Long Day's Journey

When our paychecks were handed out on the 20th, they came with a memo about holiday closures. The last two weekends have both been closed, and while the evening shifts have all been open, several daytime shifts during the last two weeks have been closed.

One of the day shifts that was to have been closed was today's shift. Having seen this memo, our day shift manager scheduled a trip to Colorado around the weekend to see her son, who just got back from Iraq. Then our all-knowing project managers decided on Tuesday that we needed to have a day shift today after all. So she was pretty much stuck.

That's where I came in. Being
a) a generally helpful guy, and
b) appreciative of a little extra cash,
I agreed to cover her shift.

So I've been here since 7:30 this morning. It's been pretty interesting. In the three-plus years I've worked here, I've never actually worked a day shift. Sure, I've worked Saturday mornings aplenty, but that's not the same. Day shift jobs involve calling people at work, so there's a different dynamic in place. The people who work the day shift are a little different than our night-shifters—they tend to be older, more mature, and more self-motivated. They also tend to assume that not all of the rules apply to them, but that's a different issue.

All in all, it's been a pretty good day. It's been busy, so the time has gone by quickly. I've been here for 10.82 hours and counting. I should be out of here in another hour or so. I have to run the End of Pay Period report in addition to all the normal reports at the end of tonight's shift, but it doesn't take too long. And I've already done some preemptive record-keeping for 2006. That'll make some of my fellow supervisors happy. As I said, a pretty good day.

One hour of work left for the year. Fun stuff.