Monday Sucks

I go swimming three times a week. More or Less. I enjoy it, it keeps my sugar down, and it gives me a good, full body, low impact workout. I arrive at the pool around 6-ish b/c I don't want to share the water with screaming children. It's usually me, a fat guy who doesn't want many people to see his fat, some old people, and a couple of guys who look like they are training for the Olympics. We all spread out and try to stay out of each other's way.

When I get out of the pool I feel heavy. I want to eat then take a nap. But instead I go off to work and I feel fine. Until I climb the 32 steps to my office. Suddenly I am heavy again, barely able to drag my 1 ton legs upstairs.

For the rest of the day I'll wish I could go home. We have a saying at my work- waiting for the shotgun blast. This means that the very beginning of the day is peaceful. If the whole day kept that calm for the entire shift, we might be able to accomplish something. Anything. But instead the managers come out of their morning meeting with an agenda that follows neither logic nor reason. And usually they withold important info because they think we should blindly follow orders without thinking.

We shipped out a machine Friday. We got a new one in today. We also moved one. Being that the managers all knew when these things would occur, the simplest thing would have been to set a date when production would stop. Then we could have done some packing, reorganizing, and arranging. We would have been ready, and possibly had things on a truck waiting to go.

Instead, the batch stopped on Wednesday. That would have been a good time to stop production. But we put a new batch of material on and kept going. Then we assigned more material. Now we have to reassign it, and what we didn't use too.

The new machine arrived at 5am, but the shift changes at 6 so night shift wouldn't start the project and day shift wasn't there. When day shift came in they started moving boxes and opening doors. Around 8ish the project finally got underway. And stopped at 9 for break.

My office mate had an out of town emergency, so I was trying to do her job and mine too. I'd run upstairs, do a little piece of my work, run downstairs, realize I forgot something, up, down, stopped by people who need me to do my job, forget what I was doing, find a mess, downstairs, stopped again, find another mess, remembered what I doing, realize I forgot a report, up, down, up, down, go on a plant-wide hunt for copy paper, steal some off a truck, send Kevin to steal more so I don't have to hunt for copy paper later, find another mess...it was a spin my wheels day. At one point I couldn't do anything because every single entrance to the room I needed to go in was blocked by men with forklifts.

All the while I am so heavy.

Somehow I managed to clear out a little spot. I felt encouraged. Our parts room is terribly short of space. I figured out to re-arrange things to make it a little easier to find things. It would be more of related items all together. But then while I wasn't looking someone dumped some junk in the space. Another mess to clean up. Suddenly I realize I have nowhere to put this stuff and my boss probably won't let me get rid of it, even though we'll never use it again. I look around and see piles and piles of worthless things, outdated parts for machines we don't have, samples for products we don't make anymore, broken things waiting for repair. I feel depressed. And heavy. And boy, do I miss my office mate.

I gave up on my space saving approach. I spent the rest of the day in my office trying to add up monthly costs and making to-do lists. We have two more machines coming. Oh joy.

Today's card is Octopus. 'Travel across earth and over sea to securely embrace your dream.' Don't let the forklifts stop you.