Originally posted on Thursday, June 4, 2009 at 11:40pm ·
Let's face it. The job market is an
epic fail- wow, it's crazy how you pick up phrases from other people. Anywho,
companies downsized, and those unfortunate laid off former employees still need
income and so they migrated and filled in the positions that most high school
or college students fill in for the summer. So, a lot of college students are
traveling home and staring at summers full of constantly bugging employers
about hiring in between bouts of lonely wall-staring and frenzied
job-searching. I would not be surprised to turn on the television in a week and
see, CABIN FEVER DECLARED NATIONWIDE EPIDEMIC. Hm, that brings to mind a
certain song from Muppet Treasure Island. Speaking of stir crazy, here's a little
something to occupy your time.
Today I felt like I'd been run over by sasquatch in a short-circuiting go-cart. You know, randomly mowed down by a hefty load of work. It was awesome. I cleaned safari tents for the fourth and fifth grade camp ALL DAY. Okay, so that's not entirely true, I cleaned a bathroom at the junior high camp, and opened a few meeting rooms for them, which took a whole...hour, maybe. And the rest of the day I was squishing spiders, sweeping pollen, and hiking from tent to tent wishing I had been able to fall asleep earlier than 1am. That's a downside of normally working a night shift, when they suddenly switch you to a day shift your normal sleeping hours get sheared. So, all day my team is cleaning these tents, not for a moment slacking- ever- and at the end of the day everyone gets called in for a talk on efficiency. Did I mention that I had five hours of sleep?- which if I was at school still, would be totally fine, but I'm doing manual labor at a summer camp and only five hours of sleep makes your body start to feel like you've perfected the art of slo-mo.
The best part of today was when I asked my team leader what the funniest radio call she has ever heard was. Her response was, "Well, I'm not going to name any names but one of our coworkers got on the radio one time and said 'I've got some visitors here looking for the Christian Conference Center and I don't know where to send them.'(pause. smile) Really? I couldn't believe she said that." Now, the CCC is essentially the camp I work at, so all that the person on the asking the question had to do was say "Welcome" to the visitors. That poor ignorant person on the other side of the radio that day was actually a team member of mine, whom I had asked to ask that question over the radio because no one was responding when I called. Fantastic, the dumbest thing my team leader (who's been there a long time) had ever heard on the radio was something I asked. Can I get an award for something like that? I like to celebrate all little moments of distinction, they're like funfetti frosting on my cupcake of life. I encourage all people to smother their Life cupcakes in funfetti frosting, it's essential to getting positive satisfaction.
But the day before yesterday I had the opposite problem as I did today. There were six of us being "trained" with a supervisor. Which meant we were done with everything we needed to do on our whole days list an hour after lunch. About every twenty minutes there was a moment of, "Okay.....I'm done, Madame Supervisor.....is there something else to do?" and Mdme. Supervisor would say,"Well, there's vacuuming but Chris is doing that. Or trash but Palmer did that.....you could high-dust-" Glance down the hallway and Janae is already doing that. "Or you could load the truck." I just finished doing that. Crazy efficiency or underestimated workload? I go with the former explanation for the obvious reason that it makes me look good.
So some days it's crazy and some days it's ridiculously slow but it's always easily remedied with chocolate covered strawberries and brilliant sitcoms when I return home. Ah funny, the cure for almost everything.
Today I felt like I'd been run over by sasquatch in a short-circuiting go-cart. You know, randomly mowed down by a hefty load of work. It was awesome. I cleaned safari tents for the fourth and fifth grade camp ALL DAY. Okay, so that's not entirely true, I cleaned a bathroom at the junior high camp, and opened a few meeting rooms for them, which took a whole...hour, maybe. And the rest of the day I was squishing spiders, sweeping pollen, and hiking from tent to tent wishing I had been able to fall asleep earlier than 1am. That's a downside of normally working a night shift, when they suddenly switch you to a day shift your normal sleeping hours get sheared. So, all day my team is cleaning these tents, not for a moment slacking- ever- and at the end of the day everyone gets called in for a talk on efficiency. Did I mention that I had five hours of sleep?- which if I was at school still, would be totally fine, but I'm doing manual labor at a summer camp and only five hours of sleep makes your body start to feel like you've perfected the art of slo-mo.
The best part of today was when I asked my team leader what the funniest radio call she has ever heard was. Her response was, "Well, I'm not going to name any names but one of our coworkers got on the radio one time and said 'I've got some visitors here looking for the Christian Conference Center and I don't know where to send them.'(pause. smile) Really? I couldn't believe she said that." Now, the CCC is essentially the camp I work at, so all that the person on the asking the question had to do was say "Welcome" to the visitors. That poor ignorant person on the other side of the radio that day was actually a team member of mine, whom I had asked to ask that question over the radio because no one was responding when I called. Fantastic, the dumbest thing my team leader (who's been there a long time) had ever heard on the radio was something I asked. Can I get an award for something like that? I like to celebrate all little moments of distinction, they're like funfetti frosting on my cupcake of life. I encourage all people to smother their Life cupcakes in funfetti frosting, it's essential to getting positive satisfaction.
But the day before yesterday I had the opposite problem as I did today. There were six of us being "trained" with a supervisor. Which meant we were done with everything we needed to do on our whole days list an hour after lunch. About every twenty minutes there was a moment of, "Okay.....I'm done, Madame Supervisor.....is there something else to do?" and Mdme. Supervisor would say,"Well, there's vacuuming but Chris is doing that. Or trash but Palmer did that.....you could high-dust-" Glance down the hallway and Janae is already doing that. "Or you could load the truck." I just finished doing that. Crazy efficiency or underestimated workload? I go with the former explanation for the obvious reason that it makes me look good.
So some days it's crazy and some days it's ridiculously slow but it's always easily remedied with chocolate covered strawberries and brilliant sitcoms when I return home. Ah funny, the cure for almost everything.
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