Wierd Week

So this week started off simply enough.

I received a promotion to Inventory and Purchasing Manager at the Verizon Wireless Indirect Agent that I work for, including a pay raise, as part of a company-wide restructuring. Basically, I'll be responsible for ordering, receiving and distributing product and office supplies to the stores as well as coaching sales reps on selling accessories.

On Tuesday, we had what everyone is calling Snowmaggedon 2011, or the Snowpocalypse. 14"+ of snow fell on the Northern Illinois area. Our VZW stores closed down at 5, and UPS actually called us and told us to stay home. That's only the second time that has happened.

On Wednesday, almost everything was still buried in snow and most of our stores stayed closed once more. I received another text message from my boss at UPS telling us that the Night Sort had been canceled, the first time I've ever seen it closed back to back days due to weather.

I was just about to go to bed, at around 1030, when I received another text message from my UPS boss: we had to go in at 430 to run a bunch of Illinois volume through the hub. So I went to bed and got up at 3am, went to work and suffered through a terribly unorganized sort.

I went straight to VZW from UPS and got the store opened and started finally working on my new job, getting some product together for one of our busier stores and a new location that they are opening nearby.

In the early afternoon, she called the bank and found out that my credit had finally been dragged up enough that we were preapproved for a home loan. She has had her eye on a house near our apartment that started at over 120K but has slowly been sinking since then. She said that as soon as we got the pre-approval letter from the bank that we could get with our realtor and start looking at houses in our price range.

At around 3pm my phone started ringing as my wife called me. I was with a customer so I ignored it for the time being but she called several times and texted a couple of times as well. When I had the chance I took a look at the text message and saw that she needed me to call her right away because the Doctor's office had called.

I stepped away and called her and she informed me that because of certain high risk factors, the doctor's wanted to induce labor and we needed to be at the hospital by 5pm! I made sure everything was in line and rushed home to help pack a suitcase and get the wife to the hospital.

I sent out a mass text to the whole family to let them know what was going on and of course hit up Facebook.

I called my boss at UPS to tell him that I wasn't going to be at work and he informed me that one of the other supervisors in my area was also having a baby at the same hospital, funny how things work out that way.

We got to the hospital around 5 and found that we weren't the only ones that were going to have a baby. All of the hospital's labor and delivery rooms were occupied with mothers getting ready to have kids so we had to wait in the waiting room for about half an hour before we finally got into a "Stage 1" room, where the early stages of the process would be handled.

We were there for around 3 hours before we were moved to a "Final Stage" room where they would administer the medicine to induce labor and where the baby would be born. At around 1030 they started the medicine and it became a waiting game.

I caught some nap time for the next few hours waiting for the real fun to begin. At around 6am, my wife was finally at around 4cm dialated and her water broke, a sure sign that our son would be around shortly. In less than an hour she dialated another 6 cm to "Full" and was ready to push, all we were waiting on was the doctor.

Once the doctor got to the hospital and got scrubbed in, it only took less than half an hour for Jaydran Alexander to be born at 726am, 6.6 lbs and 19".

The hospital staff got him all cleaned up and let me be the first family member to hold the newest Johnson.

In short order everyone else that was at the hospital was allowed to hold the baby. Both Grandmas, my dad, my sister and my sister-in-law all got their chance to hold Baby Jaydran.

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.

Posted via Blogaway on my DroidX

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.

Ah the irony

So for the last few months, basically since I took over as the Store Manager, my VZW Indirect Store has been slightly overstaffed. Not heavily overstaffed to the point where no one is making any money, but overstaffed to the point where we often had too many people working most of the time.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, my UPS area has been chronically understaffed (as I mentioned in my previous post) and I had been trying to convince my full-time supervisor to get me more people.

Now, coming back from vacation, I find the situations reversed. My UPS area has more people than I technically need (but I'm not telling anyone there that fact) and I just had 2 employees yanked from my VZW store so I'm down to me and 1 other person.

The reasons for the reversal: at UPS we're hiring hand over fist in preparation for Peak (a glorious 2-3 week period where our volume triples and we move everyone's Christmas goodies). On the other hand, the Indirect Agent I work for just took over 5 new stores in the surrounding area and now we need staff to handle those positions.

So while my 25hrs per week at UPS should prove relatively painless, at least through the end of November, I've got about 1 week to get some staff hired and another week or two to train them before Black Friday and the Christmas shopping season. The fact that most of the applicants I get aren't qualified to fight their way out of a wet paperbag is unfortunate, but I might just have to suck it up and deal.

Such is life I guess.