8 May 2006

Another drill weekend down, and, as always, I’ve found myself in serious need of comfort food. Something about the utter lack of professionalism that just *kills* me. I mean, I’m not completely opposed to *having* a family day picnic, but it shouldn’t be *during* drill hours–have it after drill, or on another weekend. Of course, I did have the biggest laugh of the year so far on Sunday, as cleanup operations were coming to a close. Here’s the story:
—–
The unit had taken a lot of folding, steel chairs from the drill hall out to the park. After the picnic, they loaded these chairs, along with a wheeled trolley designed to carry about fifty chairs at a time, onto a truck and drove them back to the drill hall. So, I finish doing dishes and come out to find soldiers taking chairs off the truck, handing them *over* the trolley, and carrying them *by hand* a hundred feet across the drill hall to the storage room. I watched three people do this before I shouted “Stop, stop, stop!” About a dozen people were staring at me as I made a big, dramatic gesture at the trolley. “Wheels. WHEELS?” I said. No one moved for about five seconds, and then one of the sergeants present started loading chairs onto the trolley. As I was walking away to find another job, I said, “Tomorrow’s class will be on levers, with inclined planes if time allows.”
—–
I had to bail on Mom and Dad again on Saturday afternoon. It seems so obvious, on Friday nights before drill, that I should just be able to drive down to Mexico on Saturday afternoon and have lunch with the family. Of course, Saturday afternoon rolls around and my night-shift oriented biological clock says “Nuh-uh–time for go to bed”. A la Tor Johnson. SORRY!!

I have stepped down from my pre-box job at MBS, and I’ll be talking to HRO about hostile work environments this week. After I started keeping a journal of everything I did to counter the *slough* of false accusations from the day shift shortage control people, they simply started sending derogatory e-mails with my name included, but no information to investigate. And they didn’t send them to me, or to my boss–they sent them to my boss’s boss’s boss. Also, I’ve discovered that the turnover rate for this job is *huge*, for exactly this reason–so somebody needs to look into it.
On the up side, since my supervisor understands the situation, I’ve been allowed to keep the hourly bonus even though I won’t be working in that position any more. And, I’m going back to shipping, where I’ve always enjoyed working, anyway.

Kevin is back from his latest military school, although I haven’t spoken to him yet. He seemed to find it less than stimulating.

Mom and Dad have almost finished moving. Apparently, there’s a bunch of my stuff in their attic that I need to come get so that they can finish–I’m sort of excited. I might finally find that box I asked them not to lose when I left for boot camp! 🙂

All my best–Jason