...seriously, I don't need any more.
I should have done this post like six days ago, since most of the drama has resolved itself by now, but I'll entertain you all with its tale as best I can besides.
Friday, February 26, 2010 - I received a call from one of my supervisors claiming to have spoken to me about my schedule. I told her I had never spoken to her concerning my schedule and she corrected, "I mean, you spoke to Eula right?" I agreed that I had spoken to Eula but no one else, (I wanted to make sure I didn't set myself up for a 'well YOU said...' later). She then proceeded to tell me that she had spoken to my Manager and that they could not adjust my schedule to have me off every Friday for school. I was still on the schedule for 2 Fridays a month. I needed to either convince one of the other weeknight girls to swap with me, find some other coverage or take ETO for them.
Now... this is 7 days before I start going to school. SEVEN. I told them before the end of January that I would need this schedule change, and they notify me SEVEN days before I start that I was still on the hook for two Fridays a month. I tell her that there's no way I can afford to take 24 hours of ETO a month for the next six months, and she quickly offers, "Well you could downgrade to part-time status with only two nights a week, though there's no guarantee you'd be able to come back to full time in September."
Dear GOD was that a loaded suggestion. It doesn't take much to look at our schedule and know we're overstaffed during the week but hell would freeze over before I take the fall for their mess. So I told her that was absolutely out of the question. In an attempt to diffuse this situation I told her about the one weekend a month I would have off from school and got signed up to work those Fridays, rearranging the other girl that was covering Fridays to make me only responsible for one Friday a month, including the 26th of March. She suggested I call this weekender girl who had expressed interest in picking up shifts, and while she wouldn't incur overtime, I would lose a whole day out of my paycheck.
I spent the rest of that night trying to figure out what I was gonna do and being in a medium level of agitation.
Saturday, February 27th, 2010 - After work I went home and napped for a little under two hours I headed out to UUCL for the Annual Board Retreat, and found that I was an hour late due to a mistype in the email I had concerning the retreat, my email said 10:30a but I guess everyone else had acquired the correct info elsewhere. Oops. No matter, I spent the whole day there, working on congregational business and planning, then eating at the wonderful potluck that came together (very lucky indeed, sometimes its really hit or miss when it comes to potluck). Tracie and I then stayed after the festivities to chat and obsess over the hall's organization and appearance, altogether very fun and good stimulation for my nit-picky side. ^^ I finally went home around 9pm and went to bed shortly thereafter, completely forgetting to call the weekender girl and ask if she wanted my March 26th shift.
Sunday, February 28th, 2010 - Went to service at 10a at UUCL and it was pretty good, last bit was very much on 'walking the talk' of being a UU (check it out
Here). Had a pleasant lunch with Dan, Tracie, Glenn and Bowen(occasionally, lol) before watching Peter S. Beagle's "The Last Unicorn," my last CUUPS film for a while, though not the last film CUUPS will see since Tracie will be running some films occasionally for the next six months. After the film Glenn, Tracie, Bowen, Daniel and I went to the Circle B Bar Reserve park out by the PSC campus and had a very enjoyable walk through the beauty of Florida's nature.
I was particularly happy to be introduced to this place because I'd been wanting to find a nice bit of nature to start reconnecting to and this place is awesome. Check it out. After a nice hour or so walk Tracie, Glenn and Bowen headed home and Daniel and I headed over to Lakeside plaza for our regularly scheduled BD's Mongolian Grill dinner, LOL.
I should probably mention that he had been trying to talk me into going to see "The Crazies" with him, Alysia and Tom all day, to little effect. I didn't really have anything better to do, but I refused to go see a film that would most likely give me horrible dreams for the rest of the week, if it didn't send me into a full fledged Panic attack right there in the theater. I am an EXTREMELY empathetic person, I feel what other people feel, including abject terror, so you can see the problem with me going to see a horror flick.
Not wanting to leave, but not willing to go see the film, I came upon a much more enjoyable alternative: They went to go see the Crazies, and I went and saw Avatar again. LOL YES! MANDATORY AIKA AVATAR SEGWAY!!! 8P
So, after my Avatar fix (I think this brings my avatar viewing count up to 4 or 5) I drove to my local Super Wal-Mart (hey, it was late and I had fangirly urges to attend to) with every intention of buying yarn, a knitting loom, and as many native style beads as I could conceivably afford. However once beholding their pitiful selection of yarn (not a single roll that wasn't a giant ball of acrylic) and suddenly realizing if I didn't come with specific bead designs there was no way I was gonna buy any beads, plus if I was designing them at home I might as well order exactly what I wanted online. So, I went home empty handed. Happy for my wallet, sad for Aika's inner fangirl.
Of course on the way home I remember that I need to call the weekender girl to see if she wanted my shift, which just put me back on the angry war path. Saturday at the congregational retreat I had told my woes to anyone that would listen, which had placated my agitation, but now I was just plain angry with being saddled with their responsibility.
So needless to say I was in a foul mood when I got home and greeted my mother. My mood was not improved to say the least when I called and asked the girl if she was interested and was told that she "only did Admissions" and didn't know how to do HUC duties. For those not firmiliar with the differences, they are few and pitiful. I could do her job as easily as mine because I'm CROSSTRAINED, a trait this girl doesn't look interested in gaining in the new future. Damn. I was gonna have to get up in the morning, head into work and talk to my team leader about these happenings, and then come in to work that night. My mother had been quiet since I arrived home, warily eyeing my pissy aura. After my failed attempt to get coverage I unleashed some of my malcontent on her in the form of an angry tearful diatribe against my employer and managers. When she didn't placate my foul mood or reply in any way my mood only got worse, but I got quite instead of continuing the rant.
I sat down next to my mother in the living room and after a moment of silence my mother spoke, "I spoke to Bonnie today."
Now this isn't an unusual occurance, my mother talks to her oldest sister pretty regularly, but the way she said it bred forboding givin the form and feeling in the air.
"Joe's been airlifted back to Georgetown and placed in the ICU, they think he's gone into sepsis."
Apparently my uncle had been discharged from the hospital after his hernia repair (which I knew about) but after a very bad night with shortness of breath at home my aunt called paramedics at his request. He was taken to their local hospital before the ER there shipped him by helicopter to the large hospital in Georgetown, three hours away, since his condition warranted it and that was were he was hospitalized last and where all his doctors were. There was a very good chance he wouldn't make it through the night and mother asked if I could pull up the bereavement policy at work in the morning and see how much time she could take off, as a precaution.
Now I've never been very close with either my aunt or her husband, but the threat of his demise was certainly enough to put a damper on my self righteous anger. I spent most of the rest of the night crying and being a mix of worried, angry and nervous before finally going to bed.
Monday, February 29th, 2010 - Finally, some good news. I got up around 930a and went to speak to Eula about the scheduling problem, who was just as surprised and flabbergasted as I was, so there was a healthy dose of justification. Eula apologized profusely for the confusion, that this was the first she had heard of the scheduling problem and she'd do everything she could to help fix it since I was one of her most flexible reliable workers. (Yes, lovely ego stroke, it's not conceited if it's true ^_~) I thanked her, made plans to speak again on Tuesday and went home to grab a few more hours of sleep. I spoke to Eula again at shift change that night where she said she made a few calls but her best prospect was Lisa who worked the PediED on the weekend, but since it was a Monday she had worked the previous night and Eula hadn't wanted to risk waking her. I told Eula I was gonna talk to Kerry (the supervisor that had called me on Friday) and see if I could get a list of the dates I needed to have covered. Work that night was relatively uneventful and I finally went and talked to Kerry at around 0930. After talking with her the problem became very apparent. I was hired on into a full time 72 hour position and Kerry was unable to find another weekday shift to give me that didn't push the already overstaffed schedule into critical mass. But she couldn't NOT give me a third shift, but I could ask for those shifts off and either take some ETO or work upstairs. Her problem wasn't in staffing those Fridays, it was in staffing ME. Well that changes things. She told me to just pick one Friday a month and she would shuffle everything else around it, she even said I could put in an ETO request for March 26th, even though the deadline for it to be in had passed. I went back to my desk and put together mock schedules for the next six months and picked my Fridays to ask off, arraigning it so that the days I picked only appeared once a month and once a schedule. I made out my request slips and attached my mock schedules to them and popped them in the box. That problem was solved.
Eula then told me Tuesday evening that she had spoken to Lisa and for all intensive purposes she was game to pick up March the 26th. Sweet, disaster averted.
But no more... please no more.
I have enough to deal with, lol.
Like Alice in Wonderland!!! Yay IMAX 3D Midnight showing!!!
Aika
