Take It To The Limit
I must say I went back to work with my spirit very high, I don't think my morale has been that good in a long time. Things errode rather rapidly. The perils of a government job I suppose.
Once more I get the feeling of having a bullseye on me because I'm a pharmacy student, I'm male, etc. My outsider status did not take long to be enforced amongst the technicians. Unlike last year, particularly after the incident in July, I really don't care about socializing with them. My experience with my peers at school taught me the valuable lesson of closing ranks and sticking with the people who are going to contribute something positive to te mix. Which is mostly the pharmacists in this case. I think because there's a much higher grade of professionalism in their work, they appreciate my attitude far more than the others do.
It still is frustrating to be working hard and see most of the other people talking while I'm the only one working. Its burning me out really fast, not helped by the fact that I came into it already burnt out from school. More and more I'm thinking I should have taken a week off instead of jumping right off that horse and onto this one pretty much. But the fact of the matter is I need the money worse than I need the rest. The stress is getting to the point where its even effecting my sleep. I'm not a early to bed type of person anyway, but when I finally do decide to go to sleep, I'd prefer to slip right to dreamland. Instead I'm tossing and turning for at least an hour before I finally make it happen.
Back in the old days, I was somewhat ambivalent about my 15 minute breaks. I think I've mentioned I could often go without them and often did. I liked work and keeping busy helped the time go by. Now I keep a close eye on the clock, eager for my time to retreat to the breakroom. One of the many changes, and one of the few good ones, is everyone's break time is set in stone. I often got the screwjob the first week or two since I was mostly working the later shifts and so I was down on the line. I may be more eager to take my breaks, but I take the 15 minutes I'm allowed. Some folks tend to linger which screws the whole system up. One time I got a minor talking to because I took off when I saw the person coming back from outside the pharmacy and thought she was coming back. Turns out she left later on for the restroom, my thoughts are why the hell didn't she make that stop on the way back. The quote when I got my talking to was that "I noticed that the one tech was there alone." That's manager-speak for said tech dimed on me. I know she's capable of it because I've seen her go into the office when there's been a bone of contention and the door gets closed. I'm no idiot, I can see how this plays out. Me, as long as it isn't a gross screwup, I follow a code of silence almost as stringent as the Omerta. I just don't believe in complaining, one of the few points of the code of conduct for a gentleman I still seem to have going for me. And I'm realizing that I may need to reevaluate that one. At this rate, the stress of suffering in silence is just going to put me on the fast track to an ulcer, a stroke, and/or a tumor. Being left alone to mind the store is not the worst thing, hell I've been ditched by these people countless times, sometimes for almost an hour. It maybe wasn't quite that long, but it certainly felt long, thankfully I don't recall us being particularly busy.
At least when it comes to the horses, life has been far more satisfying. Stormy has done quite well lately, we've been trying to amp up our work with him to see if we can get his training improved. Some nights we just take it easy and enjoy a nice mellow time with him, particularly when I'm exhausted after a rough day of work. He's making some good progress, we set up the cones and barrels in a way that I could back him and he'd have a tough time avoiding at least brushing one with his back leg. The idea being to get him over that fear of anything touching his legs. He did alright, got a little high headed but he didn't totally freak out so I take that as a small victory. We'll keep at it.
I had a really special moment with Scotch Monday night. We've been taking to brushing her almost every night in an attempt to get the excess hair off of her and keep her skin in good condition. Its going good so far, there are only a few isolated tufts so the new medicine must be really doing the trick. Monday Mom was up talking to Jayne so we had some alone time. I gave her an extra long brushing, using some of the ones that we usually don't use just for the sake of spending more time with her and being thorough. I could tell she was in a very affectionate mood that night, but nothing prepared me for what happened when I went to crawl over the fence. As I was climbing over I looked back and there she was. She had followed me to the fence. Usually when you're done Scotch walks away from you to go back about her business, not towards you, so I knew this was really special. So I stepped back down and spent some more time with her. That made my day.
Work and the horses have been pretty much it these past few days. I can't think of anything else for the moment, so I'll let it go for now and go back to enjoying my day off.