Do you work with apes?
Do you work with (or for) someone who constantly grunts questions without listening to the answers? Do you work with a knuckle-dragger who goes out of his way to make your help seem redundant and unappreciated? Do you work with someone who criticizes everything, is quick to blame, but never has any ideas of ways to improve the situation himself? Do you work with someone who needs everything explained and re-explained so he can be up to speed on a problem that has nothing to do with his job and gets involved, slowing down the problem-solving process? Do you work with an unevolved Neanderthal who believes he has all of the answers, is incapable of delegating to more qualified co-workers and stubbornly clings to incorrect or defective ideas or reasoning in the face of evidence that clearly proves him wrong? Do you work with a stone age troglodyte whose unintelligible emails are riddled with grammar and spelling errors (despite the availability of spell-check)? Do you work with the gorilla who tells everyone else what their responsibilities are without having any actual knowledge about company job descriptions and duties? Does the dearth of intelligence and acquired knowledge exhibited by your boss or co-worker lead you to question with whom and to what degree this Homo erectus demeaned himself? Is your monkey’s first response to every problem to ask if we can’t just ignore it?
Are you interested in buying one? My company has a surplus.
First Shift Observations
My brief time on first shift has allowed me a glimpse into a chaotic Bizzaro world which I thought I understood. I’ve seen people running all over the place, constantly in (wasted) motion, trying to please too many masters, and accomplishing very little because of it.
One reason scheduling seems to be such a mess is that they have someone who is too eager to please the CSR’s, but who has no real authority to make her own decisions about priorities. Basically, the scheduler doesn’t seem to have the big picture in mind as she goes about her daily duties. She can’t possibly schedule with maximum efficiency. Not to mention the fact that they have her doing too much, spreading her too thin. There’s no good reason for her to be pulling the job files for jobs she’s scheduling, trucking them to the rooms in which they will run, AND scheduling when and where jobs will run. The scheduler should be the hub, not a spoke, not someone charged with keeping the tire inflated. If you could hear how often the scheduler’s phone(s) are ringing, beeping, and direct-connecting her, you would understand why she is the hub and should remain in a central location. Other people can pull files. Hell, die setters are constantly trotting through her office any way, not to mention the fact that supervisors really aren’t all that busy that they couldn’t be more involved as spokes for the hub. I think our pressroom scheduling is a mess the way they do it on first shift, and it makes me even happier to be going back to third.
The level of support on first shift can be rather good. Some people are helpful, and some are not. The engineers who only work first shift always seem reluctant to get involved or make decisions. I’m not talking about our quality engineers. They are quite good, but our other engineers are rubbish. For the most part, they seem to be people who don’t like to get their hands dirty or go out on the floor to investigate things. It’s long been my experience that when faced with an issue like, the tooling can’t produce the part to our customer’s print specifications, the typical response from an engineer is something like, “they’re (the customer) gonna hafta use what we send them, I guess.” I’ve never heard an engineer (without direct prompting) offer to call and consult a customer about a problem we’ve discovered with their tooling, especially after we’ve told the customer that we were ready to run production on those tools. Engineers always seem ready to wash their hands of the problems and run back to their upstairs offices. Another reason I prefer being on an off shift. I don’t have to deal with the engineers very often.
Because the operators (and die setters) on first shift tend to have the most experience and have been with the company the longest, they tend also to ask the fewest questions. I’ve seen a good number of things done wrong, because the operators presume that they know what they are doing, and no one can tell them a better way to do anything. First shift operators tend to be know-it-alls who are very much stuck in their ways of inefficiency. They tend to be less open-minded. They tend to act as though the company owes them something for their length of service too. It’s no wonder that so few employees of the month have come from production people on first shift. They don’t impress me in the least, and their production numbers seem to back that up.
Communication on first shift is probably the best thing it’s got going for it. So what do first shifters do with their great communication? They horde it, and I think I know why. Very few people on first shift can write an intelligible email explaining anything complex or nuanced. So if they can’t explain something verbally, either face-to-face or over the phone, they can’t be bothered to send an email that will just be misunderstood any way.
There are some people on first with whom I enjoy working. Dan is alright. He does a good job as quality engineer. Stacy is okay, I guess. At least she isn’t super-annoying to me. I’ve even found Cheri more personable than expected. That said, I’ll be quite relieved to be back on third shift.
I suppose I should just be happy knowing that certain people who would have annoyed me were off all week. I suppose I should be happy that I was only forced to endure one week of first shift. I suppose I should be happy that I was able to walk to work every day this week. I suppose I should be happy that I’m not laid off. I am happy for all of those reasons, but most of all because it’s Friday. The weekend is nearly here, and my sleep schedule is about to become unfuct. :)
Operation Sleep Disorder: Day 4
Thursday was the easiest day at work this week. Although I had no parts to inspect, I kept busy creating inspection cards. My boss stopped in early in the day to tell me that I’ll be returning to 3rd shift next week, but remaining at the downtown plant. Woo! Needless to say, as soon as Chuck left the room, I was spreading the rumor to everyone who would listen. The pressroom will run on 3rd shift next week. No, I don’t know what operators (if any) will be called back. That made my day. Unfortunately, I won’t get to work with my friend Mark, but I will be able to continue walking to work.
Pro tip: When you forget to add the sweetener to your coffee, it’s probably not sexy to say “ACK!” (like Bill the Cat) or “GOLLUM!” (like Gollum), but that’s one of the perks to living alone.
Today will be my last on first, and I got the most contiguous sleep I’ve had all week. Hopefully I’ll have a nice quiet morning at work, then do some grocery shopping, then take a short nap. I’ll need to put off a full night’s sleep until Saturday morning in order to get back on my “normal” 3rd shift schedule. That shouldn’t be too difficult.
Operation Sleep Disorder: Day 3
With the benefit of hindsight and poor short-term memory, Wednesday flew right by. Kept busy making inspection cards and tweaking the inspection card template allowed me to ignore the clock. Jeff was nice enough to remind me of break times. C
Before work, I read a little bit about Google’s Chrome OS that won’t be released until this time next year. To this point, I have been less than impressed by Google’s Chrome browser. It lacks support for extensions, little applications that extend the abilities of the browser. For instance, there is no way in Chrome to block all advertisements, and why would there be? Google makes most of their money through online advertising, so they would be reluctant to give people the ability to eliminate their main source of revenue. I like the idea that Chrome OS will be opensource (read: FREE), but until Google has released an alpha build of Chrome OS, I think it’s far too early to speculate on how successful such an operating system will be. Remember, Chrome OS will compete with Windows 7, OS X, and the many flavors of Linux.
So far tonight, I’ve slept about 6 hours. I expect that I’ll take a short nap a bit later, probably around 3am. First, I have some TV shows to watch, including Stage 5 Tour de France highlights, the Warehouse 13 premier, Big Brother UK, and Torchwood: Children of Earth Day Three. I just watched That’s Impossible, and that show straight up sucks, mostly padded with obviousness, speculation, and conjecture. Oh, did I mention it’s on The History Channel? I should have known!
Two more days of 1st shift, followed by a short weekend, then it’s back to the anti-social vampire sleep cycle of 3rd shift. Yay!
Operation Sleep Disorder: Day 2
This sleep cycle switching is easy-peasy! Famous last words, right? Well, maybe not. Yesterday was the second day of my move to 1st shift, and although parts of my shift were boring, I survived it rather easily.
When I got home, I was tired and had no problem falling right to sleep. I slept for 5 straight hours, getting up only to use the bathroom. Upon returning to bed, I was out again for nearly 3 more hours. Basically, I think I’ve successfully shifted my sleep cycle in a way that will make switching back to 3rd shift Sunday night a little easier.
Right now, it’s nearly 4:00AM. I’m sitting at my desk drinking my third cup of coffee while watching the UFC 100 Countdown hype show. I thought about lying back down for an hour, but I doubt I would get much out of it.
I expect my shift this morning to be extremely boring, so perhaps I’ll try to do some blogging or something productive. By “productive,” I mean babbling more crazy opinionated blather. Time to shower.
Operation Sleep Disorder: Day 1
Slogging through day 1 of Operation Sleep Disorder wasn’t nearly as difficult as expected. There was plenty of work to keep me busy. I must have had enough sleep carrying over from Sunday, because although my body felt weird and my eyes were bloodshot and burning, I never felt the need to pass out while at work.
My walk home was warm, but with the low humidity, my sweat level remained low. Perhaps it was my geek t-shirt that kept me cool and clammy. Once I cooled down at home, the desire to sleep overcame the desire to watch the 2nd half of The Fellowship of the Ring, and I slipped into unconsciousness before the Bridge of Khazad-dûm.
Though I can’t say that my sleep was uninterrupted, I do feel that it was enough to get me through tonight and tomorrow afternoon. In all, I got about 7 hours, rolling out of bed at 10:30PM. My foremost concern is that I may become quite tired toward the end of my shift at work since that will be the end of my entire day, and my energy will be at its lowest.
Day 2 promises to be quite interesting as my sleep cycle is sorted. I’m now awake on my normal 3rd shift hours, but my sleep time has been pushed back into 2nd shift rather than 1st, clearing the way for me to be awake while at work.
Sunday Morning Musings
As I sit here at my computer(s) watching Stage 2 of the Tour de France and reading news RSS feeds, my eyes burning slightly from lack of sleep and lack of blinking, I see that Sarah Palin and Michael Jackson’s names are all over the place for pretty much the same reason. Michael Jackson died in real life. Sarah Palin just died in her political life. Personally, I don’t expect her to gain any political traction nationally after quitting half-way through just her first term as governor of Alaska. Many bloggers and political media spinmeisters have speculated on the most likely reasons for her decision and hastily disorganized press conference. The only question in my mind is exactly how bizarre will her reason turn out be. Perhaps Sarah Palin will create some sort of national organization promoting abstinence sex education, because we definitely need more of that (in her family).
Lance Armstrong is competing in this year’s Tour de France at the age of 37. That’s OLD in cycling years, and there’s very little chance, given the extremely high talent level of the rest of his team, that he will be in a position to win the race. So why is Lance racing? His Nike advert implies that he’s doing it to bring more attention to cancer research. Call me cynical, but I think it’s just another case of a formerly retired athlete needing to be back in the action and at the center of attention. I think he might also be thumbing his nose at the French race officials and all of the people who believe he doped or otherwise cheated his way to 7 Tour de France wins. Whatever his reasons, I respect his return to the sport he obviously loves.
I enjoy the 4th of July if for no other reason than my neighborhood sounds like a war zone with illegal fireworks going off every hour or so from the 1st through the 4th. The 5th of July usually brings peace and tranquility with it as most people seem to have expended their arsenal. I half expect to hear a few random pops of firecrackers because it’s still the weekend, and the smart kids will have squirreled away a pack or two.
My sleep situation appears to be improving. I slept for a couple of hours early this morning, forcing myself out of bed at 5:30AM. I won’t let myself lie back down until 2:30-3:00PM so as to simulate this coming week’s 1st shift sleep allowance. Despite my desire to sleep 8 straight hours this afternoon, I rather expect to be only capable of sleeping a couple of hours at a time.
