Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Too Early...

3:15 a.m. is just to early to be getting up, no matter what it's for. As usual our business seems to pick up the last quarter of the year. Just when everyone is becoming busy with the Holidays and shopping. What's nice is the production associates are now back to 40 hours after being on 32 since March. And I should mention that fact that I am grateful to have a job when so many people are still losing their jobs or out of work. The downside to this is by mid January they will be back to 32 hours unless the industry picks up.

Our company Christmas party this year is an on-site event. The boss raised quite a ruckus around here regarding the party. Our work week for production is Monday-Thursday. The Christmas party is being held on a Friday afternoon. He took it upon himself to change the work week schedule to Tuesday through Friday so everyone would be here for the party. I think having a Monday off would be nice, but also see the conflict others are having. Not many of the production workers have attended the Christmas parties in the past. I have never been to one, simply because I don't enjoy them. I enjoy going out with the people I work with in a comfortable environment. The problem that arose with switching the hours is that some people have taken part-time weekend jobs to make up for the loss in hours. He's now telling these people to take either take off from those jobs or take a vacation day from here for that Friday because he's not changing the schedule. A few unhappy campers around here now.

Yesterday we received an email with details of the party. It's from 2:30 to 4:30. We are scheduled to work 5am-3. He was asked if we were shutting down 1/2 hour early to attend and they were told they can shut down at 3 and go. I'm almost certain that no one will be attending the event. It's not mandatory. The problem here is that this is considered a during the work day event. Beside the production employees the majority of the work force have a 8-4 or 9-5 workday. They are being paid to attend the event and odds are will be there the entire time.
He was asked if we could work 6-4 and shut down at 3 and go. Denied. So he came to me to find out why all the complaints when he tried to do something nice. He didn't want people to have to come in on their off day. After a brief discussion regarding production workers attire and hat hair and not much time to clean up or change I think he understood a little. The question from him that I couldn't answer was "How many production associates do you think will come" and "how many do you think will take off after their 10 hours are in"? I'm guilty of being one of them that will take off. Not because of the pay, but simply because I feel we're being forced to attend an event.

Sometimes you find the most unlikely people listening to Christmas music. It's a nice change for an hour or so a day but they've got it blasting out on the lines. Big old goofy guys singing along to Janet's favorite donkey song.

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