Feb 16, 2008

Break Time



I thought the reader might enjoy a picture of my car. Two words...sweet ride. I'm having it printed so I can carry it in my wallet.



Our rainy and cold weather of the past couple of days has given way to sunny and cool weather. We live at about 2600 feet elevation and it snowed down to 4500 feet, as you can see in this picture. By midweek we will be back into the seventies and before you know it I will be bitching about the heat.

I was thinking about something today while I was at work. It has been decades since I last worked as an hourly employee and some aspects of it take some getting used to.

For instance, I'm not used to having to account for my comings and goings. In the store there are about ten people every shift who have to have time for lunch. It is important that we keep to a schedule. If my lunch is at 11:30, I had better go at 11:30 or the whole schedule gets out of whack and several hungry people get annoyed at me.

Sometimes in coming or going from the store a customer will ask me a question about something. Since I'm not on the clock, I'm supposed to request payment for the few minutes it takes to deal with them. This strikes me like way too much trouble to collect a buck before taxes.

Then, there are breaks. We get two ten-minute breaks, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. Arizona is not one of those states where breaks are dictated by law, at least not breaks for hardware guys, but the management allows for them.

The managers at the store are forever reminding me that it is time for my break because I forget to take them. It's the same as lunch, if I mess up the break times, everyone behind me is messed up. I appreciate the thought, but I'm not really a break kind of guy, mostly because all I can do with ten minutes is to sit alone in the break room. Plus, sometimes I'm too busy to stop and take a break. So, if I can, I just avoid the whole break thing.

Oh well, I'm an hourly hardware guy now, so I guess I'll get used to it.








Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky

4 comments:

Bobby D. said...

Oh for Christ sakes Merle, grab a bottle of water and go chill out in the break room for a few minutes.

Kurt said...

I remember when I worked packaging silk. We all took lunch together, and everyone would go to the lunch cart and spend about a hour's wages on a sandwich, chips and a soda. Huh?

Squirrel said...

I like silk.

Anonymous said...

I wish I got two ten minute breaks. I stand all day at my job.