There's just something about having to get up at 4:30 am in the morning that starts one thinking about the meaning of life after retirement.....
Week 5 started out by having to report at 6 am and on Tuesday, an overtime day. Mandatory overtime. So we grudgingly dragged ourselves out of bed to face the frosty cold of the northern Nevada desert. Then after about 3 hours at work we heard rumors that several shipments got cancelled for the day so they were letting people go home if they wanted to. Hey, we wanted to! So we did.
The sad thing is once we got home we didn't know what to do with ourselves!!! It was cold outside, there's nothing much to do in Fernley, didn't feel like driving to Reno, no friends to hang with. Sad, sad. So we started thinking about 5 o'clock somewhere.....somewhere warm like the Caribbean, New Zealand, Arizona....
Week 5, day 2 we again forced our cold, stiffened bodies to report to the house of conveyor-clanking white noise and concrete floors for another 10 hours of mindless labor. However, again being short on shipments that day, they were letting people go home or reassigning them to different tasks. Remembering the day before, we didn't go home as there was nothing to do there. I got reassigned to "ICQA", a quality-assurance task. My task for the day, the entire 10 hours mind you, was to count the number of items in bins. Just that - pull everything out, and count how many widgets/lipsticks/dildos/USB cables/shampoo bottles/you name its that were total in that bin. Punch the number into my handheld computer and have it tell me "good" or to count again. After the second count, if it didn't like the total, it said "defective" and I went on to count the next bin.
So after 10 hours of that, guess what I dreamed of all night!!! You think counting would put you to sleep, but let me tell you, obsessive counting is a NIGHTMARE!!!
So the next morning we again forced our tired, cold, aching stiff bodies out of bed at 4:30 am, had coffee and tea, looked at each other and said, "Let's pack the RV up and go south", NOW!.
So we did! And by Friday afternoon, 5 o'clock somewhere was in Quartzsite - blue skies, bright sun, fun friendly people, and 84 degrees!!!
Hello Arizona, good bye Amazon.com!
Monday, November 11, 2013
Saturday, November 2, 2013
HARDENED!
End of Week 4. I guess we are HARDENED because we actually got off work (50 hour week) and are not so tired that we are in bed by 7:30 pm. It's 9:30 pm, we just finished watching a movie and are still WIDE AWAKE!! Whoa, what animals!
Friday, November 1, 2013
What We Sell....
OK, here is one of the more interesting items that one can acquire via our company:
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Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Blood From Turnips?
Wednesday, October30, 2013
Day 2, Week 4. The four-day workweeks have turned into
five-day/ten-hour work weeks. We had
volunteered for overtime last week, but THIS week it was mandatory. We did get to choose our day (Tuesday). But NOW, they’re saying “we’re in the
overtime situation” and overtime will be mandatory each week from here on out;
for our shift the day has been set to Tuesday.
So much for the 40-hour work week!
Also, another treat. Starting next week,we have to report to work
at 6 a.m. and work until 4:30 pm.
That’s to allow us the “opportunity” to work voluntary overtime of another hour per
day. HA! So now they tell us we can work up to 55 hours per week. The only redeeming thing about the new start
time is that it coincides with the end of Daylight Savings Time, so with “fall
back” we really end up starting work at the same time as we have been.
Week 4 – after this week we are
supposed to be fully “hardened”. I don’t
feel “hard”. I feel tired and
everything still aches (thumbs, knees, feet in particular). We seem to be surviving day to day with
candy and caffeine for snacks and three squares a day. 8-9 hours of sleep a day helps also. I guess I’m a wimp because Rick and I are in
the lower category of age of work campers here. And yes, I’d like some cheese with that “whine”.
The space situation (places to put
product) has not improved. There are
more people in the warehouse at one time now.
Oh, and they’ve implemented a new “system” on our scanners so they can
keep track of how long we take on breaks now too!
Whip, whip! Work slaves work!!!!
Saturday, October 26, 2013
8 Weeks to Go!
We SURVIVED Week 3 of five 10-hour days!!!! Our bodies are adapting and our minds are shutting down and we are becoming Amazon-bots. It's not so bad.....
I haven't looked forward to 15 minute breaks and 30-hour lunch breaks so much since I started working at age 19!!
Certain faces we see every work day are becoming familiar. There's Richard, who leads the stretches, always chomping on his gum (or chew????) Alejandro, our favorite "water spider" (person who loads our stow carts). Rick, our manager who periodically wears an "eggshell" on his head (impersonting Howie Mandel). Our "class of 2013" camperforce co-workers - Ed, Carla, Chris, Maximus and many others.
These last few days I have been starting to enjoy certain aspects about stowing. Namely, SHOPPING. While many of the items I put away are not interesting to me, there are many that are. Today I stowed about 24 HUGE bottles of "Passion Lubricant"; these bottles were at least 24 ounces each with pumps. WHO USES THAT MUCH LUBE????? IS IT FOR ORGIES OR WHAT???????????? Hey, and THAT sort of item could be stowed right next to several copies of the ESV New Classic Reference Bible....whoa!
I must admit after reading how this company processes orders, it is fascinating ---supposedly it is the only company in the world that can pull an order of up to 30 items together from a 900,0000 square foot building/3 levels high and do it with 45 minutes of getting the order. FM!!!! It's a systems masterpiece.
So now we have two days off. MANDATORY overtime next week, so it's back to work on Tuesday, the start of Week 4.
I haven't looked forward to 15 minute breaks and 30-hour lunch breaks so much since I started working at age 19!!
Certain faces we see every work day are becoming familiar. There's Richard, who leads the stretches, always chomping on his gum (or chew????) Alejandro, our favorite "water spider" (person who loads our stow carts). Rick, our manager who periodically wears an "eggshell" on his head (impersonting Howie Mandel). Our "class of 2013" camperforce co-workers - Ed, Carla, Chris, Maximus and many others.
These last few days I have been starting to enjoy certain aspects about stowing. Namely, SHOPPING. While many of the items I put away are not interesting to me, there are many that are. Today I stowed about 24 HUGE bottles of "Passion Lubricant"; these bottles were at least 24 ounces each with pumps. WHO USES THAT MUCH LUBE????? IS IT FOR ORGIES OR WHAT???????????? Hey, and THAT sort of item could be stowed right next to several copies of the ESV New Classic Reference Bible....whoa!
I must admit after reading how this company processes orders, it is fascinating ---supposedly it is the only company in the world that can pull an order of up to 30 items together from a 900,0000 square foot building/3 levels high and do it with 45 minutes of getting the order. FM!!!! It's a systems masterpiece.
So now we have two days off. MANDATORY overtime next week, so it's back to work on Tuesday, the start of Week 4.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Hump Day, Week 3
Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013
Today was HUMP day in our five day
week. It was GRUELING! Rick got assigned to Green transship, and I
to Blue transship. Transship is slow
going to start with, then compounded with crowded bins it becomes an exercise
in frustration.
I am so tired tonight. I feel like I’ve run a marathon. I tried to boost my “numbers” today and
busted ass the first half of the day.
Yeah, that got me a miserable 65% productivity. After lunch, the “water spider” (person who
loads the carts) told me to take a cart that has a lot of books on it to boost
my numbers. Well, after doing that, I
got my numbers up to 68% -- whoo!
Rick got stuck this morning with
carts full of large items and no place to put them. If someone had mentioned numbers to him I think he would told them to do unspeakable things to themself. (Don’t blame him.)
The one “joy” I had today was
finding an area in Gray (adjacent to Blue) that actually had space, thus
reducing my frustrations. But alas,
after lunch break, some person who has more rank than I informed me that I
couldn’t stow there anymore and go to Blue (where there is very limited space).
There went the day. By 4:30 pm I was
limping around, lamely looking for a large space for a HUGE book. Nightmare.
All this being said, it makes one
appreciate a good meal (which I cooked) and being able to SIT DOWN, and
finally, SLEEP. It never ceases to
amaze me how the body regenerates itself.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Making the Big Bucks
Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2013
So today was an overtime day. Not too bad since it was the first day of
work after a two day break. What do we
do with our days off? Oh, very exciting
things like laundry, grocery shopping, surfing the internet for hours, watching
movies, shopping in Reno, going to the Great Basin Brewery and eating Jalapeno
Wontons…..the important thing is WE’RE NOT AT WORK!!!!
Today was just the usual….spending
hours (10 to be exact) attempting to find locations in bins for hundreds of
items. I had a lot of dog chews and
light bulbs to stow today. Good thing
it wasn’t dog jerky from China – we hear on the news tonight that the FDA is
investigating the deaths of hundreds of dogs due to bad jerky!
Rick had a lot of black-wrapped
sex toys; two of them came up as “high value” and had to be turned over to the
problem solver. Just imagine, a super vibrator sitting next to a new Ipad
in the high value lockup!
Rick was bitching all day today
about how he used to work his ass off avoiding overtime that paid him four
times more than what he made today….I asked if he wanted some cheese with that
“whine”.
Tonight we are watching Warren
Buffett and his son and grandson interview on TV, their book, “40 chances”, will probably be at our warehouse
tomorrow! Cases and cases….
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