I had no intention of writing anything about this past week except that I have finally been scheduled on the Jensen aka chocolate line again with my most excellent friend Amanda, because it was in a word awful. But Mandy man has demanded an update and I'm stuck in a car driving to Illinois to visit my brother with my parents and my mother's micro-managing insanity yammering in the seat next to me making reading impossible and ranting all the more satisfying, which is what this will mostly be. Admittedly it won't be as heated as it would be if I'd written immediately after the fact, but what can you do. Also for convenience I'm just going to make a list of the slightly crappy things that came together into a perfect storm of crapiness and I love lists.
-crappy thing number one: they gave us another person to train. I'm sure I've bitched about this in previous entries but I'm going to say it again, I hate training people. It's the most frustrating thing because it creates so much more work for me and the others on the line, which makes me all the more sweaty-this is a lose lose situation. On top of that I immediately didn't like this woman-I have no defense of this senseless feeling of dislike towards her all I can say is that she looks like an angry pug dog, has almost no teeth, doesn't ever ask us what to do or how to do it, doesn't help clean, doesn't take any initiative and ok we probably should grab her and boss her around but frankly I just don't give a damn anymore. All I want is to get the work done as fast and efficiently as possible and she just gets in the way.
-this leads nicely into crappy thing number two: as previously established my sanity is gone and I'm prone to bursts of hysterical laughter and gazing off into space pretending I'm in my happy place and not bruised, bleeding and sweating in a factory. This makes it very difficult to deal with an inexperienced worker because I have no patience in teaching/having to think. My tolerance for this line is completely zero, I can't take it anymore.
-now that I'm thinking about it I may have written about Monday so I will jump to Tuesday: it sucked. I was in a terrible mood which isn't just do to the factory, my mother is driving me fucking insane. Everything I say she takes personally and gets really offended easily and micro-manages everything. Also she has continually insulted my taste in furniture/paint color this week and it's just exhausting to be around so I go in my room and read and go to bed and then she bitches about how I never talk to her anymore. Ok angsty rant over. So I went into work pissed off, then I had Crystal incessantly asking what batch we were on, how many pounds we had left, asking me why Manuel (the guy running the line) was doing things the way he was and maybe we should do this or that. What I wish I would have said, “Just shut the fuck up! Get your work done, Manuel is a smart guy he knows what he is doing, nothing is going to make this process faster so just accept it and stop pissing me off!” Instead I just nodded, mumbled, shrugged my shoulders, cast apologetic looks at Manuel and glared at Andrew because he was mocking me because he knows how Crystal is since she goes down to that part of the line and does the same thing to them. Also there was the typical disorganization of nobody knowing how much product we actually had to package and subsequently not knowing what time we would be leaving at, which drives me crazy because I crave certainty. Oh there was one good thing; Manuel is clearly annoyed with Crystal constantly checking up on him and suggesting things so when he needs to tell us something he tells me and pass along the message-this includes how much product we have and it clearly pisses Crystal off and I love it. So that was Tuesday.
-Wednesday: I decided in the morning that this day had to be a good day. I was going to be happy no matter what it took because to be as unhappy as I was the previous day is just not healthy and it makes time drag. This worked out really well actually, I even had a bonding moment with Manuel when we discovered that we both live in Waukesha. Also me and Amanda and Andrew went out for ice cream cones at McDonalds. It was a fun time.
-Thursday: the good mood didn't last, to be more accurate it was crushed beneath the pure rage I felt during this day. What ignited my rage was two things, the first being that when I was at the front of the line the machine was just broken enough that they wouldn't stop and fix it and just made us push through. This means that I had to stop it about every 5 minutes to put these little recipe cards into the box before the packets go in because the line moves too fast to first through the recipe in and then put the packets in. Also half of all the packets coming down the line were empty which I have to throw in the garbage but everyone after still has to fill the boxes. In essence it was constant stopping/starting, empty packets, empty boxes for an hour and it was exhausting. Then we switched spots and I was at the back of the line trying to calm down my temper, which had only resulted in me cussing a lot and ripping out a few boxes in anger but nothing too bad yet. Well then I was sitting at the end and instead of yelling down to me that a bunch of the packets were open and stopping the line, the girls just let them come and in my dazed state of half zone out/half frustrated hysteria I couldn't process what was happening until my hands were covered in pectin (a slimy viscous clear liquid that makes jelly into jelly) holding onto a huge pile of open packets with more unopened packets coming that needed to be put into boxes and that's when I snapped. I grabbed it all, threw it into a bucket and threw it all away then wiped off my hands and the floor/conveyor belt/bucket by me, while swearing loudly with undoubtedly a vein pulsing in my forehead. It was one of those situations where I couldn't see it from an outside rational position, all I saw was red and I couldn't stop swearing. After a few minutes of sitting there pulsing in fury I began to calm down and luckily got to go on break, where Amanda was there and I let the crazy explode out of me and she made me and laugh and calm the fuck down. It was exactly what I needed to realize how outrageous I was being. Then I got back on the line to find them unloading their bins and Andrew was helping out and when we were finished he helped me adjust all the bins and such (I'm not going into the details of the physicality of this line it's boring and useful information). It was so nice. Basically it was just a real bad day but it made me realize that I have pretty great friends at work so it ended on an ok note.
-Friday: they told us the day before that we would only be working until 8am because we only had 2 batches to package and in a day we usually do 6-8 batches so I made plans to go get tea with my friend Sam at this incredible tea room that is only open till 4pm, hence the reason we haven't been yet. Well I get into work and the first thing I hear is that we now have 4 batches to do, which was annoying but not so bad because that was basically work till 10am. No problems. Then the machine broke down for the first hour of work. Again I wasn't worried yet because it looked like we would be leaving by 11am. Then we went on break where I got to eat the peanut butter and nutella on a roll sandwich Amanda made for me-she is pretty much a great person. Then me and all the people on the line found out that we had to do 6 batches which is a full day of work aka leaving at 2pm and we all exploded. It was kind of a great moment-all 7 of us started ranting. Then I spent the next 2 hours coping with the idea that yet again my plans to get to this tea room were thwarted (two attempts had already failed) because no one new for sure how much we had to package, how long it would take so I just blocked it all out. Then I got back from second break to find out that we were done. At 12pm. It was exciting and yet I had already readjusted my plans in my head so lets just add it to the infuriating miscommunication of the factory. In summation I got to go to the tea room and it was everything I dreamed it would be-there were roses on the table, a chandelier, china tea cups and I was surrounded by little old ladies. It was completely lovely. If any body comes to visit me we are going.
-phew that was long.
