Peak 2010 In the Bag

So I'm a little late in actually posting this, but I've been a little busy.

I will say that this year's Peak at UPS was a little different than the last two. Two years ago, I only worked the night sort and was rather busy all through the month of December. Last year, I worked the VSort but it was a snoozer and the night sort was where things got hairy.

This year, the night sort was relatively tame, with fewer delays than usual an

d an overall smoother experience. The VSort, however, was a mess half of the days. Monday night/Tuesday morning I didn't even leave UPS until almost 10am and Wednesday night/Thursday morning I was so tired that I fell asleep at the computer doing timecards.

One of my co-workers snapped the picture to the right of me snoozing/snoring.

As for VZW, being that it was my first year working in the industry, it was a bit slower than I had expected, though I'm not really surprised by that considering our traffic as of late.

Overall, it was a busy and exhausting experience and one that I don't intend to repeat next year.

Peak-In-Progress

So its Wednesday, Dec 15 and I'm two and a half days through "Bridge Week" (the week right before our official peak week.)

I started the week with my usual ,9 hour shift at my VZW Store, selling phones, putting together orders for other stores and the like. I decided to get as much sleep as possible so I took a few hour nap before going in to UPS.

Monday was busier than we have been for a while but I have a decent staff this year and we made it th heigh without a hitch. V Sort, on the other hand was pretty silly because of how they have  the supervisors distributed. Instead of having two Supervisors for two areas, they have me doing two belts, one of which gets pretty busy.

I made it through okay, went home me changed and went straight to Vzw. After that, I slept for maybe three hours and went back to UPS. Tuesday was a bit better than Monday but it was still draining.

At this point I've worked around 56 our of the last 72 hours and I have basically two shifts at each job before Friday night when I can try to catch up on sleep.

Everyone thinks I'm crazy and the more I suffer through this, the more I think they are right lol

But I'm going to power through because as of around 545 am I will be into straight pay, making $15/hr and, if my current trend of around 10 hours per day continues, I'll be making $22/hr all of Saturday.

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Cataclysm and Life

So I haven't posted in a little while because I've been really busy with both jobs, but I have a little bit of time so I thought I would throw one up.

First, I've been working on getting my VZW employees trained and relatively self-sufficient so my weekly concern about who I'm going to have close my store on Thursdays (when my usual keyholder is off). They all seem to be relatively competent and I think that all 3 of them will be keepers, even if I end up shipping one off to another location. My only concern is convincing my boss to give them enough of a salary to keep them onboard. One of them has some management potential, but they all need a lot more work on their actual sales pitch and interaction with the customers.

Next, UPS is about to get fun. I found out last night that I did indeed get my V-Sort spot so next week and the week after I'll be looking at almost 100 hours between both jobs. Its worth it though, as each week of VSort is worth $100-150 extra after taxes. Fortunately, all of my employees seem to be working out rather well.

So, outside of work, the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm, launched this week. Its the first time that I haven't gone out and picked up a copy for myself and its a little strange. My wife picked up a copy at midnight and has been playing while I'm at work. I haven't had a fully active account for almost a year now: I was burned out right before Peak hit at UPS and then I got my second job in February so I haven't really had time to play.

And I really doubt that I'm going to pick up a copy at all. Once the baby gets here its not like I'll be able to just up and quit either of my jobs. And if I do, it will be because I got promoted to the point where I don't need both of them and will be working additional hours anyways.

I played for almost 4 years straight, with some minor breaks, and it was a major part of my life for so long. But now, it just seems like a waste of time. So my characters will probably just sit and I'll pop onto the Wife's account every once in a while to play on one of her alts that she doesn't like to play anymore.