Let's not do that again

As I rolled into Cracker Barrel this morning for my "I survived another rotation" breakfast I thought to myself: I just worked ten out of the last twelve days. I juggled this in my head for a few moments, then I realized that most people with full-time jobs also work ten out of twelve days, counting from one Monday to the next week's Friday. But for the rest of the world, those ten days add up to eighty hours. For me, they add up to one hundred and twenty hours, a 50% difference. With overtime payment for time over 40 hours in a given week, that works out to one hundred and forty hours of pay.

Other people do this all the time, essentially working two out of every four days off. This isn't just to maximize the size of the weekly paycheck, which can be considerable, but also to maximize the quarterly earnings for calculation of future unemployment compensation. Unemployment, temporary or permanent, is a certainty in this industry.

But for me it's a bit much, working two sixty-hour stretches with only two days off in between - and one of them a recovery day when I should have been sleeping. I'm more tired now than I should be. I signed up for overtime again, but this time just for the first night before our rotation, Wednesday. That will turn next week's thirty-six hour paycheck (for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday) into a fifty-two hour pay. Not too shabby!

Still, I hope I can survive.