It’s just me, I’m the nonsense. Silly little man, silly little jobs, silly little volcano, silly little van, silly little life.
Yesterday I got to work chock full of beans. The smoke was thick, the parking lot was empty, and the orange tint in the sky was a beautiful reminder that a devastating fire was burning just beyond the wall of visibility born from 100,000+ acres burning nearby. Despite everything going
on, both in my personal life and the looming threat of natural disaster, I was feeling pretty good. I slipped my way up the front stairway, the one out of view of the front desk clerks, through the hallway and down the back stairs to the sauna shower. The only shower us non-local, camper dwelling employees can use without heading halfway to Portland.
Sneaky shower; success. Overnight oats; made, and ready for the work fridge. Lost book; found. Shifts today; one. A relieving sight on the schedule as I had worked multiple doubles this week, and I desperately wanted to do laundry. Everything was coming up Milhouse.
That was, until about an hour into my shift. My manager pulled me into her office. Normally when this happens, it’s to talk about the schedule or, on good days, it’s to give us some free merch that was deemed unsellable. So, I didn’t think much of it, until the conversation began and the words “Brenda from HR” were conveyed.
My first week here, while being shown the ins and outs of the time clock system, I watched a supervisor end their shift with us and immediately transfer to another department. They even said the words, mostly to themselves, ”oh right I’m not clocking out, I’m transferring”. I’ve worked for multiple departments in several different companies, and whenever I have had to work a double it was perfectly acceptable to transfer directly to the other department. The only exception to this was if an employee was planning on stopping at a store or taking a break before starting at the second department. To be honest, even that was an unenforced policy; as it was very typical to see groups of employees sitting around waiting for sandwiches at the general store on their way down the road.
So, my first day working a double here, as I was quite literally sprinting to finish up my shift up in the lodge so I wouldn’t be late to the kitchen job, I transferred to the kitchen as I was leaving the lodge. I rushed as fast as possible to get to the other company building. No personal time, no relaxing, no ability to take a break, lunchless… and it took me all of ten minutes to get into the hot and sweaty kitchen. The kitchen manager had no problem giving me that time as they were in dire need of staff and I was doing them a favor by coming in. In all honesty, I didn’t want to be there; i wanted to be back at my van, taking trips to the laundromat, and reading a good book to avoid the horrid AQI. But apparently, I had committed a “major offense”.
My managers had to defend me and argue for my employment. The policy here is, if working a double, you must clock out and then clock back in, rather than transferring. That is fair, it is policy; even if I don’t fully agree with it. But it was a policy I was unaware of, and a policy not shared by many other companies in this industry. My erratic rushing from one company building to another is no different than someone using the bathroom or having a conversation before clocking out; and honestly I could’ve used the former. But no bathroom time for me, as I was expected to be in two places at once.
sprinkling in photos of the off-season remnants of the town’s DIY snow park to break up my ranting
At the end of the day, everything is okay, my managers successfully advocated for me being a really solid employee and essentially begged HR to keep me here. SIGH. Okay..
Here’s the thing. Im not trying to juggle a chaotic and, honestly, shitty schedule to take advantage of the company. I am doing it because I am asked to; because the kitchen cant keep employees due to, well, many factors. I am doing it because they need help, and I am helping them. If they don’t want to compensate me the equivalent of $3 to rush from one building to another for some last minute help(it costs me around $8 to do so for what it’s worth), thats fine. However, I feel like the appropriate response to a new employee who made a first time mistake is a conversation such as “hey, so this is how it works here”, an edit on the time sheet, and then move on. Instead, I almost lost my job(s), there are several emails going around about me, and I am on thin ice with a company that I have been doing literally everything I can to make happy.
Well, that’s my rant on that. I will probably have to quit one of the jobs; not because I want to, but because I am set up for failure. With two managers that produce schedules at the same time, and a severe understaffing issue, there is bound to be mistakes made. Which is typically expected in this situation, because, well, I quite literally CANNOT BE IN TWO PLACES AT THE SAME TIME. I was more than willing to deal with this if it meant helping out my coworkers while making a few bucks(literally) on the side. But, if a single mistake(on my first double mind you) puts my employment at jeopardy.. I mean dude what
So job security is out the window. On top of all the other difficulties I’m facing in this recent move to a new town. I guess maybe the internal voice telling me that this might not be the place for me is right. Time to restart the job search; not because I am planning on leaving; but because it is evident the company(not the people I actually work with mind you), has it out for me. I’m only human; at some point I might get sick or be a little late. Im only human. And it seems they will jump at that first opportunity to get me out of here.
bla bla blaaaaa. whatever. Yeah, it sucks but I will just have to move on and start making a plan for whenever the time comes for me to get on out of here. Of which I have many; so no big deal. Just a bummer that I really started to like this job. Oh well. Life goes on.
I stifled my feelings about the day with doing some MUCH needed laundry. As in, pretty much everything in the van was dirty to some extent. Three loads of these silly little threads. The world’s LOUDEST dryer; screeching so loudly I thought I was gonna burn the place down. When I removed my clothes, I noticed someone had etched “fix this POS” into the viewing window; so at least it wasn’t me. Some rain potentially on the forecast tomorrow; not enough to really help the fires, but we’ll take anything at the moment.
