Some thoughts on the new schedule

First, a car update: I ran out of windshield washer fluid on the way home today. Fortunately it was raining at the time, so I didn't really need it. Also fortunately, I had a gallon in my trunk ready for an emergency refill. But I just had my windshield washer refilled when I had my last oil change. How the hell long has it been since then? I was always so dependent on my odometer to tell me when to go in for an oil change, but with the speedometer out of commision, the odometer was also not working for most of January. At my calculated rate of 1000 miles every 17 days, that means I put on at about 1650 miles since the odometer stopped rolling. I may be well overdue for another oil change.

I'm going to miss having four days off at a time. Four twelve-hour days followed by four days off seemed like a pretty good deal, except for the part about working four twelve-hour days. But I always tried to make the most of my four days of, without doing anything that might actually be considered "work" or "looking for a better job."

But I won't miss these hours. Twelve hours of work is exhausting, and you come home too drained to do anything much. And 3:00 in the morning is too damned early to be getting up.

My new job, like my most recent job, is on an hourly schedule. Punch in, punch out. Well, in this modern world, swipe in, swipe out.

In my previous job I was on salary, which meant I could stay as long as I wanted and still get paid the same amount. In the end I was working bizarre hours, a 9:30 to 7:00 shift designed to accomodate customers on the West Coast (cough Californians cough) who would always wait until the end of the day - their day - to start calling us to ask for information or finally answer our time-critical questions. Much of the later part of my day was spent waiting for these last-minute calls. It came as a bit of a surprise to our customers when I changed my schedule and started answering their calls - they had been looking forward to leaving a message, and then getting all huffy the next day about us delaying their projects by not being available when they called.

So many days I would put in nine-and-a-half or ten hour days which consisted mostly of making a lot of phone calls, sending a lot of e-mail messages, and doing a lot of waiting for responses. Well, and a hell of a lot of other stuff, too.

My point is, each day now starting next Monday, after eight-and-a-half hours I will be booted out of the building and into the midafternoon sunshine.

I'm looking forward to that. For as long as it lasts.