Perpetual Ruminations

Wednesday

It's late again, going on midnight my time and past the deadline for WDC. But, the idea is to write everyday, at least a little in my journal, and since I'm writing in a site called 750 Words, that little has to be at least -- you guessed it, 750 words long.

So, lets do a quick review of the day. It's Wednesday, my second day off this week. I still have tomorrow off, and then the same next week. After that it's going to be two days off a week, and some long days on top of it, but hey, we do what we have to.

Anyway, I slept in again today, but not as late as yesterday. I was up kind of late last night, so I didn't really sleep a lot, but got a good nights rest. Then, upon being woke up by my very wonderful wife, we enjoyed a couple cups of coffee before getting ready to run into town. Her mom, my mother in law, was in the area and wanted to get together for lunch, so we met her and her friend at Ihops. They were on their way to Iowa, but took a round a bout route so they could stop and visit for a few hours. We had a good visit, a good lunch, and then headed over to where I work.

Even though it's one of my days off, I have a guard who is quitting, and I needed to talk to him, get his resignation in writing, and try and get him to work one more weekend. I accomplished the most of it, but don't think I'm going to get the extra weekend. He is suppose to let me know tomorrow, but I really doubt he will work the extra weekend and help us out. He has been great at needing time off, but he rarely will give any time back to the rest of us, and after talking to him today, I don't see any change in his wanting to give anything back. It's too bad, because he could have done so much better if he had put more into it.

After finishing up my conversation with him, I had to talk to the store management to get some information on times another guard has been coming in. We have a double clock in system, one for our company and what we get paid, and another for the customer, so the company knows how many hours to bill them. This works out fine, but if we do not fill our post and the store has to supply someone they bill the company what is called a back-bill, for the time they fill our position. To keep things short, here is what has happened.

The person I have opening for me on my days off has been coming in a bit late on occasion. The store had to fill in for him a couple of times until he arrived, so they billed our company for the time. This gets my boss upset and he needs to know why this back-bill is happening. So, I then have to talk to the store management and get printouts of each shift to see who has not been filling their post. Since any other shift is covered, even if the guard coming on is late, I knew it had to be in the mornings. The store confirmed this, and then I had to contact my boss and explain it to him.

Now, if this person needs to make any time corrections, I have to contact the store and double check their records first before I can make the correction, since he has not given the right times. I also have to give him a verbal warning, and go over the procedure once again with him. I also have to find a solution so there will not be any back-billing, and that means, until he can prove he can get to his shift on time, he can't open.

This all leads to a big change in scheduling, and makes a lot of work for me and a lot of running around for me, especially since it's my day off. But, we got everything figured out, Saturday I will give him the verbal warning and talk to him about everything, and hopefully that will be the end of that problem. That took care of a big chunk of my day, and with the other person quitting, had me also working on a new schedule.

Here I had some help, though. Rhonda does a lot of the scheduling so she set down and worked out most of the needed changes. It's going to be tight, but I think we can cover most of the needed hours without too much trouble. It would be easier if I didn't have someone putting in for a week off, but I think we can swing that, too. Hopefully we get someone hired, trained, and on the schedule real soon, but that will be unlikely, based on past experience. Even so, I will give it a good try and post ads anyplace it may help to find a new part-time worker.

After we got the schedule finished and all the other stuff out of the way, Rhonda and I finished mowing the yard, then enjoyed a light lunch and a fire out on the patio. Now it's post this and get to bed. Rhonda works tomorrow, I get one more day off, but will likely be creating and printing off some ads to post.