Perpetual Ruminations

Sunday

This feels strange. "What feels strange," you ask? Actually its a few things. Fist of all, being home on a Sunday morning. Then being in here and writing in my journal this early in the day, and finally, typing on my netbook.

I will explain this further, starting with being home on Sunday morning. It's my job. When I started almost three years ago, I worked every other weekend. At least that was the principle, and the way the schedule was set up. In fact, the other person who worked the opposite weekends always took her weekends off, so the schedule was in constant flux, and I worked damn near every weekend.

A few months later, I found myself promoted to the position of supervisor. The first thing I did was to uphold the schedule unless someone put in for and was approved time off. I also demanded that unless it was an actual emergency, they had to put the request in at least two weeks and before the schedule was posted. This helped get me a few more weekends off, but there were some emergencies and quite a few legitimate time off requests.

Then, about two years back, I had to squeeze out some undesirable persons, and once again found myself working weekends. As I weeded out the bad and replaced them, I continued to have a difficult time finding anyone who was willing to work weekends. At best, it was every other weekend, except for one person, who was the guy who hired me. He worked another job and was only available to work on the weekends. He worked every Saturday and Sunday mornings.

This coming May will be my third anniversary and the second year since this person left us. He got sick and had to take some time off. I would have been happy to have him take medical leave, but he wanted to terminate his position, which he did. I still asked him to put in a written two-week notice and to supply me with something stating his medical need to quit working. My intent was to use this if he was curable and wanted to come back to work for us.

He gave his notice over the phone, but never worked any of the final two weeks. I understood, considering the nature of his sickness. But he never got back to me at all. I didn't hear from him for just over a year, when one day he shows up and wants his old job back. Of course, with no word at all from him, nothing stating why he even quit, and only his verbal resignation, I had no way to know if he ever intended to return.

I had hired another, vamped the schedule to fit the new employees, and now worked every weekend, but only the mornings. My wife worked the afternoons, and the nights were split between a couple of other people. There was no way to grant him his desire to have his same shift back without taking time from everyone and changing everyone's schedules.

I'm not certain, but I think I could count every Sunday I have not worked on my fingers. If not, then if I added in my toes I know I would be able to count them all. That's almost three years; in thirty-two months, I have had less than twenty Sundays that I have not been at work. At first, most weekends I worked at night, closing up. But, for most of the last couple of years I've worked mornings and opened.

Now, there is some changing to the schedule again, and I'll no longer open on Sundays, but instead will close up. I still open Saturdays, but Rhonda now opens Sunday and I close. It's been a long tie since I've closed up, especially on a Sunda. That's why it feels so strange to be home this morning.

That also explains in part why it feels so strange to be writing in my journal. The rest of this is just the fact that I work mornings and am not home to log in to WdC until afternoon. Even on my days off, I don't get a chance to log in until noon or later. But, since I don't go to work today until four o'clock and I got up early with Rhonda, I'm finding it nice to be in here and have this written already.

Finally, it's very strange to type much of anything on my netbook. I do on occasion, but not very often. I usually use my laptop for this. It's not anything much, just ease of use, I guess. My laptop has a screen about twice as large so viewing is easier, and my laptop has a standard size keyboard and number pad. This makes typing very easy and very quick, with only minimal mistakes.

Of course, I only type at about thirty-five words a minute, and I make plenty of mistakes. But, for me thirty plus words a minute is fast typing, and with the standard keyboard most of my mistakes are mechanics and spelling, not mis-typing errors.

My netbook is smaller, so more difficult to view, it has a half-sized, if even that big, keyboard, and my speed is reduced to maybe fifteen to twenty words per minute. I've never timed my typing on here, but that sounds pretty accurate. It's a nice keyboard but it's very compact and I do not have the most graceful fingers when it comes to typing, so I also make many mistakes by not compressing the key down far enough or hitting the wrong key. I also tend to catch more than one key when I type on here. I have to slow down even more to type accurately.

I know --- practice. But since I am so limited on time, I tend to just grab my laptop and put off typing on here. Today, again, I have a bit more time, therefore, am using it to become more familiar with this pint-sized keyboard.

So, as you can see, today is much different for me. I'm at home instead of at work, I'm in here writing my journal before noon, and I'm writing it out with my netbook. Strange as it feels, it also feels good and I think I a going to enjoy this change to our schedule.