We Do Still Exist!

Well, I did tell you I wouldn't be posting very much while at Amazon, and I sure didn't lie :-). We have been pretty busy here, although our outbound shift hasn't had as much overtime as in previous years and Al's overtime in Amcare didn't start until two weeks ago, unlike previous years where he went to 50 hours a week right away. But rest assured, we are still pretty tired :-0. I feel the most difficult thing we had to deal with this year was Al's schedule, There were a few weeks where he was doing a couple of night shifts and then a couple of day shifts. It wasn't easy to adjust to that at all, and hope he doesn't have to deal with that in coming seasons. I have a healthy respect now for people who work swing shifts on a regular basis, it isn't easy at all.

We have had a few difficulties here at Green River Lake State Park that were unforeseen. Sadly, the emerald ash borer has infested the beautiful trees in the park, and all of the ash trees were slated for removal this fall. They did not know this was happening until mid-October. The consequence of this was mostly for those of us working the night shift, and trying to sleep during the day when the chain saws and bobcats were hard at work :-(. We also ended up having to move sites halfway through our time as the row we were on was slated for tree removal. Not only did they not want to work around us, but we certainly didn't want to take any chances of a tree falling on us!

It has been, shall we say, an interesting season here in Campbellsville. Mid-November they recruited 100 of us Camperforce people working here at SDF1 to move north to there facility in Jeffersonville Indiana. After they left, any of the Camperforce workers who were working on the inbound side of SDF1 were moved to the outbound side of operations. So there was a big influx of new workers in our department, which was pretty nice as we now were working with some of our friends. But then they moved some of us around to other departments as well! I was trained on what they call "problem solving" which involves taking packages that have been "kicked out" of the shipping conveyors for various reasons and trying to figure out what is wrong with the order, and then correcting it. It can be pretty easy, such as just putting a new shipping label on it, to complicated...such as a wrong item was packed and you need to figure out what it was supposed to be and where the wrong item was supposed to go....to completely stressful, such as your label printer going down and the whole conveyor line of packed items getting backed up higher than the Great Wall of China. So, as I say, its been an interesting season.

We have one more week to go. Our release date is Saturday night at 11:45. We will start heading towards Florida and the warm and sunny weather on Monday 12/22, making it home in time for Christmas Eve dinner with Al's family. We are looking forward to it, and the next couple of months when we have many plans of seeing visiting family and friends. Until then, happy shopping...at Amazon :-).