Blue Door Warehouse

In the back alley at work we have a warehouse that we call the "Blue Door Warehouse."  It has (as you might have guessed) a blue door.  We also call it the "Old HGF Warehouse" because before we moved all the materials to the blue door warehouse they were in the office building that used to house HGF's offices.

It has books and marketing materials.  The books are mostly partial boxes that our real warehouses don't really want to store and one or 2 full boxes of each title so we have some more accessible.  It also has most of our marketing materials: t-shirts, buttons, pillow cases, folders with materials about how great we are, etc.

In December 2012 we planned to do a full inventory of all warehouses, including that one.  The inventories of our 2 "real" warehouses were completed in December and we are on schedule to finish the blue door warehouse physical inventory tomorrow.

It doesn't help that the person hired to do the inventory has worked 4.5 hours in the past 3 months, but some interns have also been helping.

After the inventory is done then some of the items need to be reorganized because they weren't all put back in a useful place.  Hopefully we can use the hired help for an extra pair of hands to do that next Monday or the Monday after.  It's going to be really nice to have that finally finished.

Of course, in September we are scheduled to move the office 15 minutes away, but the warehouse isn't scheduled to come with us.  After 7-8 months of getting everything in order we are going to be a 15 minute drive from all of the materials we need to have access to.  Mostly we need them so they can be boxed and shipped out.  I don't know if the plan is to box them up from the current office or drive them to the new office first.

I can't figure out why they aren't moving the warehouse and why they don't expect that our staff will need to be near the warehouse basically every day, sometimes several times per day.

You never know who's on the other end

At work there are only two people who really call me with "Unknown" on the caller ID. Morgan and a PJ program professional. When Morgan calls she always calls my google voice number which also rings to my cell phone. My cell phone usually rings after about 2 rings on my work phone.

So today I said good bye to Morgan and told her to call me if she couldn't sleep. About 30 minutes later my phone rang and the caller ID said "Unknown." I thought oh shoot the program professional called me yesterday and I forgot to call her back. But, I was working on something with Diane so I figured I would call the program professional back in a minute. But then my cell phone rang too. So I told Diane, "it's Morgan, this will be quick."

Then, completely certain that Morgan is on the other end of the phone, I pick up and say, "hey baby." Then I hear, "... is this Lauren?" I then had to explain that I thought it was someone else. I had given my google voice number to JESNA so if they had any questions about the file I sent them they could reach me over the weekend.

Luckily the woman on the other end of phone, after I apologized said, "I don't mind being greeted with 'hey lady'". The whole thing was really embarrassing.

Day 8

Labor Day. I enjoy 3 day weekends. This weekend was a little boring. I didn't leave the house very much. I did give platelets today. It went ok. Not great, but fine. I didn't feel that well starting at about 25 minutes left. On my way out the door I thought I might be sick, but I was able to just sit in the car for a few minutes and relax. I knew I had to eat soon and I didn't really think I should drive all the way home. Especially since there wasn't some one at home waiting for me with a snack like there sometimes is. Instead I went to McDonald's which was just a mile or 2 down the road. I went through the drive through and then sat in the parking lot and ate.

I had originally planned to go see a movie this afternoon, but I still wasn't feeling great after lunch so I came home and watched TV in bed for basically the rest of the day. I was only going to lay down for an hour or so, but I just couldn't get myself out of bed. My arms hurt. It looks like I might have a bruise on at least one of the needle sites. The person doing my needles seemed a little unsure of herself about the whole process. They also hurt a little more going in than usual.

I talked to Morgan today about my coming to visit her. It sounds like she does not have the whole week of Sukkot off, maybe just one day. We couldn't tell from the schedule they had sent. She should find out for sure tomorrow. I was thinking of going to visit her for Sukkot, but I forgot that Sukkot is at the very beginning of October this year. October 3rd. It seems a little crazy to go visit her when she's only been there for a month if that means I won't get to see her again for another 4 months. For some reason I thought Sukkot was at the end of October. It still would have been less than half way through, but it would have been a little closer to the middle. Now I'm thinking more seriously about going during their mid-term break in November. I just have to figure out how to do Thanksgiving in St. Louis and 10-ish days in Israel and making sure all goes well at work.

November was going to be stressful anyway because we were only going to have something like 4 business days to take care of our lists. I think this time my life has to be more important than work.

Day 1

My first day without Morgan. I just got home from work. I can tell that my routine is going to change a lot because I fed Dippy, but I have no idea what to do for dinner. I need to go grocery shopping. I think I have pirogies in the freezer, but Morgan usually makes them. That's her job.

Instead I came upstairs (we never go upstairs before dinner) and now I'm checking my email, etc. I saw something cute that I'd usually show to Morgan, so here you go: a cute squirrel picture from cuteoverload.com.

I stayed at work for about an hour extra today. Maybe Morgan being gone will be great for HGF.

Morgan made it to Israel safetly. She got her cell phone and we talked for probably almost an hour.

I just saw Lynn, Maria and Val. They came to pick up Morgan's car. If they hadn't come back from NYC until later they may have spent the night, but they didn't.

I bought a calling card so I can talk to Morgan a little cheaper. I am going to try to call her at 8 am tomorrow, if all goes to schedule she should be on break. She is going to text me if that won't be a good time.

Did you have a nice day? Day 3

Well, another day. I got to work on time, but I was very tired this morning. I forgot to scoop Dippy last night, but she survived. I remembered to feed her this morning and Toby too.

At work I was super annoyed because I got a really annoying email first thing in the morning. I never understand why people insist on bringing up really aggravating things first thing in the morning when everyone is tired and cranky about being at work.

At lunch I went to the gas station and vacuumed some of my car and put air in my tires. There is a gas station down the road that has free vacuums and air. Then I got lunch at Arby's.

Someone from work did a walk through with an inspector for a house. She is going to buy it. How exciting for her. She's buying her first home. If I knew that I was going to stay in this area for the next few years I'd be looking at homes too. She locked in an interest rate of under 5%.

I finally finished the online renewals. Tomorrow morning we should be able to run the lists. I have a few little things to do like remove the report that is causing an error in our live system but we're using it for testing in our Play system.

I got home and did some dishes and I put in laundry. I also did day 2 of P90X. Then I took a shower and now I'm in bed watching TV. I think I'm about to have some popcorn.

I got to talk to Morgan for about 4 and a half minutes. She seems to have had a nice day. I'm tired and hungry. Popcorn then bed.

How was your day? Day 2

I was worried about getting out of the house on time this morning. Usually Morgan handles the morning pet routine: feed dippy, weigh and feed Toby and give him new hay. Not a lot, but it adds a few minutes. I also couldn't get to sleep last night even though I was really tired.

But, I woke up, took a shower, got dressed, fed and weighed the babies and got out of the house on time. Then, on the way to work there was a truck blocking the whole road. It was trying to back up, but it didn't really have enough room. I sat there in a line of cars (I was 3rd) for a good 2 minutes, watching and helping by saying things out loud like, "oooh, you're not going to make it" and "watch out for the curb, watch out for the tree!" I hit a moment where I thought he was never going to make it and I should go back and go around. Then 30 seconds later I saw that he was going to make it and was slowly backing up, but would be out of the way in about another 30 seconds. At that moment 2 cars, one in front of me and one in back of me chose to turn around and go another way. I was surprised because it was clear that we were about to move.
By the time the car in front of me had finished the U-turn in the middle of the road we were driving. It was strange. Even all that, I got to work 5 minutes early.

It was a quite day at work because HG, Marcie and Ed were all out of the office.
There was a little ruckus in the morning because AB had sent RJB a meeting request for 8:00am for a conference call, but AB did not show up until 8:45. Turns out the meeting was at 2:30 pm and AB forgot to change the meeting request from the default time.

I did learn that they are building a new Olive Garden in West Springfield. When it opens we are going to go there for lunch. It's supposed to open late November.

I did not finish the online renewals today like wanted, but I did get a lot of other things done. We also had a pretty good hour long conference call with the Salesforce implementer.

I got home around 6 and fed Dippy. I had a big bowl of corn and a giant slice of ice cream cake for dinner. Then I did a P90X work out. A word to the wise: don't do P90X after eating ice cream cake for dinner.

I got to talk to Morgan tonight! Except, half way through the conversation she stopped being able to hear me. I heard here saying, "hello? hello?" Then, all of a sudden she said, "oh, I'm sorry, I must have the wrong number." Yeah, google voice cut out in the middle of our call and connected her to someone else. Weird.

Anyway, now I'm off to bed. I can't wait until the weekend.

It's started...

Morgan has gone to California for a week. I'll be spending a lot more time at home when "my Mom's in the shower."

I do miss talking about my day, but she's not gone for long. The good news is, you get to hear it.

Got to work at 7:00am. It wasn't worth it to drive 30 minutes home, spend 30 minutes at home and drive 30 minutes back to work.
At around 7:30 I went to McDonald's to get a coffee and 2 hash browns. Then I went back to work and there was still no one else there.

I was really tired so I ended up looking around at some of the Jewish links for Western Mass. It's relatively related to work. I noticed that there was a link to a Kosher Bed and Breakfast in Springfield! Shocking because, apparently it's the only Kosher hotel/motel etc in Massachusetts outside of the Boston metro area. Who knew it would be a tiny B&B across from Forest Park. Of course this is really only mildly interesting as I have no real need for a B&B 30 minutes from my house.

We walked to Celery Stalk for lunch and I got an egg salad sandwich. It was hot, but not as humid as yesterday.

I got my produce box delivery. I'd forgotten to write a check so I paid cash this month. I got: red leaf lettuce, corn, blueberries, cherry tomatoes, beets and a giant cucumber. I was excited. Now I have to figure out what to do with all that food.

I skipped the 3pm stretch break because it was supposed to be 90 degrees. Instead we moved the coffee into my office at work. The coffee used to be in the conference room, but we are loosing the conference room and they will be putting in two old cubicles from across the street. I cleaned out one of my drawers in the filing cabinet. It only had book samples, so it wasn't hard.

We also moved the checks from my office to the new bookkeepers desk. This means I don't have to lock my door every day, so now I won't miss the trash pick up in the morning.

I left at 4:30 because I was really having trouble focusing. Somehow 200 people filled out the online renewal form in the last 2 weeks. Usually only about 50 people per week fill it out. It might have something to do with there being no reply envelopes in the first batch of letters inviting people to renew.

I watched my movie from Netflix. I'm going to send it back tomorrow in hopes to get another one soon. I gave platelets a week or so ago and I started to watch "Yes Man" but I finished with something like 30 minutes left. It's been driving me crazy that I don't know how it ends so that's next from Netflix.

Tomorrow I hope to finish online renewals and finalize everything so we can run US lists. What fun.

Careers again

Well, last year I took some career tests to see what I was best suited for. You can see the results here.

As I've been struggling lately with what I want to do with my life and how I am basically miserable at work I took another free online test.

Here are the results:
1. Construction and Maintenance 100%
2. Manufacturing 89%
3. Administrative & Clerical 34%
4. Transportation 32%
5. Natural Sciences 22%
6. Engineering & Architecture 20%
7. Agriculture & Forestry 9%
8. Finance & Management 8%
9. Health Care 8%
10. Technology 5%
11. Law & Criminal Justice


The best part is the suggested jobs under Construction and Maintenance:

* Janitors and Cleaners, Except Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners
* Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners
* Pest Control Workers
* Landscaping and Groundskeeping Workers
* Pesticide Handlers, Sprayers, and Applicators, Vegetation


Basically I'm not well suited for the work force.

Potential career paths

Possible Career Paths for the ISFJ:

• Interior Decorators
• Designers
• Nurses
• Administrators and Managers
• Administrative Assistants
• Child Care / Early Childhood Development
• Social Work / Counselors
• Paralegals
• Clergy / Religious Workers
• Office Managers
• Shopkeepers
• Bookkeepers
• Home Economics

Or these:

Category	Percentages
Sales & Marketing	100
Manufacturing	100
Construction & Maintenance	100
Technology	100
Finance/Accounting	83
Entrepreneurs	80
Agriculture/Forestry	60
Mechanical/Electrical	50
Administrative/Clerical	50
Business & Management	40
Visual Arts	40
Natural Sciences	38
Social Sciences/Services	33
Education	33
Creative/Performing Arts	10

Leaving the picnic table

After this week at work I realized that working with my child boss is unbearable. I spend 75% of my work time wanting to rip my hair out or beat someone. Especially since we are hiring 2 more people she is on this power trip, I think about being able to "supervise" all of them and getting an office (I can't believe they think she needs an office. It makes me so angry). She keeps saying things like, "I think that'll be a great first task for the new person." I keep thinking, "your kidding me. One person already started and you were so unprepared for her to start she has worked there a full week before anyone even started to talk to her about what her job would be or give her anything to do that was her job."

I despise work. I spend the other 25% of my time there trying not to think about how much I hate it.

I'm torn between quitting and then finding a new job (I really want to quit so badly) and waiting to find another job before I quit.
But in my 8 months there I have gotten a total of just over an 18% raise. That's not bad for 8 months.

I mean if that continues maybe it's worth being miserable. Is it? No. It's not, I hate being miserable.

Also it's getting dark so early now. Stupid daylight savings time. I like the "extra hour" of sleep, but I hate it being dark at 5:00 instead of 6:00 all of a sudden. I mean it gradually gets darker earlier and then BOOM 1 hour earlier!

So, I'm making a commitment to actively look for a new job. Any ideas?

No more picnic table?

Well, we are moving from the 2nd floor of the building we are in to the 1st floor. So, they are building new cubicles for us. I am going to get a real cubicle. It will be 6 feet by 8 feet (which is bigger than the cubes everyone else has now.

We are moving in a few weeks.

I won't be able to send any more note from the picnic table!

Why work is stupid

We have marketing materials. We send them out. We often send people several copies of the same thing, "just in case." We generally waste a lot of my time putting them together and sending them out and a lot of money on creating them. We are in the processes of totally revamping all the marketing materials. They will be completely new in a week and a half. But, as of today I still need to put together 50 of our "blue folders." Do you know what the executive director said when I suggested that instead of buying more folders and sending these out now we wait until the new stuff is ready? She said, "I want to strike while the iron is hot. We can resend the new materials later." So I'm going to spend the next day putting together 50 "blue folders" for people who and in a week and a half I'm going to need to redo this mailing with all the new materials.

Sunday Night Blues

The Sunday Night Blues are terrible. There is nothing you can do to prepare. There's now way to know if this Sunday you'll be hit with the Sunday Night Blues or if you'll be safe. Tonight I have the Sunday Night Blues.

Raise

Stapled to the back of my paycheck and everyone else's paycheck today was a letter, that I only skimmed before opening the paycheck.

The letter was addressed "Dear Employee"

It had 4 paragraphs and after skimming it I had no idea why they had attached it to my paycheck. The only thing that really stood out was that they were talking about a NCAA coach. 3 of the 4 paragraphs mention John Wooden.

So I opened my paycheck and noticed that there was a note saying that my hourly wage had been changed from A to B. I immediately checked to see if this was an increase or a decrease. It turns out it was an increase, a 3% increase.

Then I decided to read the letter again only this time actually read it. The last sentence in the third paragraph (the only paragraph that does not talk about Wooden) says, "We are happy to recognize your effort to perform consistently at your best with the raise contained in your paycheck this week."

Just so you know it's not just me, 2 other people skimmed the letter and had no idea it was about us getting a raise.

So there is an upside and a down side.

The upside: it seems once a year everyone gets a 3% raise. It just turns out I've only been here for 4 months and I got it too.

The downside: it seems raises have nothing to do with your performance so no matter how hard I work I'm not eligible for more than a 3% raise once a year. But maybe, just maybe, if I really do awesome Harold will make something happen for me.

Until then, I'm 3% a year richer and that's a nice thing.

Change in Holiday Office Closure Policy

Today the executive director walked around and said, "all staff in the conference room" so everyone gets in the conference room. I think that maybe they're going to tell us what to do in case of a tornado since the sky was very dark and there was a tornado watch. But, no, they pulled everyone together to talk about a change in the policy for Jewish holidays off. The policy used to be that if you celebrated a Jewish holiday you could take it off paid but the office would remain open. But people felt that wasn't fair to the non-Jews, so now the office is closed on the following days:
The first and seventh day of Passover
Shavuot
Rosh Hashanah (the first day)
Yom Kippur
Sukkot
Shmini Atzeret

This is in addition to the regular holidays (yes, there are pathetically few of them):
New Year's Day
Memorial Day
July 4th
Labor Day
Thanksgiving
the day following Thanksgiving
Christmas

So, now there are 14 paid holidays instead of 7. Not bad, eh? Ok, fine, I'm sure it's not as good as what you have, but at least I'm better off than I was.

Schedule

My schedule from STCC arrived in the mail today. Conveniently enough I also took a long lunch and went to the bookstore to buy the book for my class. I was glad that in my 45 minute lunch I was able to drive to STCC, go into the bookstore, buy the book, drive around campus to find the building where my class would be held, park the car, walk around the building to the right entrance, walk to the fourth floor and peer in the window, drive back towards work and stop at McDonald's and walk back into work stopping to talk to some people in the conference room for a minute. That is good since class will start at 5:45 and I'll get out of work at 5:00. I shouldn't have any trouble getting there on time. I'm all set, just a little over 3 weeks before I start.

On another note the director talked to me yesterday morning and said that she wanted me to be happy and that if I wanted to I should talk to someone at work who is leaving to see if I want to try and move up within the company to take her job. I don't think I do. I heard her talk about her job a little bit more today, and while I still don't know exactly what she does, it was pretty clear that it sucks a lot of the time.

On a totally unrelated note I finally got to play with Crystal reports today. And I made a huge step forward in writing the report that I want. Then I did something stupid and now I'll have to completely redo it again on Monday. A word to the wise. If you're not sure the thing you're about to try will work be sure to save first! Well, you live and you learn. But I had a great day because I really enjoy playing with the program and trying to figure it out.

So, I guess things are looking up.

Trying to get away

Well... I did it. I registered an Accounting 1 class. It's at Springfield Technical Community College, not a fantastic school, but close to work and has a convenient class. I was looking to see if there were any classes at any of the schools around here. So I went to stcc.edu and looked at the summer 1 session classes. And I think it was a sign, but the first class listed was Accounting 1. It either was a sign or the list was alphabetical.

Anyway, I registered. The bookstore is open from 8-4. Tomorrow I'm going to call to see if I buy the book over the phone how long it would take to get to me. Classes start June 4 and end July 5 from Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from 5:45 to 9:15.

On another note after sending out two mailings today, one of 81 and the other of 125 the director asked how I was liking my job. I told her I was hoping it would be more challenging and interesting. She said that she knows that I'm very capable and will try to see if there are more things that I can begin doing and I should speak up if I see something that I can do. So, we'll see what happens.