Well, here I am. After already coming over here once tonight to visit Argo earlier (surf the web, watch Angel, etc), and driving back to mom's place to go to bed, I found a piece of snail mail waiting, and just couldn't get myself go to sleep. Now, having laid awake for nearly an hour, I've arisen from bed, dressed, come out in the cold, and driven all the way back over to this here Laser Fortress just to type a rambling. So... I guess I had better have something worthwhile to write.

There's a number of things that I've had in the mental "queue" to write online about lately. For some reason, they just haven't made it out. I speculate the reasons for this to be a number of factors: My work schedule; the fact that my computer is several miles away from my bed; the environmental constraints of the venue Argo is located.

Usually, by the time I've gotten off work at midnight, any seemingly brilliant ideas I might have had earlier in the day have fizzled to a mere "ugggh." I often find myself very tired. Time for bed. Nevertheless, because maintaining some connection to the online world is desperately important to me, I frequently make the detour to this place, and spend a few minutes or hours vegging out in front of the screen. But to summon the brainpower to write stuff? Well, sometimes it happens.

Then, on some occassions, I find myself thinking of things after I've made the drive back to mom's place. I lay down in bed for a few minutes, contemplating things, and think, "Oh, if my computer was here right now, I'd write about..." (Yes, I do now have Dagobah over there now. It's not setup currently. Before I journied back over here, I thought about doing it, but.... space for anything in that crowded room is a major issue. Besides, transferring data is an issue. Dagobah has only a floppy and no network connection. Argo has no compatible media. Doh.)

And then, we get to my days off. Well, usually, my most active time mentally is in the evenings. In this room where my computer sits, my dad (understandably) often likes to relax and watch tv in the evening. Maybe it's a flimsy excuse, but.... typically, background tv noise and mental focus don't mix very well for me. Or maybe I just feel utterly out of my natural habitat to begin with.

But shit. Who am I to complain? It is his apartment. He's been very gracious to let me have a corner in here, set my computer up, and use his broadband connection all this time. I feel guilty even writing this, because it puts me in the spot of coming off as an ungrateful little puke. That's not my intention. The whole situation is just... hard. That's all.

So anyway.... tonight's insomnia finally triggered me to wander back over here for what looks to become a colossal braindump, of which the last several paragraphs were spent explaining why I haven't produced quite as steady a stream of content as has been known in the past.

Well... Here's the short and simple of it: I'm fed up with my job, and I don't know what to do about it. I think I'm also depressed much of the time these days. Life feels like it has come to a dead end for me. There's no clear direction for the future, and none of the available options seem very appealing. Maybe there are demons to face, but their nature eludes me.

Hmmm... Time for some music.

Queensryche -- Take Hold of the Flame, seems fitting enough. Read the lyrics. I don't feel like retyping or pasting them.

Work. Well, I'll have two days off now, so I don't need to worry about waking up this afternoon. Hence, the title of this rambling. It's my "weekend." Everybody else's work week has just started. Now I get to be off for a couple of days. Yipee.

Now playing some classic Yanni for background. Hopefully, it won't put me to sleep prematurely.

Work. Where do I even begin? Well, I guess I'll just go with what comes to mind.

Last week, there was another overtime crackdown. Should I perhaps define my terms? Overtime crackdown. No, it does not mean that there's a bunch of extra work, so the store wants people to work lots of overtime. Quite the opposite. Sort of. Well.... There might be extra work, and they might want it to get done, but the people running the store certainly do not want employees to log lots of overtime hours. Slightly clearer now? No?

When I came in to work on Monday^H^H^H^H^H^H Thursday, a coworker immediately gave me a friendly warning that I would probably also be getting spoken to by the manager, which in this case would not be a good thing. Too many people in the department had worked longer than their allotted 8 hours shift, which meant the store has to pay them 150% of their standard wage for the extra time. Since I been one of the people to take a bit of overtime the previous week, I would probably be getting the same reprimand.

For some reason, it didn't happen to me, but I know for a fact several other people in the deli were told to make sure not to be there for over 8 hours per day. Not just the deli. Other departments in the store too. It appears that these things come in waves, originating from the top of the pyramid, presumably whenever the overtime budget exceeds a certain threshold. (Or at least, that's my speculation.)

People who have been there for a while say that this never used to happen. A year ago, two years ago.... it wasn't considered a problem. The first week $coworker[$n] started working over a year ago, the deli alone logged over a 50 overtime hours in a week, and as long as work was getting done, management didn't have a problem with it. Now, they've gotten stingy. Very stingy. 16 overtime hours (for the combined department) is considered a major infraction. Why?

Well, we know it's not the deli manager's fault. She just gets her orders from the store manager. Could it be that he has turned into an miserly asshole? Doesn't seem to be. Though I haven't had a lot of contact with him, he seems like a nice enough person. Heck, he was nice enough to hire me. That's something good.

General speculation has been that he's got people from corporate headquarters way off in $who_knows_where telling him costs have to be cut. Could it be that they are the assholes? I don't know. I haven't met them. That is so far beyond my sphere of operation that any attempt on my part to draw a conclusion comes up with insufficient data. Fruitless.

But anyway, the point is: They don't want us to work overtime.

There is a problem with that, though. I don't know how things work in other parts of the store, but in the deli, each person working a shift is assigned to complete certain duties to during the course of that shift. People who work in the morning need to get all the hot food cooked and prepared for display, chickens baked, etc. Those working in the evening (such as myself) generally have fair amounts of cleaning to do. However, we're also natually expected to help any customers who might happen to wander by.

Most of the time, this isn't a problem. The shift duties are assigned in such a way that a person has enough time to get it all done, and also care of a reasonable flow of customers. Some of the time though, there are more customers than usual. (Why and how this happens is one of those eternal mysteries of the universe. Predicting it is kind of like trying to predict the weather, tomorrow, next week, or next month.) When there is a huge rush of customers, finishing all the shift duties before end of shift can be anywhere from difficult to downright impossible. Hence, overtime.

A reasonable person might assume that when there are more customers, the store must be making more money. Therefore, there should to be enough to cover a little overtime pay for the people serving those customers, right?

Maybe that's how things work on your world, but in our universe, the physics of accounting takes on an entirely new and unimagined form. :)

Well, like I said, I personally didn't get the "talk" about overtime. So the only thing I'm really bitching about at this point is what I've heard happen to other people.

Why didn't it happen to me? I can guess a few possible reasons. Maybe it's because I didn't have much overtime. Maybe it's because on some nights I clocked out early when I finished ahead of schedule. (Yes, sometimes the mysterious customer behavioral patterns can go in the opposite direction too. When this happens, I often leave early because I get tired, bored, and/or itching to go home and read slashdot. Somehow, after 11 at night, when the brain and body are ready to collapse, the perceived value of standing around a little longer in order to pull in a few extra bucks diminishes significantly.) Or maybe it's because I work my ass off, and the manager knows it. (I did get complemented a couple days ago, which was... good.)

Well, if I ever do get the "talk", I've got my response all planned out. I'll politely and respectfully ask exactly what I am supposed to do. When the end of my shift is approaching, I'm trying to clean, and there are a bunch of customers, do I (1) Wait on the customers, leave the cleaning jobs unfinished, and go home, (2) Ignore the customers, and finish my tasks, or (3) wait on customers, clock out, and proceed to finish tasks "off the clock." (And if the latter was explicitly being requested by an employer, I'm pretty sure that violates a statute somewhere, which might give somebody grounds to sue somebody.)

Unfortunately, I've seen some coworkers opt for (3), which is, well, their choice, but I don't think it helps matters much in the long run. The more often it happens, the more it might be likely to give management the illusion that those of us who actually clock the time we work are "inefficient." Personally, I'm not willing to go that route. But I also know that not everybody has the luxury of spending a few months in mom or dad's place when worse comes to worse. So who am I to judge?

Blah. This whole subject is depressing. That's why I don't usually feel like writing about it.

Unfortunately, there's more.

Last week, I finally got my union application. Union membership for someone in my position is mandatory, or so they say. Recalling from very first discussion I had with the store manager when I first interviewed for the job, he said union dues were $5/week. I figured that if the union was doing something positive, that was probably fairly reasonable. (Generally, I find labor unions to be a good idea, although I have problems with many of the common implementations of such.)

So anyway, I filled out the union application, signed the form authorizing union dues to automatically be deducted from my weekly paycheck, and figured all was well with the world. Until tonight.

I found an envelope sitting in my room from the UFL-CIO, which contains introductory information. The first paper I pulled out explains the benefits of having a union, collective bargaining, how unions can prevent employers from changing the benefits and terms of employment without notice, blah blah blah. Also instructions and schedules, should I choose to attend an upcoming union meeting. Oh goodie.

Then, a letter. Summary: "Welcome to the union! You owe back dues from the past 2 months. Weekly dues are $10. Also, an initiation fee of $175 is required. (No joke.) Your current balance is: [something over $300] We will deduct the standard $10, plus an extra $10.20 from every paycheck until the balance is paid off in full. Have a nice day."

And here I am, thinking: Fuck. I already signed the paper authorizing "appropriate dues" to be deducted from my paychecks, without getting IN WRITING exactly how much those dues would be. I'm a moron. Is there any way I can fight this now? Is it even worth trying?

Maybe the union is a good cause. I dunno. But in my book, if it looks like a scam, smells like a scam, and feels like a scam... What else can it be?

The terrible irony of all this is that the union is supposably the entity which is supposed to represent MY INTERESTS, and keep me from getting screwed. Hah!

A few quick mental calculation. Depending how many hours I work in a given week, that's between 6% and 10% out of every paycheck, from now until $balance is paid. (6 months from now, by my estimate.)

There's a part of me that just wants to say: Screw it. This is the last straw. Go in there and give 2 weeks notice now. Then I could spend more time worrying about where to find a job next. The pay is peanuts anyway. It ain't worth spending 30-40 hours out of every week working my ass off, potentially getting crap about overtime, and then having to fight the union too. (Or passively stand by and take it up the ass. Also an option.)

But then the voice of reason: It's hard to find work right now. Besides, this job ain't that bad. I like my coworkers. My manager is nice. I have debts to finish paying. I don't want to be a bum.

Well, now I have a couple days off to chill and think about it. No need to make rash decisions.

And now, I know I've been up writing too long. My dad just awoke, and is now up and about.

And here I am, thinking maybe I'll drown my anxiety in another stellar episode of Angel.

Life ain't all bad. Peace, and goodnight^H^H^H^H^H morning.