rather have the time off than overtime.

"it's as if it never happened"
That is something that the Feds are trying to put an end to.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

Gosh Terre! What a week!

I'm so glad I almost never get called to fix things on my days off. Though it has happened a time or two.

One day we will be able to retire! Won't that be nice??? Then we can start our second careers :wink:

 

[Miss B]

Personally, I'd far rather have the time off than overtime.

I totally agree. Unless I needed extra funds to pay off a couple of large bills, the time off was always much better.

 

[Dreamer]

That sounds like it would be a huge pain.

Oh it is, I gave up last night when my eyes started crossing lol have to finish that to day and get back to fixing seams too

I'll second the time off over overtime, though right now I'd be happy to even have a job but work is hard to find right now