OK. I still don't have any time to post here but I've got enough stuff I need to rant on that I'm going to anyway.
"They" say you should list a rental 2 months before it is going to be available. And that winter is a hard time to find good renters. There is also a new "fair" housing ordinance set to go into effect March 1, so I dutifully listed my house...and had a qualified applicant in the time it took me to walk my dog. And the catch is, he was hoping to move February 21, so I'm scrambling to get everything done. Add to that a downpour during one of my significant move days and a freezing rain storm the next time I moved stuff. Now, once I get everything else done, I'll have to figure out how to get a motorcycle 3 miles when there hasn't been any sun or temperatures above freezing since the ice storm. Go for the stress of riding it? Or the stress of trying to get it up the ramp into the van, strapped down so it doesn't fall, and then back out at the other end?
Then there's the existing renters at the other place. They seem pretty normal. But their blinds are always drawn. I'd worry about this but it made me realize the vast majority of people actually just leave their blinds drawn all the time. It isn't because it's hot. It can't be because everyone works 3rd shift. Is it a Louisville thing? Do people hate natural sunlight? What? Then the other day, the wife mentioned that her car got ransacked. So that night I drive by their place and both their cars are parked in the driveway--right in front of the wonderful 2 car garage they have--even has a garage door opener and remote. So I'm wondering "what do they have going on in the garage?"
Last bit is the origin of this thread: punching a time clock. Occasionally I'll tell myself there are no enjoyable jobs. But then I realize that isn't true. I've had a number of jobs I enjoyed. Either because they were something I liked and was good at and excited by or because I worked with people I liked and respected. Invariably I wind up leaving when a manager leaves and the replacement is worse than useless. My current job sucks--assembly line work as a fill-in worker on Mondays and Fridays. So I either shoot 2 screws and install a latch and a piece of Styrofoam every 16 seconds for 8 hours or I sit around and surf the 'Net on my phone/sweep floors/sort dropped screws/etc for 8 hours. But it meets my needs for pay and maximizing free time to grow my business. And the people I work with are good. Were. They're setting up a new assembly line for our product and our team lead had been over there a lot so this chubby older woman was filling in for him. Meanwhile, his backup got promoted to a different job so a woman who started around the time I did is filling in for her. And Shelly is no Bob while Lora is no Rachael. They're nice people, don't get me wrong, but they just don't get things done, solve problems, and make things work smoothly the way their predecessors do. We regularly just run out of stuff. I wound up learning where the screws are so I could make the rounds and keep everyone supplied.
Last night I was supposed to show Lora how to do basic repairs because Shelly was out the last couple nights. (If a subassembly has a defect like a part that won't fit or a stripped screw, there's a little workbench at the end of our line where you can take it apart, fix the problem, and then put it back into the line to be added to the final product.) We had about 3-4 subassemblies ready for repairs, so I hunted down Lora, who was sitting on a chair in a little alcove, BS'ing with one of the lazier, more useless workers, so I got her and started showing her how to do door repairs. The Plan was to do one myself, walk her through one, and then just watch her do one and only help her out if she got stuck. Finished the first repair and she was like "Oh, I've got to go take care of [blahblah]." So I go find something else to do and wait for Lora to come back. Eventually, since you don't want too many repairs to pile up, I went looking for her. [Blahblah] was done and she was back on her chair, tucked behind a rack, BS'ing with Fat Lazy Girl. So I went and fixed doors. And she never came and asked me to continue training her for the rest of the night.
Meanwhile, we were running low on a part I can't go get myself, so I went looking for Shelly to let her know. She was over in the break area, talking to someone on her phone. So I went to find some way to kill time until she got off her phone. When I got back she was over in the repair area--oh, forgot about that, the repair area also doubles as her "gear bomb"--her lunch and drink and clothes and stuff are strewn all over it so you have to rummage around it to actually work--anyway, she was over there talking to the New Useless Big Boss. I mean, the old Big Boss was pretty useless, but this guy takes it to a whole other level. So I went back to find something to do. At this point the machine operator for the part I was trying to find asks "Hey, have you seen Shelly?" And I pull the part he needs out of my pocket to show to him and tell him what she's up to. Eventually she wanders past so I flag her down and the guy points out that he's got about 30 minutes of parts left. This produces a pow-wow of about 4 old, fairly well paid union people, occasionally talking on radios before wandering off in different directions--oh, that's the other maddening thing about Shelly that Bob and Rachael would never do: all the stations are supplied by bins on gravity fed racks; you walk by a rack that has empty space and you pull the empty bins out of the return chute and load new bins onto the feed chute. She *never* does this. Well 15-20 minutes goes by. No more parts. So finally Barton sees the guy going past that delivers the part (and now I know who he is so I can take care of it too) and talks to him. He says no one told him and 5 minutes later he's reloading the rack with fresh bins. Maybe 5 minutes after that Shelly wanders over and tells Barton that she tried to get ahold of someone to get more supplies but no one got back to her. After she left, I went over and asked if she just told him "oh well, I tried" and he said "basically." Here's the thing: If you've got hundreds, maybe thousands of people on the clock, cranking out expensive consumer goods that are on backorder for weeks, you don't let a production line go down because of a 5 cent part--not even for a minute. "Well, I called but no one answered" isn't acceptable. You either go find the person yourself or you send someone. You do whatever needs to be done to keep things moving.
Well, I should get going. Speaking of keeping things moving, I've got a lot of stuff to do in the next week or so. And none of it is getting done while I sit here and bitch about life.