What do you know?

I can answer the musical question "Who let the dogs out?".

It was my cat.

I work the night shift so when I go to bed in the morning, the dogs come in and sleep with me. The dogs and the cat are still slowly working on relations; the cat hates them. A couple of days ago, I woke up and realized that something was wrong. I could move. Normally, I have 140 pounds of dogs sleeping on me somewhere.

Still groggy and looking around, I figure the dogs must be sleeping on the floor. I grabbed my housecoat (woke up 'cause I had to pee) and suddenly realized that the bedroom door was open. This is a bad thing-the dogs like to eat stuff. And they have Labrador stomachs. So off I go to the bathroom, expecting to find the house destroyed.

There, looking horribly dejected, are the dogs, out in the living room. The kitchen door only swings one way so after they pushed it open to go out, they couldn't get back in. Keep in mind that the dogs are usually woken up by my daughter when she takes them outside at 3. So, they're sort of trained that when the bedroom door opens, they run out to the living room.

Apparently, the cat figured this out, too. After my trip to the bathroom, I let the dogs back into the bedroom and went back to sleep with my usual 140 pounds of fur on me. The next day, I woke up at 10am. No dogs, door open, cat curled up beside me on the bed.

I'm pretty sure she was smiling.

I make great money for a babysitter

I'm 37 years old, and I work with a crew of people who are younger than I am. The youngest is 20. Lately, the crew is acting like a bunch of petulant kids. It started like this we had a wicked busy night-we had to drop 900 skids, transport them and load them. They got dropped and they got transported. We knew they would not all get loaded, but the loaders were waiting for a truck to be chocked.

The lady who does that stuff was busy as well. So the loaders and droppers start to talk, and the lady that does the paper work and stuff gets mad. 2 of the guys talking could have chocked the truck instead of waiting on her. So she gets a chance to chock it, comes back in and says you can start loading now. Loader guy says, "Oh, we're done for the day." This is at 10 to 6-work is over at 6:30. Lady gets mad and tells the manager. The next night, the manager gives the guys shit for standing around.

Now the guys get mad that we did that much work and she ratted us out for talking (yes, that is actually what these grown men said- she ratted us out. How very grade school!). "Well screw them! They're not getting more than 8hrs work from us." So than starts the crap fest; the droppers start doing a bad job which screws the transporters which means the loads get freight much slower. This goes on for 2 days.

Then the big boss comes in to our start up and says, in a nutshell, grow up or you're getting a TL. They continue acting like spoiled kids. Then I got mad because one of the droppers does a very good job for me because he knows I'm not the one they're mad at. Why does this make me mad? Because this guy used to hate me; so here is this guy that stopped hating me like 8 months ago (but probably still doesn't like me) working well for me. I got really pissed because the night before an old friend of mine did the crap drop for me.

As I have said, I have worked for this company for 11 years and I'm damn good at my job. I'm now pissing off the pissed off guys by getting the work done anyway (go me!). Their stupid plot is pointless and petty.

Yep, I make damn good money for a babysitter.

The Transporter's Prayer

The Company signs my paycheque; I shall not want.
It maketh me work with juvenile sucks. It leadth me into many clusterfucks.
It provideth me Health and Safety Training. It outlines policies and procedures in the Employee Handbook.

Yea, though I drive through the valley of childish bullshit, I will fear no crybaby,
For you pay me for this.

My center-rider and my driving skills comfort me.
Thou periodically has Employee Appreciation Barbeques with these juvenile cry-asses.
My machine is full of oil, my thermos runneth over.
Surely this childish bullshit shall follow me until I retire,
and I shall dwell in this damn warehouse until I'm 65.
Praise The Company!

Gay marriage? So?

Since election time is rolling closer and closer in the States (sigh-I'll miss Dubbya. He's done great things for the Canadian dollar.) and most likely here in Canada as well, let's talk about something that's sure to be a hot election topic, shall we? Say it with me kids, gay marriage.

As a heterosexual male (*looks down pants* yep, male), and as a person who was brutalized by his mother (not all women are caring and nurturing), let me start by saying if 2 men or 2 women want to get married, by all means, go ahead. I have always held to the personal belief that the world is a hard enough place to be happy in to worry about what gender somebody is happy with. And so long as there is love in your hearts and you have kindness and compassion-adopt! Adopt as many kids as you can. Personally I would have much rather been raised by a gay couple that wanted me than a straight woman who didn't. So for all of those who believe that homosexuality is an affront to God-get bent!

Really. Gay marriage is not going to cause the collapse of Western Civilization. It is not going to destroy the institution of marriage. I'm fairly certain that there will be a far lower divorce rate among gay couples than straight ones.

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that most of the people who are really, really outspokenly against gay marriage tend to get outed a couple of months later? So, you know, if you're gay and you're looking, find yourself an outspoken opponent of gay marriage and you might get a date! Of course, they won't call you back and they'll denounce you as evil, but it could still be a good night. (kidding! relax folks!)

And for the overly religious zealot types, here's the thing: if God has a problem with gay marriage, let God stop it. Not by vote in congress or Parliament, but by showing up and saying "Knock this shit off!". Doesn't have to be in person-could be by flaming shrub or whatever. I'm pretty sure that he has the special effects budget to animate a statue of jeebus if he wanted to.

Hey, is it getting warm in here? Does anyone smell burning wood?

(If the Christians are right, I'm so going to Hell...)

Poopin' on overtime!

Kind of a tribute to Blue Water, Baby by moooooog35, here goes a tale of a man and his toilet.

As I lack a friend to text me when the toilets at work have been cleaned, I had to find my own system. I've mentioned that I've been with the company for a long time. We have a separate company that comes in to do the cleaning of the bathrooms, cafeteria and so on. After they'd been there for about a week I learned their schedule. Now, anywhere in the warehouse, I can tell you where's there's a freshly cleaned toilet and at what time it was cleaned.

Since the last thing the janitorial staff do is mop the floors you can tell if someone has been in since they cleaned-there's boot prints on the floor. So, I guess my BWB is NBPB-No Boot Prints, Baby! But I digress.

One of the minor forms of revenge against my company that I enjoy the most is pooping on overtime. Seems a small thing, but consider it-they're paying me double time to poop. And on a freshly cleaned toilet. Trust me, it's the most satisfying shit you'll ever take in your life. If I'm really hacked off at the company and I know they're offering a double time shift, especially on a long weekend (that's triple time and a half), I will actually eat foods that will guarantee that I will poop more. My personal best is 5 visits in a 12 hour shift, and all on freshly cleaned toilets.

My revenge is stinky.

Saving money VS stupid

Stuff like this is why the place I work for drives me nuts. The Q A night shift had one its guys take a day shift job (Why anyone works days is beyond me,sun light-it burns, it burns!). Now, in the interest of saving money, the company has decided that replacing the guy who left is not in the budget, taking the QA night shift from a 5 person crew that struggled to get the job done (it used to be a 7 person crew-gotta save that money) to a 4 person crew that has no fucking hope of getting the job done.

QA-the department that fixes all the mistakes, catches all the errors, that sort of thing-is now woefully understaffed. And in the corporation's extensive wisdom, all technical people like QA, Traffic, IT and loss prevention, now have to do 5 hours a week in operations. That means all the folks with the cushy office jobs now have to slug boxes. Great idea in theory, if your theory is to piss off as many people as possible with as little effort as you can put in! Why do they think these people took the cushy office jobs? Here's a hint-because they didn't want to slug boxes! If they wanted to be shippers or receivers, they would have signed up as shippers or receivers.

Great, so they've increased the inexperienced and pissed off people on the floor while decreasing the people that catch the mistakes. That will save money, I'm sure. I'm sure for the extra few boxes they'll get out the extra mistakes will totally be worth it. But what do I know? I've just worked on the floor for 11 years. Management makes me giggle. They could solve so many of these problems by walking up to one of the old guys like me and very quietly, so no one else can hear, asking me one simple question-"Is this stupid?".

"Why yes, Mr. Manager, sir, it certainly is!"

In my 11 years with the company, I have have 57 Team Leaders and probably 14 or 15 managers. I've seen 2 managers retire, I've seen 4 TLs become managers. Guess what happened to the rest of them? Fired or quit. A few were moved to other departments. I can't wait to see what the future has in store.

We have a new TL, young guy, I'm guessing late 20's at best. When talking to a team member (that's any of us uneducated folks on the floor, y'all) he tends to have a look on his face like he's staring at a particularly unpleasant pile of something. And he seems to have this idea that since he worked at a brake plant as a manager previously, he knows absolutely everything about warehousing. For example, the RSR night shift has a very important job and sometimes it's crazy busy. On those occasions, we need 3 droppers, 3 transporters (that's what I do) and 3 loaders. His last great idea was to take one of our best droppers and assign him as a transporter. Dumb. His really dumb idea before that; put a guy who had his reach licence for 2 days (that's what we drop with) on the drop, on an insanely busy night. Dumb. I can't help thinking when he looks at me with that "What did I just step in?" look-"Yeah, smart guy, next year while you're looking for another job, I'll still be here doing the job at 150% of target. Ya schmuck!"

Too bad I lack the mental acuity for management.