Not so lite

Since the change to workstations, WS5 has been referred to as "tetra lite" as it has fewer responsibilities than the old tetra zone but had nothing added to it.
Whenever someone came back from a long vacation in the past, they would be in the tetra zone, because it was busy.
I haven't noticed that as much lately, but last night was my first night back after a ten-day break, and I was in WS5.

There was one additional tetra line running, which MH took over in WS4, so I could have had it worse, but it was just like old times.

I made it eight hours before I started to lose it. Nothing was happening in one of the workstations, so Tea was able to take over for me and I went home and went to bed. I could easily have fallen asleep mid-medpass audit.

Creepy, awkward, charming

Last night Junior made the entire lab cry with laughter simply by rolling a squeaky-wheeled cart back and forth repeatedly.

If I were to describe her in three words, they would be: awkward, creepy, and charming.

Dread

When this week's schedule came out, I checked who I was working with each day and immediately knew that last night was going to awful.

I was correct.

There were four of us. Myself, our newest recruit (who is not fully trained), one freshly signed off training, and Tea.

I used to hate working with Tea, but she really held her own last night. The new guy was fine, got all his work done, tried to help out when he could, and asked intelligent questions when he needed help. The other one, however, somehow made herself extremely busy all night, but accomplished, as far as I could tell, at most four hours worth of work in the twelve hours we were there.

I do not understand.

Nightmares coming true

A few weeks ago, MH had a dream that one of our newer techs left a huge number of samples until the very end of the shift and was super busy and MH had to try to organize this neverending epic run.

Last night wasn't particularly busy, but we were short-staffed, so ESL seemed way busier than it otherwise would have. Both fillers were running, which is something new that we are all still getting used to, plus it was combined with the bag in a box zone.

Toward the end of the night, the epic run was completed, but it wasn't yet written up. MH was very concerned that her dream was a premonition.

Back on 12s

Last night was our first twelve hour shift of this round of twelve hour shifts (I hope it lasts more than a week...).

There were only three of us working, and all week there are combined zones and short-staffed shifts, even with the twelves . I don't know how they expected to leave us on our regular shifts this week.

In any case, it was just MH, SK and me. It was perfect.

Lately every time I'm one of three techs, I feel like I'm the one doing all the work and cleaning up other peoples' messes.

Last night was not like that at all. I kept busy, but no busier than the other two girls and we all still had plenty of time for breaks. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come.

JB goes to days

Last night was my last night working with JB. I am off tonight and she is going to first shift as of next week.

The strangest thing about this turn of events is that I am now the most senior lab tech on third shift. I have been working here for almost two years.

If I were to go to first shift, I would be the lowest in seniority.

Exhausted

I was honestly so tired I have no idea what happened last night, other than the fact that I somehow arranged things so I could go home early.

Next week we go back to 12s for real

When you are used to working 10 to 6 and you have to work 6 to 6, it can be a little rough getting to work the first day, but once you get through the first hour or so, it doesn't seem like you're there any longer than usual. When you are used to working 10 to 6 and you have to work 10 to 10, it feels like your shift will never, ever end.

Last night I worked the wrong twelve hours. Twelve bag in a box audits. Not much else. Easy night that felt like the longest, busiest stretch imaginable.

Extended Shelf Life

We test the shelf life, presumably of all of our products, but in the lab specifically, we test the shelf life of our ESL gable top carton products, namely milk and a couple of kinds of soy. (Also 4oz products recently, but that's another story.)

The company is currently doing a study to determine if we can extend the shelf life another five days. Basically that means that for however long they are studying, we are supposed to check the taste, odor and pH of a carton of milk per side per filler per flavor per codedate exactly 65 days after production.

Our shelf life test cartons are stored in the lab cooler. There are sections for each shift, but beyond that, cartons are basically put anywhere and then things are piled on top and it becomes a chore to find them 65 days later. People also tend to see all these cartons of milk and think, "ooh, I could use some 2% right now..." and the cartons disappear or sit open and half empty until testing. Ew.

Last night, MH and I (mostly her) organized the ESL shelf life.

We threw out overdue cartons, paired up same flavor same code, put everything on the correct shelves and put them in order by date.

It was about two full hours in a refrigerator. Awesome.

OK, DK

DK can be an utter bastard sometimes, but other nights he is chatty and funny and wants to be everyone's best friend.

Last night was a chatty-friendly night. When he is in that mood, he tends to stop one person and talk to them without pause for far too long.

Twice last night he trapped me and wouldn't shut up until I was late for an audit.

I can't interrupt him because he's my boss, but shouldn't he know I have work to do? He's the one who's going to yell at me when it's not done.

Five o'clock five day

For four lab techs, there was very little work to go around last night. Whether it is a slow night of not, I like to get all of the dailys and micro testing done as early as possible and then relax if it stays slow.

I did everything I could early. It didn't get really busy later on, but it definitely picked up in the last hour. It mostly got busy because SK didn't realize she had two kinds of five day until the end of our shift, left an 0330 check and an 0145 plating sample until about 0530, and had a start-up.

And that kind of insanity is why, yeah, I get annoyed when everyone's sitting around chatting halfway through the shift with work sitting in front of them not getting done.

Thermal overload

The most important test on most of our products other than white milk is total solids.
The machines we use to measure total solids can also measure moisture. Moisture and solids make up 100% of a product. The moisture percentage is 100 - total solids; the solids percentage is 100 - moisture.
Simple enough?

The machines default mode is moisture, even though we don't use that setting at all. One of these machines had an error last night (thermal overload, happens when the machine gets rated with the cover not locked closed. To fix the error message, you turn it off, wait a minute, and turn it back on. When it turns back on, it is in moisture mode.

For a soup whose solids are approximately 2.85, the readings if you don't change the settings say 97.15 M.

The tech testing this soup didn't know about the thermal overload and somehow read the 97.15 as .97. She called the tetra supervisor because the solids were less than half of what they should be!

Both lines got shut down, they were running to check the raw tank, get a line fill, find the problem. How could the solids drop out like that and the salt still be okay?

They figured it out eventually, but the panic and chaos caused because someone just wasn't paying that much attention? Hilarious.

Blind Samples

With our allergen testing program, we are required to test a set of blind samples each week and send our results to the soy company to prove we're doing it correctly.
I have been trained in allergen testing for something like five months now. There are only six lab techs currently trained to do allergens, including myself. I repeat, blind samples are tested on a weekly basis.

I tested blind samples for the first time two nights ago!

I was a little concerned that I would fail them, not sure I filled out the paperwork correctly, kind of hoping I'd fail and get kicked off the task...

Walking in last night, DK pulled me aside and asked me if I would do more allergen testing. Apparently, I aced the blinds and now KS is freaking out about how good I am at allergens.

Boop

Junior has this habit of imitating any noise she hears.

When the phone rings, she repeats the ring before answering it.

This little quirk is funny as heck, but also seems to be contagious. It's not just Junior anymore.

Everytime the phone rings on third shift, "boooop," every lab tech in the room repeats, "boooop."

Monthly

I had very little to do last night and Junior refused to let me help her.
DK said he had a task for me and handed me a stack of papers.

What he handed me was a checklist (two, actually) that are completed on a monthly basis as part of our SQF compliance. They go through a list of items and the person filling it out must check if the department is compliant or not, and if not must record details and corrective action. The items include cleanliness and whether all the lights are functioning and if the ceiling leaks and if employees wash their hands after using the restroom (how DK would know if the six women under his supervision wash their hands in the bathroom is beyond me).

I have completed these checklists before. In fact, I filled them out just a couple of weeks ago.

I said, "Okay, DK, but didn't I already do these?"
He says, "When?"
I say, "I don't know, maybe two weeks ago?"
..."What month was it two weeks ago, RC?"

ohhhh.

Everything was good, except I checked no for the cleanliness of the floors, walls and ceilings and then had to scrub them so DK could fill in the corrective action was completed.

Start-up sheet

I was in the zone formerly known as pudding last night. The flavor had just changed to chocolate before my shift started. There was about eight hours worth of chocolate pudding to run. (Incidentally, it ended three minutes before my shift did.)
At the beginning of any run, the lab tech is required to sign off on a list of items (the product looks right, the case code is correct, the solids are good, the cups weigh the right amount, etc) and deliver that sheet to the person operating the pudding line.

Often, someone will call looking for the start-up sheet two minutes after they start, when the beginning samples are still sitting there and they can actually see that the lab tech has not gotten samples yet, let alone finished testing them.

Other times, the lab tech (i.e. moi) brings the start-up sheet down halfway through the run and hands it to the operator, who looks from the sheet to me as if I am trying to hand her an enormous spider. Or at least an uncapped needle. Essentially, looking at me as if I am crazy, she has no idea why I want her to have this thing, and she really wishes I would just disappear.

Guess which one happened last night?

Finally I understand

Last night there were only three techs scheduled, including myself. There are supposed to be five of us, or possibly four on weekends or holidays. So far, every time I have been one of three because of a call-in or a scheduling hiccup, it has been pretty much a nightmare. It has never been truly busy on those nights, but I always feel like I am running around all night doing all of what little work there is while the other two sit around chatting.

Last night, it was me, the only person with seniority over me on the shift, and Junior (as in Smitty Junior, orrrr Super-tech Junior).
It was easy! I did some work, but so did everyone else! After complaining for weeks, I finally see that it does make sense to just have three of us some nights. Maybe they should just pay more attention to which three of us are there.

Get your stories straight

When I walked in, JJ told me all the hot ICs would transfer to CSM2. The only one still there went to IC1.

V-dogg told me he'd transfer 60,000lbs. Then he told me 30,000 from each. Then he transferred 30,000 from one, waited a few hours, and transferred 30,000 from the same one.

New girl, SN, told me organic 2% was coming from PT1 and PT2.... That's not even possible.

One of the blenders came in and asked me the solids on YH1. Nobody ever asked me to check YH1. V-dogg tells me to check it in twenty minutes. (New blends should agitate for at least half an hour before a check). Beavis came ten minutes later and said it just finished blending.

They told me to take my time with a check, so I went to lunch. When I got back, JM had already checked it because they needed the answer immediately.

Brilliant. My paperwork was a mess. Also, splattered yogurt all over myself. Oh and sprayed Beavis with water from the second floor.

Quote of the night

I don't feel well, I drank too much homoport.

Just a coincidence

You might already realize this, Internet, but in case you haven't figured it out, I am not exactly a girly girl. I have also never gotten along with my father very well, I was never a daddy's girl.

In my entire life I have been referred to as a "lil princess" exactly twice.

Both of those times have been while working this job, and both by members of the blending staff.

This just did

At the very end of the night last night I went to bring a garbage cart to the dumpster. The temp working there made small talk with me while we threw the lab trash into the compactor. He asked me if anything funny had happened last night. I said, "oh there's always something" but I couldn't think of anything specific. Then I wondered what I could possibly blog about...

  

Yes, i'm making a Jersey Shore reference

MH and I were sitting in the clean room, calibrating the cryoscope when she says, "so...I like pickles."
There was enough of a pause after that comment to make it seem like a completely independent thought. I laughed. She couldn't finish the story because I was laughing at her.
Once we collected ourselves, she continued, telling me about a barbeque she had attended with her boyfriend and that there had been homemade pickles and that her boyfriend had made the generalization that all women like pickles...because Snooki does.

Monday monotony

There's something about twelve hours of milk audits that just fries my brain. Eight or nine hours in I realize I have no idea what I've even been writing on my audit sheet because I'm just so locked into the routine. Like when you're driving a real familiar route and you don't remember the drive but suddenly find yourself at your destination.

Noooo (vartis)

The worst torture I have endured at work lately is spending half of a twelve hour shift without an ally but with the hope of leaving early and then after working my tail off to make that happen, not being able to leave.

Saturday nights' alright for tetra

Lucky DR got to leave early since nothing was going on. I wanted to go home but she had a bad case of seniority. 

Why I can't hold on to a bad mood

My job sucks sometimes, but I really do have the greatest coworkers ever. I was in a terrible mood last night, I hadn't eaten or slept much on my night off, and soy pudding was not making things any better.
I was frustrated and extremely cranky.

Picking up on this, all of my coworkers started doing my work for me to the point that I had to stop them and tell them I wasn't that busy, I was just being obnoxious. They acted like I was having the most overwhelming night in history until I just had to smile and relax.

Another DK classic

There is a customer or a representative from an equipment company or... Someone who is emailing DK ...whose last name is Bonekat. We imagine this name is probably pronounced Bon-kaht or something along those lines, but DK kept saying "Bone-cat" and then meowing. Not likely to please Mr. Bonekat, but it made my night.

I'm not actually sure this happened...

I think last night at some point Junior said something ridiculously awkward and then whistled part of the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme in the deafening silence that followed.
It was perfect.

Zen-frickin-soy

My very first day at the factory, zensoy was running in ESL. I tested it my very first day of work. It was the first thing I learned to do.
It runs about once a month. Since my very first day, I have tested zensoy base from tankers and after recieving, I have tested blends of zensoy, maybe even prismas... but until last night, I hadn't tested zensoy offline in ESL for the entire year and nine months I have had this job.

Escape

I know I'm repeating myself, but gelatin makes me want to clock out for lunch, walk straight past the breakroom, take everything out of my locker, get in my car, drive away and never come back.
Especially when I am simultaneously running main lab because my best beloved Smitty quit without giving notice and they didnt change the schedule to compensate.

Beavis love

As much as other lab techs get frustrated and even angry with Beavis and his crazy ranting and not being able to understand what he's talking about half the time...I really miss him when he's not here.

Nightmares

I have this recurring nightmare where I'm in ESL and I keep trying to get my audit, but everytime I walk out of the lab, the filler's down and then when I walk back in, it starts up again. This happens a bunch of times and then I go out to the filler to tell the operators to pull my samples for me when it starts up but they can't hear me or can't understand what I'm saying...

Pudding/bnb

Last night, I was in pudding and bag in a box. For twelve hours.

Neither was running or blending. I had no five day, nothing for second shift, no day 1s, no 14 day, no cream receipt, no tetra lines...

I had 48 hour that I had to wait until 2200 to do. That's about it.

I thought summer was supposed to be the busy season?

Just a slow week

Seems like whenever I'm in main lab lately there's nothing going on.

Karmic forces are clearly trying to atone for all those billion plating sample nights I had a few months ago.

Thanks, karma, but this is getting boring.

No, I'm not having a bad day...

One of the filler operators asked me, while I was in the liter filler room and cursing TEA for I don't even remember what, if I was having a bad day.

I looked at him, confused. I wasn't having a bad day at all. It was a really easy shift, I had junior there and not much was going on that we were overwhelmed or anything.

I told him, I'm not having a bad day, I'm just having a bad minute.

I had a lot of those in the course of the night.

Not sure whose judgement I question more...

#1 (I think we are still not friends but he did finally apologize for being such a jerk) had an accident last week and got 15 stitches in his right forearm.

Last night, in the blending control room, with GP and myself looking on, he had JB remove them.

A Welcome Change

For a few weeks now, mostly since RD moved to first shift and since SK, the new girl, came to nights, I've been noticing that I am one of the most senior lab techs on 3rd shift. The newer people come to me with questions, as if I know anything, and trust my answers. 

It's weird!

Last night, however, SK was there, but so were the only two other third shifters who have more seniority than me. The most pressing thing anyone asked me was when I was planning on taking my lunch break. It was nice

Let out early after a significant amount of whining about having nothing to do

This here is half a blog post for my half a shift last night.

Enjoy it as I did the extra sleep.

Junior is literally killing me

I hate to admit this, even to you, Internet, but I occassionally smoke cigarettes. Very occassionally. I have been about a pack a year smoker since middle school. It is not really a big deal or much of a health issue because it is so rare.

Every now and then, when we are having a rough night at work, pretty much everyone wants a cigarette.

I occassionally smoke on my way home. Junior occassionally "borrows" a cigarette from someone and takes a smoke break.
The last time she took me with her and we discussed buying an "emergency" pack to keep at work for nights when it was just necessary.

I decided I couldn't do that, because that's a slippery slope and it wouldn't take long for my pack a year to become a pack a day.

Junior brought in an emergency pack of cigarettes last night.

It was a slow, easy night.

...we took two smoke breaks.

Apparently working at the factory is basically an emergency in itself,

(but probably not)

Just three techs on last night, though they promised us that the only time we wouldn't have all five workstations filled was on weekends and holidays. 

It wasn't actually too busy, but with all the weekly tasks needing to get done, it wasn't as relaxed as it could have been. I covered main lab as well as all the pudding silos. I signed off as having done the water baths after changing two out of the three of them.

At about 0555 I made up a number for the last one without even testing it. Maybe I'll change it tomorrow.

More about sleep

Last night was so slow and I was so wiped out that I literally did my tetra audit each hour and then sat at the main lab bench, put my head down and dozed.

Beavis told me, "you always look so cute when you're sleeping."

Do you ever get used to working nights?

I worked Wednesday night. Without sleeping, I spent all day Thursday moving. I then slept from approximately 2130 on Thursday until 0330 Friday. I continued moving and running errands all day. I tried to take a nap, but couldn't fall asleep. I went to work from 1800 until 0600.

I couldn't sleep when I got home.

People ask all the time how long it takes to adjust to working the night shift.
You don't get used to working nights, you get used to being exhausted all the time.

Lofty goals

I don't even remember exactly what I said to him, but I said something to embarrass V-dogg last night.
Since I'm working twelves and I don't really deal with any of the numbers at present, if MH and Junior aren't there, I am basically bored out of my mind. In order to remedy this situation, I have to decided to begin keeping track of how many shades of red I can make V-dogg's face and, of course, set my sights ever darker.

Bigger stronger faster

When we started working twelve hour shifts last week, the night crew consisted of nine ladies, including myself.

This week, since HG has been let go and two other night-shifters are on vacation, we are down to six women...and one dude.

Essentially, our boy MC has come to nights to replace three other lab techs.

Oddly, none of our supervisors thought it was funny when I made jokes about one man doing the work of three women.

Another one bites the dust

The first thing I('m supposed to) do when I walk in to the lab is read the lab communication log. Last night, I actually did. It paid off. The most recent note in the log subtly stated that HG has been fired.

DK has been not so subtly hinting at this all week, but sometimes he is a great big liar, so it was hard to believe.

Now, Internet, I don't want to come off as s bitch, I feel bad that she lost her job. She is a decent human being and I wouldn't wish the struggle of unemployment on anybody, especially the way the economy is today. Having said that, she was an absolutely atrocious employee who should have been let go ages ago. She was mean and rude to everyone she encountered, she was careless and lazy, and she hated the job.

I will even kind of miss her. Apparently, most of the other lab techs do not feel the same. The note in the log had been copied, highlighted and framed. It was posted on the side of one of the incubators.

My favorite thing that ever happened.

I've mentioned before that there is one tetra supervisor on third shift who is basically amazing and I adore him. I don't know exactly what happened, but that wonderful man lost his job recently. The tetra department and the plant as a whole have suffered a huge blow, even if they don't know it.
I never told this story on here, because it's less effective with initials rather than real names, but it is absolutely ny favorite thing that ever happened.

One day, MH and I stayed after our shift to deal with some low solids at the end of a horizon run. The warehouse people had pulled the last pallet for us, and it was already being gone through by some of the tetra staff. We went over there to find paks from earlier times to test. The tetra supervisor, GW, was there with one of the filler operators. While we were looking, GW yelled at the filler operator in such a way that I not only felt guilty, but kind of wanted to run away and cry, even though he was not addressing me. I'd never seen him angry before.

A few minutes later, MH was in the lab talking to another lab tech (incidentally also initialed MH) while doing the testing and I had run out to grab some more paks. When I walked back in, GW was standing just inside the door of the lab, but where the other MH couldn't see him. Our beloved MH had just asked her if she'd ever seen GW get angry. The other MH said, loudly, as I walked in to the conversation knowing exactly what they were talking about and that the man in question was standing well within earshot, "why, did he scream at you?"

Trying to cover and subtly gesture that he was standing right there, I said, "who, DK?"

And the other MH, in her greatest moment of glory, said, "No, GW!"

It saddens me that this will never be funny again.

Tested and proven

One of the most amazing and strange coincidences at the ol' milk factory involves the milk lines themselves.
Every time, and I mean every single time the milk line is expected to start up or go on a flavor change, it will do so when the lab tech was planning on going to lunch. It's uncanny. It does not matter if it's first, second or third shift. It does not matter if you are trying to head out for an early meal so you can get back in time or if you're trying to squeeze your break in late in the shift once everything else is done. Whatever time of day it is, when you are planning on walking out the door, the processor will walk in with a sample for you.

Ex: it is 0050. I am in ESL. It has been down since an hour before our shift started, about 1700. MH says, "can you go to lunch at 0145?" I say, "sure, unless milk starts up." At 0055, GP brings in my line fill. The line actually starts at 0153.

So very many pudding checks

24 hours of pudding and bnb is enough to drive any lab tech to take a dive off the top of SK1 (the highest point in the plant). But I am still here, Internet, I've lived to tell the tale.

It's not much of a tale, actually, mostly I just ran back and forth across the factory checking pudding silo after pudding silo after pudding silo. I only managed one of my four allowed short breaks (in twelve hours). None of my work buddies were there so I had no one to talk to and I think I'm getting sick!

Super, super night...in the sense that it's finally over.

Is it just me or are the smells around here particularly...vivid...tonight?

Have you ever wondered what it would smell like if you melted banana 'now and laters' into some boiling chicken broth? Have you ever wondered what that would smell like if you did it in a locker room of burly men after an intense basketball game?

Me neither.

But I think I have a pretty good idea, based on what the factory smelled like last night.

You'll be surprised to know you're really not missing out.

Scheduled for allergens

I was on the schedule for allergens plus an actual zone today. I was the third person assigned allergens for
this particular run. I was supposed to just a back-up in case the run went a little long (it was supposed to end midway through second shift) to just get the last few samples done.

The run started a full twelve hours late and hadn't even finished the second of three flavors when I left.

As the back-up, I ran 46 samples from this run. The other two people originally scheduled for allergens did two total.

They all passed, but I did have to re-run four of my samples because my genius mathematical skills briefly convinced
me that five plus fourteen is seventeen.

In even lighter news, DK said something about how he's not the "box police" and I thought I might die laughing.

Iodine

In preparation for the SQF audit, one of the things we've begun doing is the "broken glass report."

Essentially, standards require that we take inventory of all of our glass and brittle plastic once every shift. Because of the amount of glassware we have scattered in various areas around the lab, we are not totally complying with that standard, but we have a sheet where you write it down every time you break something, so that supposedly some kind of inventory could be maintained. It is then checked off daily if something got broken and cleaned up properly, or if everything was "ok".

Junior says (and I am beginning to believe her) that since the broken glass sheet was posted, she has been much clumsier and keeps breaking things. Yesterday, she broke the 64oz volumetric flask that we use for milk. (A $498 value.) Last night, she managed to do one better and dropped a liter bottle of 0.02N Iodine.

The stain on the floor can only be described as epic.
Mopping yielded no result.
"Will chlorine get it clean?" MH wondered. I took a napkin, wet it with straight chlorine and scrubbed a tiny piece of yellow floor. It worked.
MH and I spent well over an hour scrubbing the floor in the back of the lab with scrubby pads and undiluted chlorine.
Once it was clean, we spent the rest of the night taking care of start-ups and plating and what-not...completely high on chemical fumes.

Gel-hell

Last night I was not remarkably busy. I was running jello, which is the simplest product to test and has been much easier to deal with lately because we haven't been adjusting the blends (supposedly they are creating new specs?). As a finished product, we test jello once every hour.

In my eight hour shift last night, I did TWELVE finished product jello audits.

Stats lie

I was wrong about there being a one in fifty chance of #1 speaking to me this month. The chances of him actually sharing a meaningful conversation with me, explaining why he has been or even (yeah right) apologizing for being such a jerk are slim, but he did talk to me last night.

...About my car.

That's not sqf

We have this big, important audit coming up next week. The audit is to see if we meet SQF (safe quality food) standards.

We had a plant meeting to discuss what everyone needs to know, what we need to start doing, and what we need to stop doing. At one point the manager running the meeting told us he was going to tell us how to wash our hands. Not when, how. Awesome.

Anyway, all night and probably forever on, every time anyone sees someone do something...questionable... They say, "that's not SQF."

Things that are not SQF:
-chewing gum
-cell phones
-sneezing in the plating room
-prying open the door to the plant with your safety glasses

Weird night

Last night just started off strange. I witnessed this woman (whose name I could not spell if I...looked at it on her nametag every day....) do this crazy booty dance. I have no idea what it was about, because I just couldn't bring myself to ask.

Within the same hour, I walked into the control room just as JK let rip this big fart pretty much right in my face.

I'm sure both of them were more embarrassed than I was, but everything just felt a little surreal.

allergen shmallergen

Allergens are like this huge deal that they spent months trying to find some time to train me because it was sosososo important that I learn how to do them.

I haven't done allergens in over a month.

I was assigned to allergens/pudding last night, which is kind of a weird combination, but way better than allergens/milk, which has happened a few times. Trying to do a delicate test for particles of milk protein at the same time as you are testing half gallons of actual cow's milk off line every half an hour...that's a joy let me tell you.

I kind of forgot how to do the test.

It took me half the night just to test sixteen samples, which is not a large number at all, but I did it and they all passed.

Yay me.

PS we still have not proved that I am even remotely qualified to be doing this test, since I failed the customer-mandated weekly blind samples the first time and have not done them since.

Got 99 problems and sugar free pudding is always one...

Statistics:
-I understand one sixth of every conversation I have with Beavis.
-Seven out of every ten pudding runs have major problems.
-Twenty percent of ESL chocolate gets put on hold for low/high solids.
-Every "minute" DK needs to talk to you takes at least ten minutes.
-The more viscous, smelly or sticky a product is, the more likely you are to spill it all over yourself.
-It is 80 degrees in the lab, 88 in the plating room. 100% humidity.
-The likelihood of getting an air conditioner in the plating room before summer ends is approximately one in thirty.
-The likelihood of #1 speaking to me before the end of the month is approximately one in fifty.
-The odds of someone in the lab quitting in the next two months are about one in twenty.
-There are currently twenty lab techs on staff.

Sundays are boring with four people

Last week, they only scheduled three techs for Sunday night, which kind of made sense, because it was a holiday and because everyone was working six days, so they couldn't have put anyone else on without giving her off a different day. Because of the holiday, it wasn't so bad having just three of us.

This week, they scheduled three of us on Sunday night, because...they are insane.

I was scheduled as 2&3, which is normal for a weekend and almost always really busy. I had pudding blending, homoport checks, bnb transferring and 48hr and 5 day for both pudding and bnb. With dailies and weeklies, that's more than enough to keep me busy.

RD was scheduled for 4&5, probably with the assumption that all the tetra lines would be down. They weren't, so I took over most of main lab, too.

I forgot my ID card. It was the best possible night to do so, since I only left the lab/production area ONCE all night.

Funny things

I sprayed a hose in the wrong direction. I am a genius.

I discovered a silo of enlive (pharmaceutical and therefor our most strictly regulated product) that hadn't been checked in over twenty hours. Oops!

Junior says, "I won't eat it, but I love it all over my body." ...She was talking about jello. And also being sarcastic.

We are still not speaking, but I overheard #1 singing Mr. Sandman.

DK has definitely forgotten about screaming at me about my attitude problem.

Yet another discussion about using processing terms in the bedroom..."I think we broke a seal, better separate off to be sure."

Unintentional hiatus

It's not that I forgot about you, dear Internet. It's just that I missed one update and then meant to post two the next day (and even knew what I was going to write about!) and then another day went by and another and now it's just been too long to go back and make up for it.

Let's start fresh. Two nights ago, DK yelled at me and insulted me until I cried. Not in front of him, but still. Last night, he was trying to be my best pal again...and #1 made me cry! I am having an awesome week!

In all fairness, I think I may have hurt #1s feelings as well, but at this point he kind of deserves it! (We're not friends again.) I have had a really rough couple of weeks, mostly because of him, but I promise you, Internet, tonight, there will be something funny. No matter how much I get hurt, there's always something to smile about.

So it's okay if you get hit by a bus!

DK likes to believe that the lab would fall apart and we would all waste away without him. He makes sure there are certain things that only he can do.

When a CEM runs out of tape, I have asked him to show me how to replace it so that we don't have to go to hum every time. He gives his, "what would happen if I got run over by a bus?" speech but won't show me how to do it.

Last night, he wasn't working and one of the CEM needed a new roll of tape.

I figured out how to open it (it basically just flips up) and how to change the roll (just slightly above the level of difficulty of changing a roll of toilet paper!). The biggest challenge was snooping through the supplies in the office to find the right size paper.

Not exactly rocket science.

This is why no one on third shift will ever get certified to do phosphatase testing. Unless DK actually gets hit by a bus, I suppose.

Foam wars

Does it make you feel better to think the people who make your food sometimes have fun doing it?

Probably not, if the food is aseptically packaged milk and soup and the making it involves sensitive machinery and complicated sanitization processes.

But anyway, we use this alcohol sanitizer for sterilizing our gloves and I think they probably use it for cleaning, too. And it comes in these aeresol cans, kind of like redi-whip, and comes out as foam.

The filler operators in the liter filler room today may have spent as much time sneaking up and spraying each other with it as they did operating their fillers. It was hilarious and got to a point where I contemplated arming myself before I walked in.

I'm sure the milk's fine.

Early morning rush

I was in main lab (the workstation formerly known as main lab) again last night. I was bored out of my mind for the first five hours.

I had one silo check. One! I had a tetra product running, but even that only took up a few minutes of each hour. I tried to find little things to do. I tried to help everyone else. And then I finally had another check- they needed a first check on some soy that was waiting to run. And then a soup silo finished blending. And milk finished recieving. Then they needed a check on enlive. And while I was getting the soup, #2 asked me to check the medpass at 0530. And when I had some of that under control, I got called to recheck the silk. And the enlive. And the milk. Oh and could you check the BSN at 0520?

V-dogg, the most impatient human in the world, told me to just take my time because he knows they're throwing a lot at me all at once. Whoa.

Sweating in your plating...not sterile.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, KS told us that we would get an air conditioner for the plating room, but only if we learned to keep the door closed.

We've had doors that shut automatically for several months now, which means there is no ventilation and all that hot air is trapped in the plating room. We are also, due to an upcoming audit, cracking down on certain regulations including wearing smocks while plating. The smocks provided are not only an extra layer of clothing, but an upper layer of non-breathable way too big on all us little girls clothing.

I checked today and found that the plating room was approximately 86 degrees Fahrenheit.

I do believe we will get that air conditioner...but probably not before someone passes out or throws up from the heat.

No, seriously can you guys just blend something?

I was in the workstation formerly known as main lab last night. For the first half of the shift I had one tetra product running, plus all of the dailies, so at least I had something to do. Honey ended just after 0200 and I did bloaters (almost always the last daily task) after lunch.

The rest of the night I sat around waiting. If I was a puppy, my tail would have wagged every time a blender walked in, thinking he would tell me to check something. Anything. No such luck.

Terrible

Bag in a box and pudding last night. Lots of silos of cream, transfers, rechecks, jello blends, bnb start-up.

Also, more problems with #1.

I actually cannot remember the last time I was in bnb and did not end up at least near tears at some point.

It's contagious!

Last night, both Beavis and Smitty, two of the most wonderfully clueless people in the universe, intentionally joined in on our continuous stream of that's what she said's.

It was both magical and highly disturbing.

Bzzz

I was not very busy last night.

In tetra, unless it is a really slow night, you can only fit in a lunch break at quarter to rather than quarter after any given hour.

My horizon flavor change started at 0115 and did not end until 0345. In that time, I was almost constantly working. I did seven horizon audits. And if I wasn't completely half-assing the last one, I would not have been able to take a lunch until 0445, an hour and a half before I clock out. Ridiculous!

Let's make a deal

I did bloaters last night even though they were assigned to Junior. I think I am the only person on third who ever does bloaters when I don't have to. I guess I just treat them like any other daily task, but everyone else sees them as this horrible torture that must be avoided if at all possible. I worry that people are going to stop doing them because they know I'll get around to it if they wait long enough.

But last night I had to. Junior told me shed bring me coffee tonight if I did bloaters for her.

Essentially, I just made an extra $3 for doing something I would have probably done anyway.

But I wasn't!

This morning, my second favorite blender on days came in to talk to me and told me he had been warned that I was cranky.

He refused to tell me who had told him. He denied that it was V-Dogg. I hadn't talked to #1 all night and he would have said crabby not cranky. I cannot think of who else it might have been and now it's driving me crazy.

The kicker is that I was in a pretty good mood all night. Two nights ago I was crabby as heck and no one noticed.

On hold for high/low/high solids

Last night I ran soy in ESL for the first time since my very first day.

My very first day, I did not realize how much it sucks to run soy in ESL.

There is no agitation in the steritanks. For milk that just went through a homogenizer, this is no big deal. For soy? Disaster. I don't know why these customers stay with us when half of every run gets put on hold because it's settling out in the tank and the solids bounce around like crazy.

And that's not even taking in to account the bloaters. I put my samples away and had four leakers within twenty minutes. The hot room is going to be a mess of rotten soy. Lovely.

Inconcievable!

I was in main lab (ws4) last night. Since we changed to the workstation system, we have these sheets with a list of tasks that we have to sign off on each night. For workstation 4, this includes auditing silos, enlive controls, hot ICs, audit lines J, K and H, and plating. Other than auditing silos and plating, a lot of these are usually "na" or done by someone else. Just silos and plating could be acreally busy night.

Or it could be like last night. For third shift, I signed off on those two tasks, but all I did was three checks and some other peoples' plating.

I stayed over into first shift and literally cleared the board. There were no tetra silos. That doesn't even happen on Christmas. I guess it could now, but it has certainly never happened before. For first shift, I filled out the worksheet entirely with "na".

In the comments/instructions portion of the silo sheet, I wrote, "this is not a joke."

Another thrilling Friday night

I went into work last night expecting a calm night in tetra.

Wrong.

The schedule was rearranged so that I was in pudding. My least favorite zone. My most hated product. The supervisors did this, presumably not just to torture me, but so that I would have time to work on allergens.

Fine.

I got the reagents ready for allergens, but before I got going, DK stopped me, told me to put everything away, I had to plate 100 paks of enlive instead.

I finished everything I had to do with the horrible pudding. I plated my 100 paks. I then started getting my stuff ready for allergens again.

When I was done with all of it, it was about ten minutes to six.

Had I started the allergens at the beginning of the shift, I could have been done with all of it around 0400.

Oh well.

I like hockey. Sorry?

So last night the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup. I was very much hoping for that. I watched the first period before I had to leave for work, then spent the beginning of the night doing work and intermittently sneaking out of the lab to check the score. When the game went final, I was thrilled. I let everyone know and maybe did a little happy dance, but it was hours before I could wipe the lunatic grin off my face.

Obviously, looking that happy in a factory is some kind of serious crime.

When Mr. G walked in, he gave me such a look of disgust that I actually said, "I'm sorry" before I realized that I was apologizing for smiling.

We're making creamer, what did you expect?

The entire third shift crew got in trouble with DK last night for "that's what she said"ing and laughing too much in front of a customer.

C'mon, don't you think they want to see happy people producing their stuff?

Explosions

RD, for the third time in recent memory, dropped a big beaker of island oasis (actually one of the three times it was a syringe of pudding) all over the place. It fell in slow motion, she screamed, MH was sadly in the line of fire. There was caramel all over the floor, the counter, MH... in her pockets, in her phone, in her hairnet, in her hair...

They got it cleaned up relatively quickly and we all went back to work.

And then I noticed the splatter all over the ceiling.

What are you doing here? ...Being a champ.

I went to work at 6pm yesterday, because that's what the schedule told me to do. JJ had already left early because there was nothing to do. I was scheduled to work on allergens. JJ is also trained in allergens. Weird.

It took about two hours to get the allergen stuff done. I also changed all three water baths, did the chemical inventory, read plates and did plating controls. Before third shift started.

Glad to be helping out, glad to be working a 52 hour week (well glad as I'll ever be about that...) but I should have saved some work for later. Spent most of third shift making photocopies and re-re-re-checking inventories on products that weren't running.

Zensoy...

Zensoy is the most irritating brand of soy we make. Silk and I think kikkoman are really easy to test, nutrisoy is just slightly more time-consuming, zensoy has every test that takes a long time or is difficult or annoying to do, except a vitamin c.

Last night I had to test two silos of zensoy immediately when I came in. Moments after I finished the second one, #1 told me he was transferring both of them. I said, "is that because of hours or just because you hate me?"

...he did not respond. One of them transferred again later in the night.

Summertime and the livings easy

I misread the production schedule and thought I would have a pudding start-up last night. Instead, I had just about nothing to do all night (again...good thing we're all working so much overtime...).

I kept busy with dailies for the first couple of hours, then got a 'special project' from DK (arts and crafts! my favorite special project!), then did some plating, then played cards in the back room with MH...

...the night ended with a bunch of sample cups stacked up in a pyramid and each of us taking turns bowling it down with a roll of masking tape.

Welcome to the busy season?

Every day is like Sunday

Last night, a wednesday night, where everything went pretty much according to schedule, was as completely dead as a holiday or a slow weekend.
If I had stuck with my assigned workstation tasks, I would have done two yo on the go audits, calibrated the pH meters and read steritanks. That would total about an hours worth of work. As it stands, I probably only did like twice that, which was more than my fair share.

Can't remember the last time it's been that slow on a regular weeknight. Especially in the summer. Weird.

A whole pudding run, just for me.

Have I mentioned lately that I hate pudding?

A short run of fat free pudding was supposed to start at 2200 last night and run until 0600.
Pudding runs are almost never on time.
I say almost because, of course, this one was. I had the start-up at 2225. We audit pudding every two hours, so after FP4 at 0425, I thought I was pretty much done for the night. Instead, I had three finished product audits in the last hour of the shift, plus raw tanks.
The first flavor ended at 0450, the next started at 0457 and the entire run ended at 0551.
Plus I had to check the raw tanks for the next run at 0530 and 0550.

I cannot begin to explain how much I hate pudding.

Hallmark moments

Last night we were discussing buying a greeting card for DK of the 'just for being you' variety and fill it in with all of the amazing things he does and says...

...for calling me a poor little Jew girl.
...for calling me Tea, Tea's sister, Tea's cousin, Tea's twin, Tea's best friend, or Tea's girlfriend every time I mess something up.
...for showing me YouTube videos on your phone when I am actually trying to do work.
...for sharing your views on downs syndrome babies.
...for taking twenty minutes to answer a yes or no question.
...for smacking MH in the mouth and pinching her elbow fat.
...for "the talon" (a new hand signal he invented to look like a chicken foot where you hold down your middle finger and the rest of them are all crooked)
...for the "inverse talon" (just the middle finger...)
...for saying you're leaving, appointing a fire marshall and then showing up two hours later.


In other news, after not speaking to #1 for about two weeks, I wished him a happy birthday. He thinks we're best friends again now. Should have kept my mouth shut.

Breaking ICs

Making yogurt is a Much more delicate process than most of what we do at my job. Obviously anyone using live bacterial cultures for anything has to be careful, but it is important that we strike the balance between "there is so much bacteria in here that our packaging won't hold up" and "we ultra-pasteurized all the flavors out of this because it didn't culture long enough."

So what happens is they transfer small amounts of sugary milk to the ICs, which are small silos capable of heating as well as cooling the product. They put in yogurt cultures and ramp up the temperature to make the bacteria all cozy and warm. The process is referred to as "breaking ICs."

Four hours after the culture is added, the lab tech (yours truly), begins checking the acidity and pH via a very specific sampling method that involves basically climbing up to the top of the silo and dipping a little bucket on a stick into it (so as not to disturb the bugs).
Each IC (and they usually do several at overlapping times) must be checked every half hour thereafter until the desired levels are reached, then it gets cooled down to stop the growth of the cultures.

Most people hate breaking ICs because it is a complete pain in the ass. I kind of like it because I'm five and I like to climb on things.

But as I discovered last night, breaking ICs also roughly translates to "no, little girl, you do not get a coffee break."

Run run run stop

Most of our horizon flavored milk is run from one processor into two steritanks and on to five out of the six prisma fillers. In these runs, once all of the product is processed, usually one steritank takes longer than the other to run out, although presumably the goal is to have it all end at once. I feel like I would need to draw a diagram in order to explain how this works, but basically we end up doing more work if the tanks don't even out and one ends while the other is still full.

It is extraordinarily rare for both steritanks to empty at the same time.

Last night, I had two steritanks of horizon chocolate. They had the same codedate. But, they were run through two different processors, making them two completely separate runs requiring two completely separate audits. Meaning twice as much work all night long.

The two steritanks ended their runs within ten minutes of each other.

Thus, requiring three times the work of a normal horizon audit...

...Twenty minutes before the end of my shift.

Lovely.

I could probably get in a lot of trouble for this...

I was assigned to allergens last night. You know, that special task that I got trained in a little, but then my important customer reviewed test failed and then I had to retest it on my own and got the exact same answers as the first time?

That thing? I had to do those tonight, because apparently it wasn't my fault those samples failed which I guess means I'm trained and approved. Whatever.

So I start my testing and in the first batch of samples, one of them looks like it's going to fail. I...fixed it. Because it was a raw tank sample and obviously if there was a problem with the raw tank, all of the finished product samples would be failing, too.

Then I ran my second batch of tests...and a five or six hour block of time all failed.

Uh. Oops?

I had to start over entirely to show that the raw tank had been bad.

Don't tell my boss.

All of first shift called in

Whenever the phone rings its outside ring, everyone panics a little. If DK answers, no matter who it is, he tells us that it was all of first shift - ya know, eight people getting together to make one phone call, saying they're not feeling well and won't be in that morning.

Last night, it was actually just one of the first shift lab techs. First shift calls in more than any other shift for a variety of reasons - mostly because they're a bunch of whiners.

The problem here is that there is this note posted about what to do if there is a call-in. It says that the outgoing shift should check if all the zones are covered...if not, and if no one is going to stay in order to provide that coverage, there is a list of tasks that the outgoing shift must get done before leaving - all of the 48hr, 5 day and 7 day samples, plating controls, plate reading, etc.

Reasonable, no?

Except CK has decided that means that if someone calls in, the outgoing shift must do all of those tasks... No matter what. And although the note implies that everyone should be staying an hour or two to get all of these things done, we get in trouble if anyone stays past 0645ish without being asked to stay.

So, when a first shifter called in an hour before shift change (we are supposed to give at least two hours notice...) we had to scramble to finish all of our work plus getting this laundry list of dailies done for first...even though they still had SEVEN people to cover four and a half active zones.

You will be tested on this material.

We all have to read and sign off on a big binder full of lab procedures this week. There is a test to make sure we are paying attention. Or, really, there is a test to make sure we can effectively copy down answers, since it is open-book.

DK told me if I get one wrong, I'm fired.

If Smitty gets one wrong it's okay though.

The odds

I know I have mentioned before the one person I really don't like, CB. He is very interested in cleanliness and completely freaks out if a lab tech doesn't hose off a silo after getting a sample.

A couple of weeks ago, he yelled at MH for not cleaning off a silo which had chicken soup in it. No one hoses off soup silos. Soup does not make that much of a mess! He yelled at her and she refused to do it and he used this as an excuse to leave halfway through his shift. Everyone in the plant heard about it.

Last night, I sampled pudding from one of the silos on his end of the plant. I did not make a mess. There was a small stream of pudding down the door of the silo under the sample port. I have literally seen more pudding on Tea's paperwork than there was on that silo.

I knew he was watching, but I did not hose it down.

He did not yell at me.

Two hours later, another blender told me he had thrown a fit about it and made V-dogg walk down there to look at it.

V-dogg, love of my life, basically told him to quit being such a whiner.

Obviously, CB does not know my theory on silo cleaning... There is an 85% chance I will wash down any silo I sample, depending on a variety of factors. Everytime one of the blenders is a dick to me, those odds drop five percent.

Knowing this, no one would ever bet on CB's satisfaction when I'm around.

Back and blogging strong

This very long week (I am working last night through Saturday and won't know my next day off until Thursday or later...could be twelve nights in a row) began with two start-ups the minute I walked in.

The day ended slightly more entertainingly, when the last half hour of a horizon chocolate run had to be put on hold for low solids.
MH and I stayed late to investigate. In reality, some water must have gotten in either during processing or somehow between the steritank and the fillers (if that's possible?).
In our minds though, we maintain that there was a problem with the chocolatization process.

But don't worry, we got it sorted out and will live to chocolatize another night.

Relief

I cannot describe how happy I am that this week is over. I am off for at least the next four nights and although normally I would update at least once for my one paid day off, I think I am going to take a break.

This week has been just one nightmare after another and it wasn't until today that I realized I worked TWENTY fewer hours this week than last. That is a whole part-time job less work. Unfortunately, it feels like it's been several years since my last night off.

Exceptional!

When something like a chart or a log that is an official state document gets screwed up, you have to send in an "exception report" stating what happened and when and where and why and what was done to make it better and whose fault it was.
It costs the company hundreds (or maybe thousands? I don't remember but I don't want to exaggerate too much) of dollars every time one of these reports gets turned in. It is bad news. CK said that if a lab tech had a certain number of exception reports in a certain amount of time (again I don't remember... I think it was five reports in six months?) it would count as one step of disciplinary action.

Anyway I had to fill out two of them last night.

The most backward compliment I've ever recieved is when DK told me what a great job I did writing up my exception reports.

Hey, you are excellent at explaining your mistakes!

Shopping

My trainer basically left me to do allergens all by my lonesome today, which I don't know if I was ready for... Maybe I'll start failing and get kicked off in a couple of weeks...

But anyway I finished the allergen testing around four thirty and then went looking for something else to do. We had almost no distiller water left in the lab, so I took a cart and went shopping.

In the lab, when we need supplies, we go shopping in our special little section of the warehouse. Because it would be impossible to have supplies we need regularly ready for us to use, we have to dig and climb and tear stuff apart to find what we need. I loaded up my cart with a case each of medium and large nitrile gloves, a box of 3oz vials, a case of CEM pads, and four cases of water. At this point, I am already tired from searching for all of this stuff and loading it onto the cart. I now have to drag said cart with all the supplies (estimated to weigh about the same as three of me) allllll the way through the plant and back to the lab.

Of course they keep our supplies literally as far away as possible while still being in the same building. What's weird about that?

I do not like shopping in real life. Lab shopping only reinforces that hatred.

Allergens

A few months ago, KS asked me if I wanted to learn how to do allergens. Allergen testing used to be a first shift duty, and having seen how much trouble everyone on first had with it and how much they all complained about it, I said no.

A couple of weeks later, JB got trained to do allergens.

A month or so ago, JB stopped doing allergens- she failed too many times and got kicked off. They tried to give her more training, but she continued to fail.

Today I began my allergen training.

I didn't get a choice this time.

If you can't take the heat, make someone else get your 5 day

I have discovered the worst feeling in the entire world!

It is thus: having sinusitis and standing under the heater in a hundred degree incubator full of milk in various degrees of spoilage.

Sick

I have a sinus infection bad enough that if I had a normal job, I would have called in.

As it stands, I feel like I was almost entirely
useless all night, doing basically nothing but my own audits even though there were dailies to be done and other people needed help. I know DK saw me sitting down doing nothing on more than one occasion.

This is what my review was all about - how I only do my own work and don't help anybody else.

When deciding if I was going to work, I knew this would be a problem, but wouldn't it be worse if I called in? Granted, second shift would then be required to do most of our dailies, but they don't even get their own work done a lot of the time...

Sorry for not being a team player, but it's tough to be helpful when every sudden movement makes you feel like you're going to pass out!

I jinxed it.

When I am in the ESL zone, there are always problems. Around one o'clock, I said something to DK about how nervous I was getting because all my 48 hour and 7 day samples passed without any problems, the line had been running smoothly and everything seemed just fine.

He assured me that there were enough problems with this run before I came in and that if the 48 hour samples failed two nights from now, he'd blame me.

When I started having sediment problems two hours later, he told me he had no sympathy...I had brought it upon myself.

What were we talking about?

Vittles...?

No, no, there was something after vittles but before impregnating horses.

No?

Cupcake

Since MH predicted this would be my blog today, I'll go ahead with it. Wouldn't want to piss her off on her birthday...

Last night was MH's birthday! I made strawberry shortcakes for the occassion, but I did not specifically tell her what I'd made, just that there was cake. So that the cakes didn't get soggy, I kept the strawberries and whipped cream separate until we were ready to eat them.

I took out the cupcakes and she watched as I started to take out the other ingredients. As she realized what I was constructing, her face lit up like a little kid at Christmas. It was awesome. She's like a fat kid stuck in the body of a pretty lady.

In other news, we had probably ten minutes of conversation about boxes, different sized boxes, and putting things into boxes. Fabulous.

Junior's back!

Junior came back to third shift today. She missed us. She says nobody laughs on second and they were stealing her soul. After that we giggled for five minutes because she was putting teardowns out for me to do and we put out four paks for each filler, two standing upright and two laying down and she asked which ones I still needed and I said "you need P over here" and she put them in the wrong spot and I said "no no you need P standing up."

Granted, we were both really tired, but basically our senses of humor pretty much finished developing at age 8.

P standing up. Haha.

Tetra, die already

Tetra dye is an alcohol based bright pink dye that we use to check our packaging.

Last night, MH was doing teardowns, shooting dye into the air gaps.

I was standing next to her at the tetra bench, working on my audit, with no else in earshot when she said, "f***ing die already!"

"what?" I said.

She repeated herself more emphatically, "f***ing die already!"

I knew she could not really be speaking to me, but there was no one else there...

It took at least a full minute before I realized what she had actually said was, "[I got] f***ing [tetra] dye [all over my hands] already!" and she realized what it sounded like and why I seemed so offended.

Sample plan

When our regular microbiological testing fails by a certain percentage, additional samples are pulled from the run and tested to find out just how bad it is and if, for instance, all of the micro problems are at the end of a run, we might still be allowed to ship the beginning. The additional samples, called a sample plan, may be a certain percentage of the run overall or may be samples from specific times, depending on the product and the problem.

In addition to my regular 48 hour micro, last night I had to test a sample plan of ESL milk. I had 72 additional cartons.

55 of them failed.

The higher-ups are pissed that we have to get rid of an entire run.
Wouldn't it be worse to pour green milk on your cheerios?

Coolatta

There is only one product we make of which I never get tired. Dunkin donuts coffee coolatta base. It is basically a coffee syrup used to make DD's frozen coffee drinks.

I don't actually like the frozen coffee drinks so much, but I love the base just mixed with milk (or chocolate milk, or soymilk...).

What concerns me a little is that someday I will quit this job and have a craving for coolatta.

I don't think the local Dunkin's employees are going to be thrilled when I come in and ask... So, you know coolatta? Do you get the base for that in like...a white, aseptic, liter-sized tetra pak with blue writing on it? Yeah? Could I have like small cup of just that, mixed with plain silk if you have it? Or vanilla's okay as long as it's not very vanilla.

No, that wouldn't be weird at all.

Not sure why I found this SO funny...

LS, a well-liked second shifter, recently quit and moved on to greener pastures (oh, I have been working here too long, I think I just made a dairy pun...). We each have a drawer in the lab, in which to store our pens, markers, paperwork, illegal contraband (i.e. gum and candy), hand lotion, calculator, etc. LS's drawer was frequently filled with other things by those of us who loved her... Straws, the caps from liter paks, styrofoam peanuts, pull tabs, and basically anything else we could find. As avid Office fans, MH and I had plans to put something of hers in jello before she left. (As avid procrastinators, this never happened.)

Last night, JB was bored and decided to clean out anything left over in LS's old drawer. LS did clean it before she went but there were a couple of paperclips, maybe a straw left. JB took the entire drawer out and shook it over the garbage can. I watched her do this and started giggling uncontrolably.

On the inside front of the drawer, where no one would ever notice if they weren't looking for it or otherwise inspecting the drawer, there are collage-style cut-outs that say "chicken ass."

Clearly, the "chicken" comes from one of our many kinds of chicken broth and the "ass" is cut from a pak of medpass, but... I couldn't stop laughing about it the rest of the night.

Comparisons

The lab tech who is unmotivated, not a team player and doesn't live up to her potential splashes acid on her arm and waits until she is finished with the work she is doing to wash it off.

The process operator who is too valuable to his department to be allowed to take a different job in the plant takes a two hour nap in the break room, despite needing to take readings on his systems every half hour.

This is a true story.

"It just builds up for eight hours!"

Sadly, Junior has moved to second shift. Just before work last night, I got a text message from her that was a picture of unraveled CEM tape (one of our favorite second shift messes) with the caption "don't worry...I'm on it."

When I got in, she called me in to the plating prep room to show me the crumpled bits of kim wipe on the counter...
Her: "What does this look like to you?"
Me: "The bedside table of a thirteen year old boy."
Her: "I know! I don't have anyone to show this stuff to anymore...they just don't get it! It all just gets built up inside me for eight hours before I can let it go!"
Me: "That's what she said."
Her: ...pause... "Exactly!!"

Sunken Ghetto

Kitchen Basics' clam stock, which DK says we may never run again (excellent news) smells, as I determined last night, as if you took the absolute worst memories of my Long Island childhood and melted them down into a liquid.

Basically, it smells like a north shore beach on a really humid horrible hazy late summer day.

Never thought I'd be smelling Sunken Meadow in a factory five hundred miles away.

Wait honey, can you just separate off for a second

MH and I had a conversation (and by conversation I mean a few words and a lot of uncontrollable laughing) about the use of processing terms in the bedroom.

I'm probably going to start giggling the next time some one tells me "the system went unsterile."

Food for thought

The vending machines at work are the only real source of food we have. According to the manual, we are actually not allowed to leave the premises for lunch (awesome that my job is more oppressive than my high school), but even if we could there aren't many food options that could be ordered, served and consumed in half an hour especially taking into account travel time. There are even less (read: Tim Horton's drive-thru) that are open in the middle of the night.

So, vending machines it is.

I bring food from home every day because I absolutely cannot bring myself to eat out of a machine generally referred to as "the wheel of death" or "the wheel of misfortune". It poses a serious problem to third shift, however, because all of the machines are stocked in the morning- usually right as we are leaving. Even the normally limited food options are further limited by 2am. Essentially, we are eating the food no one else wants to eat.

How gross is that?

Scheduling mishaps

Two awesome things on the schedule this week...firstly, MH was off Friday and Saturday nights. The schedule did not come out until Friday night. She asked JJ for her days off and he told her that she had off Friday and Saturday again.

He did not, however, bother to mention that she had to work a twelve-hour shift one day. Most of the time, this wouldn't be a big deal, except that her twelve hour shift was six to six on Sunday. Meaning she was scheduled to come in early the day she came back from being off and not seeing the schedule. She figured it out around six thirty when she was on her way to dinner and work was calling to find out where she was.

The other amazing thing on the schedule is a note at the bottom which says "RC safety meeting 0530 or 0600."
It does not mention what safety meeting, where, or most importantly...what day of the week.

Maybe our supervisors missed a schedule-making meeting at the same time I missed safety training.

More factory fashion

I took a shower right before work last night and didn't have the time or motivation to blowdry my hair. Because we wear hairnets at work, I probably didn't look any different than I do every other night. Completely normal. Until quitting tiime, when I pulled the hairnet off and discovered that wet hair pulled back and kept under a hairnet for eight hours turns into some sort of nightmare hurricane frizz horror. It was kind of impressive.

Enlive is always a problem

I don't know what is wrong with me, but no matter how careful I am with enlive, my solids are always high and I always manage to spill it everywhere.

I plated some five-day samples today, then cut the tops of the paks open to do visuals and pH. Then, I went to carry the case to the sink to dump the product. The glue on the sides of the case had come off, so it was essentially twenty-seven little cups of sticky, impossible to clean juice balanced on a piece of cardboard. I managed to carry it to the sink and dispose of it without spilling a drop.

When I returned for the second case, plus two extra paks, I managed somehow to completely knock over one of the stray paks. Just bumped it somehow so that it fell over sideways.

Man I am awesome.

Smitty Jr.

The second to newest girl on third...I know I talked about how her productivity makes me look like an ass, but I don't remember if I referred to her by her initials? Her initials are JM, but I am just going to go ahead and call her Junior from now on. She's just like Smitty. Always working, always helping, never letting anyone help her.

Today she was in the only busy zone. She would not accept help at all. After midnight, I literally had no work assigned to me. I spent most of the night hunting down something to do.

Most of what I found was scrubbing counters and talking.

How's that ESL line running?

I was in workstation 1, formerly known as ESL, last night for the first time since we started this crazy new system.

Something sort of strange happened.

Nothing went wrong.

All my 48 hour samples passed, all my swabs were good, they started up relatively on time, ran smoothly and had absolutely no major problems whatsoever.

DK called me into his office twice just to ask if there had been any disasters. My presence usually seems to invoke Murphy's law all over that zone.

Call-in pity

The phones in the plant have a different ringtone when the call is coming from an outside line rather than an extension within the factory.

When the lab phone rings the outside ring on third shift, everyone stops and stares at it for a second as if it is a bomb about to go off. We know what that call is. We know that ninety percent of the time, that call means someone on first shift is calling in sick.

Who is it? Are they really sick? Couldn't they have called earlier, we're supposed to give at least two hours notice?! I bet they're faking, I bet they're just getting in from the bar. I bet they just want a long weekend.

"Lab, RC speaking"
"Hi, RC, it's MO...I'm not going to be able to come in today..."

Bitch! Are you fricking serious? She just called in last week. Yeah okay you just got off maternity leave but you can't screw us over just because you have a kid. Lots of people have babies, they still manage to show up at work every once in a...

"...I had to bring the baby to the hospital."

My face and tone of voice have never gone from "bitch!" to "ohhh nooo that's terrible" so fast.

PS The baby is okay and I got another four hours OT.

#1

Silly boy left early tonight after basically telling he doesn't want to talk to me.

Kind of frustrating, but man did it make my night way easier!

Ugh

Last night was twelve hours of absolute misery. I haven't slept in three days and I am having a kind of serious fight with #1. I definitely sat down in the ESL hot room and cried for a while.

Here's to better times tonight.

I am not an addict.

Knowing we had a safety meeting at the beginning of our shift, I stopped for coffee before work. I generally get some kind of coffee on my way to work as long as I have enough time, but I do not go to the same place everyday. Really, I don't.

There is a Tim Horton's around the corner from the plant and that is my most frequent caffeine-source, but even so, I am there twice a week at most. Usually, I go to the drive-thru and am already wearing my work uniform.

Today, I had gone out to dinner for my birthday and was wearing my street clothes. I went in to the Tim's because I had a lot of time to kill and a free coffee coupon (and because I didn't look like a gas station attendant for once!)

The manager not only recognized me, he knew my order before I said it.

I'm not sure if this means he's a stalker or I need to cut back...

Happy Birthday, RC

I made JB switch zones with me last night because I flat-out refused to check pudding on my birthday.

The pudding line didn't run all night. She did almost entirely nothing besides a couple of tank checks and plating.

I did bloaters, because who knows if she ever would have got to them. My zone was moderately busy all night oh and did I mention It's my birthday?! give me a break, dude.

Always double-check the schedule

I was in pudding and bag in a box last night. I had checked the schedule and thought nothing was supposed to run until Monday morning, as usual. I thought I'd have an easy if somewhat annoying night of doing dailys and weeklys and 48 hour and five day and tank checks...

I did, essentially, have that night. Plus the 4oz line was running. When I checked the schedule, I somehow overlooked this big ol' gelatin run that started early Sunday morning. Maybe it was from last week?

Gelatin is the number one easiest product to audit, but somehow when I have to deal with it, it keeps me busy and worse keeps me annoyed all night long.

Last of the 12s

Everyone in the lab was on twelve-hour shifts this week. I am a huge fan of this schedule, but it looks like I'm in the minority on that front so we won't be switching permanently.

Oh well. One benefit of working twelves is that it would simplify scheduling. Everyone would be on a normal rotating schedule with every other weekend off. (This also opens up the possibility that I may literally never see #1 again, which might be a good thing. Or not.)

A simpler schedule would be nice, since all of our supervisors are incapable of putting together a schedule that makes sense. I requested off next Friday and Saturday. My request was approved. It was clearly written on the calendar.

KS gave me Sunday and Saturday.

I pointed this out to CK. She rearranged things a little to give me off Friday. No problem. It did not occur to her and I needed to point it out that if I was off friday and Saturday, she would need to change it so that I was working Sunday and give someone else the day off.

Geniuses, all.

Hours spent testing pudding: 18/36

Being in pudding (sorry I mean workstation 3?) makes me unbelievably bitchy. I think I even (jokingly) told #1 he's fat.
I was about ready to smack another blender in the face yesterday and this morning I definitely yelled at JJ for being helpful when I was really busy.

Pudding turns me into a jerk. Twelve hour shifts of pudding...ugh.

Drunk driving is what I like to do, I like drunk driving with you

When I pulled into the parking lot today, I saw a good spot a little late and pulled in completely crooked.
I didn't bother adjusting, because I wanted to make sure I clocked in on time and there was a car on either side of me. I figured it was okay.

When DK came in he asked what my middle name is...his guess was "drives-drunk-to-work."
He continued to make fun of my poor parking the rest of the night to the point where I considered using one of my breaks just to go straighten out my car, but it wouldn't have helped, since he was already busy showing everyone the picture he had taken of it.

Murphy's law of FBs

Once the blenders have put all of the ingredients into a product and allowed it to mix for a while, we get a first check and calculate if anything needs to be added. Often, they leave out some water to make sure the solids aren't too low. It's a lot easier to add water than to take it out.

Since everything needs to be checked for micro problems, we collect plating samples when we do our first check. These are labeled with an FB number for "finished blend."

Most of the time, FB samples are gathered with the very first check. Usually the product needs to be standardized and rechecked.

If, however, you do not get an FB on your first check, the product will always always always be perfect. If you have to go back for your plating samples anyway, the product will not need a recheck.

Don't call me a sidekick

I was so bored last night that I was basically following MH around the plant when she had stuff to check on the other end.
This happened enough that when I actually had something to do and didn't escort her to the ct's for one of her checks, she was questioned as to my whereabouts.

Caution

You know how sometimes caution signs are a little unclear or funny? Like you can look up pictures on the Internet of funny caution signs and there are a huge number of them.

Apparently we don't have to go so far as the Internet to find these things... There is this one sign on the elopak filler which I think actually explains itself in words a little so you know what it means, which is that the machine uses uv radiation and not to expose your skin to it, but the picture is these wavy lines pointing at what is supposed to be a hand but looks kind of like a tree limb drawn by a second grader.

The best one, though, which JB discovered tonight, has no words on it and we've absolutely no idea what it means. It has three yellow caution triangles, each with a picture in it.

As we read it, the sign says lemons, clouds and no bugs.

Interpret for yourself.

Genius moment of the week

Around 0430 today, I decided it was time to go pick up my half hour plating samples of gelatin. There are two 4oz cups for each half hour.

It did not seem like a huge amount, and I couldn't get my cart near them because there were pallets scattered in my way.
I figured I could probably just stack them up and carry at least most of them through the little pudding sleeve pallet obstacle course to where I'd left my cart.

I started gathering them, carefully arranging them so that I could hold the most possible without dropping them. I managed to secure all but two of the cups when the operator brought over two more.

It was at this point that it dawned on me that the samples are all on a big tray and that I could just pick up the whole tray and bring it back without any trouble at all.

I replaced all the cups I had gathered and took the tray off the rack. As I began to walk toward my cart, I spotted one of the supervisors sitting on a ladder. He had clearly been watching the entire production and displayed his obvious pride in my ingenuity by giving the most sarcastic thumbs-up I have ever seen. You could practically hear it calling me a moron.

This is why people from work can't read this blog...

We had a new girl start last night. I realized what an incredibly horrible human being I am when upon seeing her my first thought was not, "oh she looks nice," or, "she seems like she'll do a good job," but, "thank god she isn't as pretty as I am."

I always thought I was less shallow and self-absorbed than most people.

Guess not.

I'm not mad, I'm just impressed

GP told me they wanted to separate on to the nectar at 2:30. It wasn't scheduled to start up until morning, but sometimes they do manage to get their stuff together early.

Still, I was absolutely amazed when they brought in a line fill at 2:45. I was on my way out for lunch and it was running by the time I got back.

Should I not be this shocked when things work the way they're supposed to?

If only I wasn't so nice...

That one person I mentioned a while back, whom I really seriously dislike...I could get him fired. I kind of want to get him fired, but I would feel too bad about it.

So here's the scoop- this guy has done this to me before but not lately and has also done it to most of the other lab techs on third shift (we're all female by the way)...I never knew this name for it, but MH called it "jumper cables"? Where someone grabs at you on both sides in the hip/love-handle area? Do you understand what I mean, Internet? I don't feel like I'm describing it well.

Every single one of us is creeped out and uncomfortable with this. If I brought it up to HR I'm positive it would qualify as sexual harrassment and I think it would probably be grounds for termination, considering it is at
least five or six ladies who would concur. They've definitely fired people for less.

I just can't do it because as much as I don't like him, I know he doesn't mean any harm and I would still feel bad if he lost his job.
Also I feel like kind of a hypocrite because #1 does stuff like that to me all the time and it's not a problem. But that's really different, isn't it, Internet?

Treats

The company provided a nice lunch for us Thursday night and DK told us we should be really excited because that meant we were getting treats two nights in a row.
None of us knew what treat we were getting last night but he sounded a little sarcastic when he said it, like the way you might tell a child they're getting a treat like a lollipop at the doctor's office after a shot.

The idea didn't cross my mind again until around two thirty in the morning, after CK went home...her presence was not a treat.

I texted DK to ask if that was what he meant.

He just figured we'd be excited to have a DK-free night.

Painful realization

Next week's schedule came out tonight and shocking though this may be, I have no overtime at all! Unfortunately, my days off are not consecutive, which is always kind of a bummer on third shift moreso than otherwise. Aside from meaning I'm way less likely to see that big glowy thing you people refer to as "the sun" what I've realized this means is that I have not been away from work for a full calendar day since the 9th of March.

Is it sad that I am just dreaming of a day when I will not be wearing a hairnet at ten pm and at six am of the same date?

Quirks of the new system

One of the reasons that the duties in the lab were redistributed was supposedly so that the work would be more evenly spread out.

There are some flaws in their plan...

Last night I was in workstation 5, the station formerly known as tetra. MH was in station 4, which we are now referring to as "main tab" because it combines most of the duties of what was once main lab with some tetra audits.

In addition to the silos she had to check, she had more products running than I did.

If I had followed the new system to the letter, last night I would have done almost entirely nothing besides read steritanks and audit horizon chocolate.

I might also, had I felt really motivated, have taken out the garbage.

Ooooovertime

I, like most people, like getting paid more than the usual amount of money. I generally like my job. I generally have no social life.

All of the above factors basically mean that I will work any and all overtime offered to me and I will do it with a smile.

(sidenote, #1 is disappointed when his paycheck is only three figures. I want to become a blender.)

Our supervisors know who wants and does not want overtime and they give to
those who want the extra cash first, although they try to distribute it as evenly
as possible so HR doesn't freak out about it.

Thus, I have been working all sorts of OT lately. Normally this is exactly what I want, but I am so
completely burnt out all I want is a couple of
days off.

Workstations

We started a whole new system in the lab tonight.

Our supervisors think it is just a super idea and it worked out so well that we all had to come back to my house and get drunk afterwards!

The end.

Recently recieved a raise for all her hard work

An exact quote: "okay, now I'm going to play just one game of taptap and then I'm going to take a smoke break."

This was said about an hour before I ran out of things to do.

At least enlive didn't start up?

Tonight was not a bad night in tetra. Unfortunately, it also wasn't a good night in tetra.

I had one product end on my first audit (in fact at 2200 exactly) and then worked on dailies while all I had was nectar. Then silk started up. No big deal. Then horizon started up, which means three relatively easy products what could you possibly be complaining about?

The screen from which I need to take readings every half hour broke. There is another screen with the same information on the other end of the plant. The only problem with that is you have to go all the way to the other end of the plant.

I ended up making these huge looping circles where I took the half of my readings that aren't on the screen, went around gathering my samples and then went to finish my readings.

Probably wasted a good ten minutes every hour walking around and explaining to everyone why I was all over the place today.

An example

How can you tell it was a really busy night on third shift?

When a lab tech (namely, me) is standing at the sink with a pile of bloaters at 6am.

How can you tell it was a ridiculously busy night?

When that same lab tech goes home and eats a full meal, despite the bloater nausea.

What I'm really saying here, Internet, is that I am cranky because all I have eaten in the past twenty-four hours is a muffin, a cupcake, a donut and string cheese.

Random

The night began with a safety meeting, which somehow makes it inevitable that there will be a fantastic "that's what she said" opportunity. In this case it was our safety coordinator explaining that the picture he had of an ammonia cloud was difficult to see. He said, "I wish I had a bigger one..."

#2 lost a little more of my respect tonight when he got genuinely angry at me because he disrupted my work and I am pretty sure I wasn't mean about when I told him he had done.

I think I checked two pudding blends a total of seven times and was just alternating back and forth for what felt like hours.

V-dogg continued to be kind of a jerk and got super defensive because there were problems with some soy that he had blended himself.

Beavis continued to be insane to the point where I think we need to hire someone to follow him around as a translator.

The lactoscope broke after DK went home, but was repaired by that ancient and sacred tech support method of turn it off, wait five seconds and turn it back on.

Typical night.

Medpass perfection takes time

The first thing I checked last night was NSA medpass. It called for 6000 lbs of water. It was 3000 short of batch. #1 was blending it, which (if his bragging is any indication) means it should only need one addition, but V-dogg wouldn't put in the full six grand.

Not only did it require more than one water addition, but my finished blend check at 2220 was not actually a finished blend until 0430.

More than six hours to add a grand total of...you guessed it, Internet, six thousand pounds of water.

Bad ideas

A list of things not to do if possible:

go out drinking when you have to work that night
go out drinking with a coworker you have never seen outside of work before and are not particularly close with
go out drinking with a male coworker unless you are romantically interested in him or you are 100% positive he is not interested in you
go out drinking immediately after waking up
go out drinking and then go to work without sleeping before or preferably in between
be the one to stay out but stop drinking early so that you can drive to work
be the one who has a sober coworker to drive you so you can keep drinking and still be buzzed at work
go out drinking at all in the middle of a nine days in a row stretch of work

...

Note to self: make sure you are prepared to deal with the consequences if you ever pull a stunt like this again.

Have I mentioned lately that he's a genius?

At some point last night, #1 told me that I punch like a girl.

I said, "I am a girl!"

He looked at me as if he had no idea what I was talking about.

This is not the strangest conversation starter he's come up with...

Have you ever noticed that the hubcaps on my car's front wheels are different from the ones on the back?

#1 has.

If I were ever asked to describe that man in two words (and "douche-whore" only counts as one) I would definitely go with "weirdly observant."

Mistake

For our 120 days without a lost time accident, everyone in the plant got an amazing 120 days t-shirt.

Being a relatively small human, I got a small sized t-shirt.

The shirt fits me well. I wish I had asked for a medium.

We are allowed to wear these t-shirts to work instead of our regular work shirts. One of the tetra leads absolutely hates them- something about the color- and calls them "gay." One of the filler operators, intentionally wanting to torture him, declared Thursdays "gay t-shirt day" and we have all followed along.

Last night was the first time I wore my t-shirt. Everything was going fine until I walked past the maintenance bay and felt five pairs of eyes turn toward me and...ogle. There is no other word for it, I got ogled.

I guess compared to the usual mechanic garb, t-shirts are pretty sexy.

Really wish I'd gotten a medium.

More unnecessary overtime

MH is on six days this week, again, making it 12 straight for her.

Obviously our supervisors would only schedule like that because we are really busy and couldn't possibly get by without the additional manpower, right?

Last night, there were five of us working. Only two zones were running and neither of them were busy. We played a full game of war and did several mad libs. I'm sure JB must have earned an awful lot of points in taptap and she managed to get a nap in there, too.

Clearly we have been terribly understaffed.

Garbage

So we had the most amazing conversation today, inspired by MH sitting on one of the carts we use to bring our garbage to the dumpster, as to whether it would be correct to throw a human body into the dry dumpster.

Not on moral grounds, mind you, but if it would be better suited than the big compactor we use for product.

Based on the absolutely charming idea that the human body has roughly the same total solids as pudding, we determined that it would be okay to put a body in the dry dumpster as long as the grumpy old garbage man wasn't watching.

This conversation continued into the possibility of autoclaving the person first, like we do with plates, and what the effects of autoclaving the human body would be.

No one was anywhere near as disturbed by this discussion as we probably should have been.

Process fail

When I walked in to the tetra zone last night, the silk liter run was halfway through the second of three flavors but had not been running since eight pm.

I was told the delay was due to a problem with the fillers. I was called to swab those fillers less than an hour into my shift. I kept expecting them to start up and just be running when I walked in next. That kept not happening.

Eventually I did a little investigating and found out the fillers were okay, it was the system that was down.

I do not know how many times they tried to sterilize the system, but I do know that the five percent in the tank when I went home was the very same five percent that had been waiting for me when I got in.

If I wasn't off tonight, I'd half expect it to still be there next time I looked.

Ugh.

In main lab last night, V-dogg had me check island oasis that wasn't done blending. So that they could run it immediately.

'nuff said.

Change of pace

The only notable thing that happened last night involves me being angrier than I've been in a very long time. I don't really want to get into it again, I whined at MH and #1 enough.

Instead, I thought I'd share with you, Internet, how I am making myself feel better about it.

A totally normal nine AM for a third shifter:
popcorn
wine
Die Hard


I feel better already.

Maintence needed

A slew of funny things happened last night, among them this gem...

JB walked into the lab and muttered something about not being sure if this is an "I need a new job" moment or a "you need a new job" moment.

She said, "I just went up to one of the maintenance guys and asked him if he had a pair of pliers I could borrow."

Let's keep in mind, Internet, that our maintenance staff are not of the sanitation/light bulb changing variety... They make twenty something dollars an hour to maintain and service a wide variety of complicated machinery from blending to processing to fillers...

"I asked him for pliers...

And he handed me a crescent wrench."

Of course

So last night when I did like all the work there was to do, DK wasn't there to witness it. Tonight, he was there and spent the first fifteen minutes of the shift basically questioning my intelligence and ability to do my job properly. He was joking, but joking in the way where even if you're smiling on the outside, on the inside you want to punch him in the stomach.

I was rather busy though, and didn't do any of the daily tasks or help anyone else until after he left. Oh well.

He did seem kind of impressed when I offered to help the new girl with bloaters, but we'll see how impressed he and CK are when they look at the result... I couldn't figure out what was wrong with the stupid things.

Teamwork: needs improvement

I hate to dwell on something so stupid, but I'm not sure what my bosses look at when preparing those annual reviews. I am suppossedly unmotivated and not a team player.

I have not changed the way I work since the review.

Today, I did all but two of the daily tasks and helped with both of those other two. I did most of the weekly tasks (and the others could not be done today.) I did dishes and plating. I took out the garbage. And I must have asked the other lab techs if there was anything I could help with twenty times.

I also spent a good amount of time sitting down reading.

What the hell is wrong with that?

0100 with absolutely no context

"MH, I have a great idea."

"Oh, what is it?"

"I know how we are going to get out of here. We learn the rules of curling, get really good at it and become Olympians. Bam! No more milk testing."

"If that doesn't work we could try badminton."

"oh god I've been on this shift too long"

During one of the very few short breaks in a main lab shitstorm tonight, I took out my phone and sent a text message.
V-dogg, who silly nicknames aside is actually a supervisor, happened to be standing there.

He said, "no cellphones in the plant...unless you're calling me."

I laughed and told him that #1 says the exact same thing all the time.

I've never seen V-dogg look so
disturbed.

Twelve hours of nothing to do

I was on for twelve hours today rather than the usual eight, filling in for a second shifter. This was decided last night immediately after she called in. Someone from first would have to stay over and then I would come in early.

Great. Glad to help.

Except no one from first shift stayed over, because there wasn't really that much going on.

This has happened before and I have complained about it to supervisors before and of course I won't be so cranky about it when I get my paycheck and I've never any right to complain about getting time and a half for sitting around discussing Olympic hockey with JJ, but why couldn't someone have called me and told me not to come in?

It's as simple as picking up the phone and saying, "hey RC, we don't really need you to come in early."

Impossible.

But hey, at least I got paid well to do dishes and teardowns.