Well, that seemed to be the longest possible way to have a four day period. I had Friday and Saturday off, due to work Sunday - so I worked with that, planning on doing some work on the Gemini, play poker with the boys, go to a house party, then work Sunday and keep going as normal, getting a normal amount of sleep.
The best plans always go wrong, damn that guy Murphy.
Friday worked out well, as you can see by my previous post. I got a lot done, crashed out relatively early Saturday morning, and I got about eight hours sleep. I pottered around on Saturday, going to Bob’s house, doing not much then going home and getting ready for the poker night and party at Jess’ house later.
Poker was great! We had five people total, $25 buy-in, with prizes for first and second. First takes $100, second gets his money back. It was my first time playing poker anywhere but a computer in a LONG time, but I’d been practising online for strategies and so forth. All in all it was a great night, lasting about five hours - I didn’t go out first, and it was a pretty even game until closer to the end when the blinds ramped higher and higher (as they should have, else the game would have gone on forever.)
Around midnight I started my trek over to St. Lucia to go to Jess’ house party. I think I might have had a little too much Wild Turkey while playing poker, I felt all together too relaxed. I took some stupid wrong turns which I knew were wrong, and ended up in a few interesting places. Oh well, it was fun, and noone knew until I posted it here! Muahaha *cough*
Everyone else was pretty much smashed at the party, and it was a semi-typical party full of geeks and uni students. Pretty normal stuff happened, there was lots of loud joking, people whinging about music and so forth. I was having fun, catching up with a bunch of different people I tend only to see at #overclockers-related events.
It’s always funny when I walk into one of these events, since I’m awake all sorts of times of day, anyone that spends time on IRC knows me, or knows of me. Walking into the party, a bunch of people looked up, and someone yelled out “YAAALEMAN!” which got a bit of a mini-cheer going, which is always funny.
So I left there around three AM, deciding that I needed some sleep, as I was due to be at work twelve hours later, and I was going to be manager - a good idea to be at least a little alert.
Thank you common sense.
The night itself wasn’t due to be anything special - sunday night, noone had called in sick, three pm to eleven pm shift - it should be nice and easy. And it was! We’d smashed through the KPI’s, meaning that there was VERY little that I had to do all night. Until ten PM. There are three overnighters working for our company, and there were two rostered on for Sunday night, enough so that one can go on their lunch break and the other can keep taking calls blah blah. The third was on annual leave, and that was fine. Until the first one called in sick. Again, that was fine - we’ve got another overnighter, and they are on the same floor as the messaging and directories department, which means that one of their staff can come and cover the breaks for people in our department.
Then I went on my last break, just before ten. Walking back in, there was myself and two other people, one was on a call. The other, Adam - who I’ve written about before - is a bit of a joker. As I came back to my desk, he mentioned that the other overnighter had called in sick, about five minutes before they were due to start.
This is where it gets a little messy. The first overnighter was one of our best staff members - been with the company for years, had TWO nights off including this one in about eight years of service. It was quite amazing that he’d called in sick (later I found out he was amazingly ill) at all. The second and third, well… they should have been fired a long time ago, if only we could find someone crazy enough to replace them. They constantly do this to us, screwing our rostering and staff management people around and calling in sick ten minutes before and so forth.
So, being the manager of the floor, I had to make a decision. What I’d been told by other managers (jokingly) is that if the overnighters don’t come in, the floor manager of the night has to stay. It’s never happened while any of the recent managers had been working there. My first reaction (as usual) was to call my great friend and mentor, Denise! Talking with her, we worked out I had to call the operations manager and work something out.
That was fine, I called her and she asked if there was anyone else there that was happy to do it. I’d talked with one of the other staff members there and she offered to do it, since it would only cost the company normal time to do it (weird rostering and workplace agreement stuffs). I don’t really trust her as an agent, I’m sure she could do the job, but some of the other responsibilities of the position need a little more training. I worked out with the boss that I would work the additional hours until the next rostered person came in, and the other staff member that was there would stay until 1:30am so that I could have my first alloted break and not reduce staffing of other departments (since they were short that night as well)
Oh how I wished I hadn’t kept her on. When I’m pushing the barrier on tiredness, and needing to stay awake to work and so forth, the last thing I need is a motormouth that just won’t shut up about whatever topic they find in their trashy tabloid magazine. Even asking an opinion meant she just wanted another reason to keep going on about whatever it was that was sloshing around in her brain at that point. Eventually I just gave up and gave verbal nods, keeping her amused while letting me get back to my book.
There wasn’t many spectacular things about the night once she’d left, I had another half hour break at 3:30am, having a pie, a sausage roll and a red bull from the Night Owl convenience store in the valley mall. Between 0250 and 0530, there was no calls. None at all. No one found a reason to call me and talk to me about anything. I nearly forgot that I was at work. I was saying about it on IRC when a call dropped in! Huzzah! A reprieve! And something useful to do.
Saying my usual greeting, asking for the phone number or the account number, he responded with “I don’t know.” I don’t like these people. They are too stupid to know the information needed to find out other information, and I’m sure they blunder through life with nary a thought taken in the planning stages of anything. Apparrently, he didn’t know his number at all, so I had to go through the “what’s your name, where do you live” sort of thing, which is a pain in the ass normally because their name can be spelt wrong, or they have something completely unpronouncable (or funny, like “Very Impressive” or “Ufuk Dik”) So we got through that, and he verified (by other details… REMEMBER YOUR PIN’s PEOPLE!) and I gave him his phone number so he could recharge his prepaid, and then he was gone.
The only other funny thing of the shift was that Sandy, the absolutely amazing Call and Resource lady was on a split shift. She finised at 8pm on Sunday, when I was on floor manager, and started again at 6am Monday, when I was still there! The look on her face was hilarious (or I had gotten a little delerious by that point) and she put my hours into the system as overtime on Sunday, meaning I’ll get paid for it by tomorrow, which will be nice.
I left work at about twenty past six, after having shifted the box-o’-headsets back onto our normal floor and said hello to the morning people. Stopping off at Lauren’s for a shower and a bit of a wake up, I got home at about nine o’clock and promptly went to sleep.
I was due to be back at work at 3pm, but the ops manager had already said that I could shift my roster around because of the hours I’d worked, so I shifted it back to 4pm, allowing me to get a few hours sleep. I was back at work to start at four, and worked the whole shift without feeling too tired at all - in fact I was more awake the longer I stayed. I took e-time at 2300, meaning I lose an hour off this week, but that’s offset by the pay I would have gotten from the overnight extra-time.
It was quite an interesting time all-in-all, being at work for 22 out of 32 hours. That’s pretty nuts, since there wasn’t much sleep either side of that. I’m completely shagged today, but I tend not to sleep properly anyway and I have a seriously sore jaw 🙁