Work, sleep, eat. Take two Tylenol and repeat. That's life right now. Tonight gets even better...12 hour shifts start for the next week. Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday I will be fulfilling your Amazon orders from 5:30PM until 6:00 AM. Oh boy!
No more news than that, except the lake is finally receding. They are releasing water a little at a time from the reservoir. Al took a little video of the torrent for your viewing pleasure.
Hopefully my next update will show that 1. we've survived peak season 2. the house closing is finally done, and 3. our holding tank has been replaced. Until then, please cross your fingers for us!
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Bits and Pieces From Kentucky
It's the middle of my "week-end", and my system got all messed up. We were scheduled to take the trailer up to Shepardsville to have the holding tank replaced. Debbie had called last Friday with the welcome news that Keystone was going to cover the work under warranty. Kudos to them for that, and many thanks to Debbie for her perseverance in discussing the matter with them. We worked the night shift Monday night, so we arrived home at 4AM, slept for a couple of hours, and left the campground at 7:45 AM for the trip up there. We arrived shortly after 9AM, and of course, you do know there's a "but" coming again, right? Keystone had shipped the wrong tank! Oh, arghh. So, we are rescheduled for next Tuesday, provided the tank arrives by then. I was rather frustrated, as I was looking forward to having a working toilet again, especially as its supposed to get cold here over the next few nights. So instead of holing up in a hotel room sleeping while the trailer was worked on, we turned around and drove back to the park and set-up again. Its amazing what the body will do on two hours of sleep if it has too!
Speaking of the park, we have an issue here as well now. With all the rain we've been having, and even more to the north, the rivers are full to overflowing, and the lake has been rising. A lot! A couple of weeks ago the COE released water through the dam to lower the level, but they can't do that again without causing severe damage below the dam. So our water levels are rising here. We've been given a notice about it, telling us the park is monitoring the situation, and we need to be prepared to evacuate if necessary. Goody. Less than 3 weeks to go, and we may have to move. Again, oh arghh. Some folks have moved to Heartland RV Park today, but we are going to wait. We are in the highest area, so hopefully it won't come to that.
I was moved back to Receiving last Friday for my work week. We were told that the plants in Tennessee and South Carolina were having difficulty keeping up with shipments, so trucks were diverted here to Campbellsville. They then needed more help in Receiving, so us trainable, flexible camperforce people were asked to help out. Alrighty then! Monday night our department actually broke the record for number of units processed on shift, so we all received a reward at the end of the shift, which was really nice. I received a $5.00 gift certificate to a restaurant downtown. Not too shabby, right? They also treated each shift Sunday night to a chili and baked potato dinner at meal break, and there's been Christmas carolers entertaining us during meal breaks. Nice.
On the New York front, it looks like we may be finally closing on the sale of the house. My lawyer called yesterday with the news that we should be closing Friday morning. Yay! That will be one more thing off the list of things that need attending to. Welcome news indeed.
So, 18 days from now and we will be making tracks for Crystal River for Christmas, and then on to Otter Springs for our first camphost gig. I so have fingers crossed for a nice winter in Florida. The weather there has been good so far! Just two more work weeks to get through ;-). I can do it!
Speaking of the park, we have an issue here as well now. With all the rain we've been having, and even more to the north, the rivers are full to overflowing, and the lake has been rising. A lot! A couple of weeks ago the COE released water through the dam to lower the level, but they can't do that again without causing severe damage below the dam. So our water levels are rising here. We've been given a notice about it, telling us the park is monitoring the situation, and we need to be prepared to evacuate if necessary. Goody. Less than 3 weeks to go, and we may have to move. Again, oh arghh. Some folks have moved to Heartland RV Park today, but we are going to wait. We are in the highest area, so hopefully it won't come to that.
I was moved back to Receiving last Friday for my work week. We were told that the plants in Tennessee and South Carolina were having difficulty keeping up with shipments, so trucks were diverted here to Campbellsville. They then needed more help in Receiving, so us trainable, flexible camperforce people were asked to help out. Alrighty then! Monday night our department actually broke the record for number of units processed on shift, so we all received a reward at the end of the shift, which was really nice. I received a $5.00 gift certificate to a restaurant downtown. Not too shabby, right? They also treated each shift Sunday night to a chili and baked potato dinner at meal break, and there's been Christmas carolers entertaining us during meal breaks. Nice.
On the New York front, it looks like we may be finally closing on the sale of the house. My lawyer called yesterday with the news that we should be closing Friday morning. Yay! That will be one more thing off the list of things that need attending to. Welcome news indeed.
So, 18 days from now and we will be making tracks for Crystal River for Christmas, and then on to Otter Springs for our first camphost gig. I so have fingers crossed for a nice winter in Florida. The weather there has been good so far! Just two more work weeks to get through ;-). I can do it!
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Guess What?
My personal Amazon adventure continues :-). My work week started Black Friday. Our first inkling of the mayhem to come was the traffic backed up to enter the parking lot, the jockeying for a parking space, and the line to simply enter into the warehouse. I was a half hour early, having driven in with Al, and watched the day shift masses departing. Wow! There's a lot of people working here now.
I wasn't sure of where to report to, as I had ended my week working in receiving. A phone call to the CamperForce office manager informed me to report back to CrisPlant for packing. So that's where I went. Would it surprise anyone to hear that my name wasn't on the roster...and neither was Laura's name. We reported to our PA (Process Assistant), explained our situation, and he said "oh, you're supposed to be in Singles". Uh, no, we were transferred to Crisplant last week. "Oh, that's right, you went to Receiving. That's where you'll be from now on". Uh, no, that was just for the weekend. "Oh, ok, wait here". Finds the manager and finds yes, we belong to Crisplant now." Ok, well, you're extras tonight. Come with me. " Wow, this can't be good.
Well, we ended up working in SLAM that night. IF you want a mind-numbing, brain-cell killing job, this it it. For 10 hours, I stood at the beginning of the shipping conveyor, as the bar-coded packages came up from Crisplant, and made sure the boxes were straight and right side up so the bar code scanner could properly read the bar code in order to affix the shipping label to the box. I never say this, but...O..M...G!!! I would rather be back in ICQA again (and for a humorous view of that wonderful job, check out Darrell's blog here) than ever do that again! I was so frustrated at the end of that shift that I was thinking of going to HR and see if they would transfer me back to Receiving...at least I know that, I'm pretty good at it, and it occupies a few brain cells. But I decided to wait and see how Saturday went.
Saturday, again, no names on the roster. Again, check with the PA. A different PA. A PA who was truly wonderful! Finally! Heard our story, and talked to John the manager. He made sure we were assigned to CrisPlant, and then adopted us into his area. So Saturday we learned a new process, "buffering". This section of CrisPlant, "Rebins" is where orders are manually sorted rather than by the conveyor system. As the totes full of goodies come down the conveyor, we grab it, scan the tote with our scanner, and the scanner tells us what "buffer" to put it in. A buffer is a marked out space on the floor, and there's anywhere from 5 to 20 totes in a buffer. There's 40 buffers laid out. There's a total of 8 orders in each buffer. When a buffer is finished, it gets moved to the "rebin" area, where it is sorted into the 8 separate orders and then sent to a packager. So Laura and I buffered until the second break, and actually had a decent time. The people working there were fun, the work was fast so the time went quickly, and you used your brain cells to keep track of everything. The last 2 hours of the shift we worked on packaging the orders.
Sunday we were actually on the roster, and worked at Crisplant order packaging all night. And Monday we were on the roster again, but assigned to Rebin again. We buffered until the meal break, and the last half of the shift we were taught another new task, the rebinning sortation. This is the sorting of the buffers into the 8 individual orders.
So, in the 5 weeks I've worked here, let's see what I've done:
Receiving
ICQA
Prep
CrisPlant packaging
SLAM
Buffering
Rebinning
Am I versatile or what :-)? Al is still applying band-aids and ice packs, and knows everyone I think!
Thanksgiving was nice, with about 40 people from the campground gathering at the restaurant for dinner. The weather that day was beautiful, but has been lousy again, raining for the last 3 days. It doesn't really matter, as we've been doing not much besides working, sleeping and eating, but a glimpse of sunshine would make you feel better. We are still waiting for word on our holding tank, and I surely hope it will be a swift shipping and repair, as it does get old schlepping down to the bath house to use the restroom. Especially in the chilly rainy weather.
My mandatory overtime night this week of Wednesday has been changed to a voluntary overtime night, and I have elected to not take it. There's a couple of personal issues have cropped up that I need to be available for, so I won't be on again until Friday. We'll see what new adventures the new workweek will bring :-).
I wasn't sure of where to report to, as I had ended my week working in receiving. A phone call to the CamperForce office manager informed me to report back to CrisPlant for packing. So that's where I went. Would it surprise anyone to hear that my name wasn't on the roster...and neither was Laura's name. We reported to our PA (Process Assistant), explained our situation, and he said "oh, you're supposed to be in Singles". Uh, no, we were transferred to Crisplant last week. "Oh, that's right, you went to Receiving. That's where you'll be from now on". Uh, no, that was just for the weekend. "Oh, ok, wait here". Finds the manager and finds yes, we belong to Crisplant now." Ok, well, you're extras tonight. Come with me. " Wow, this can't be good.
Well, we ended up working in SLAM that night. IF you want a mind-numbing, brain-cell killing job, this it it. For 10 hours, I stood at the beginning of the shipping conveyor, as the bar-coded packages came up from Crisplant, and made sure the boxes were straight and right side up so the bar code scanner could properly read the bar code in order to affix the shipping label to the box. I never say this, but...O..M...G!!! I would rather be back in ICQA again (and for a humorous view of that wonderful job, check out Darrell's blog here) than ever do that again! I was so frustrated at the end of that shift that I was thinking of going to HR and see if they would transfer me back to Receiving...at least I know that, I'm pretty good at it, and it occupies a few brain cells. But I decided to wait and see how Saturday went.
Saturday, again, no names on the roster. Again, check with the PA. A different PA. A PA who was truly wonderful! Finally! Heard our story, and talked to John the manager. He made sure we were assigned to CrisPlant, and then adopted us into his area. So Saturday we learned a new process, "buffering". This section of CrisPlant, "Rebins" is where orders are manually sorted rather than by the conveyor system. As the totes full of goodies come down the conveyor, we grab it, scan the tote with our scanner, and the scanner tells us what "buffer" to put it in. A buffer is a marked out space on the floor, and there's anywhere from 5 to 20 totes in a buffer. There's 40 buffers laid out. There's a total of 8 orders in each buffer. When a buffer is finished, it gets moved to the "rebin" area, where it is sorted into the 8 separate orders and then sent to a packager. So Laura and I buffered until the second break, and actually had a decent time. The people working there were fun, the work was fast so the time went quickly, and you used your brain cells to keep track of everything. The last 2 hours of the shift we worked on packaging the orders.
Sunday we were actually on the roster, and worked at Crisplant order packaging all night. And Monday we were on the roster again, but assigned to Rebin again. We buffered until the meal break, and the last half of the shift we were taught another new task, the rebinning sortation. This is the sorting of the buffers into the 8 individual orders.
So, in the 5 weeks I've worked here, let's see what I've done:
Receiving
ICQA
Prep
CrisPlant packaging
SLAM
Buffering
Rebinning
Am I versatile or what :-)? Al is still applying band-aids and ice packs, and knows everyone I think!
Thanksgiving was nice, with about 40 people from the campground gathering at the restaurant for dinner. The weather that day was beautiful, but has been lousy again, raining for the last 3 days. It doesn't really matter, as we've been doing not much besides working, sleeping and eating, but a glimpse of sunshine would make you feel better. We are still waiting for word on our holding tank, and I surely hope it will be a swift shipping and repair, as it does get old schlepping down to the bath house to use the restroom. Especially in the chilly rainy weather.
My mandatory overtime night this week of Wednesday has been changed to a voluntary overtime night, and I have elected to not take it. There's a couple of personal issues have cropped up that I need to be available for, so I won't be on again until Friday. We'll see what new adventures the new workweek will bring :-).
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