Multiply 365 Day 221 - Adrenaline anti-rush

 

I think I am finally starting to lose my momentum a little bit. I still have three days left out of 20 in a row at work and while I did get a boost with the removal of Curtis this past weekend, I am thinking the buzz is starting to wear off a bit. Not that we have been shorthanded, at least my crew hasn't been. Last Friday Ed had hired Sammy's son, Shane, and put him on my crew. He has been training with Sammy and I for most of his first week and has been doing a better job than I would initially have expected. Not that anything we do is all that complicated, well some of the stuff I do may be a little more complicated, but the stuff that my crew is asked to do isn't all that mind challenging of work, more labor intensive than anything else. And Shane seems like a good worker in that regard.

Tomorrow will be the big test, we have a Pepsi truck coming in, the first one Shane has ever experienced. 236 cases on it, a baby order for Sammy and I, and with three people it will be even easier, but still to the untrained it will seem and feel like a lot of work. I guess technically it is, I just don't dwell on it that much. Once you get used to catching a couple hundred cases every week, you almost become numb to the process.

As long as my crew remains reliable and doesn't shy away from work, I am sitting in the cat bird seat. Again today there was at least one call off upstairs, and as I was leaving around 3:30, one of the 3pm crew still hadn't arrived yet. I am not sure how Ed tolerates it at this point. I would be all kinds of “off with their heads” and just bringing in new people. I know it would leave us short handed in the short term, but if they aren't there, then we are short handed anyway, so there is no benefit to keeping a name on the schedule when there is no better than a coin's flip of a chance that they will actually show up. Sorry, you just can't run a business that way. Not that any of us have the greatest jobs on the planet, but if you dislike it that much, then leave.

I did get to talk to Dee today. She is still in Florida, doing some work for Ed on the how to's behind setting up a pawn shop from one of his business contacts down there. I guess she is just doing an eyes and ears sort of thing, watching what the guy does, asking the relevant questions, etc. But she was talking to Ed today and Ed's hearing being what it was, he put me on the phone to get the relevant information (she needed another copy of a pawn broker's license printed up) and then I handed the phone to Ed. No harm, no foul, right? Ed starts talking to Dee again and the next thing I hear, Ed is saying “Dee says she misses you Matt”. Now I am not reading anything into this at all, I have firmly established that that avenue leads nowhere, but it still twisted the dagger just a tad. Unintentionally I am sure, so I shot back, “Yeah, I have that effect on women.” Then I said I miss her too and went back to my work, which I think at the time was finding grocery wholesalers for Ed to buy more stuff from. I swear the man shops like a woman some times. I already know that we are expecting a very large order from Pricemaster, another wholesaler he deals with. By the way he has been talking about it, it is going to be a very large order, and all of it is going to be unmarked, so I can see just hours of rearranging the stock room to make room for this order, followed by hours of hand tagging each item in the order itself.

Well I am off to get some sleep. 17 days down and only three to go, but one of which I double up with volleyball tomorrow night. On the plus side I am celebrating the end of this run (and the demise of Curtis) with a breakfast sundae at Deluca's Saturday morning. A banana split on a Belgian waffle sounds really good right now.