Off the streets....
As usual things have been busy here.
Change tends to do that.
Heck, everything tends to do that with us lately!
So, the news:
Tygrr is handling her new job really well. The first few days were killers as it's a very physical job. The factory covers 15acres and is five stories high inside. It's open down the middle where forklifts etc work, including special high lifters that lift the products up to whichever floor they are stored on. Therefore, there are no lifts. It's all stairs. Yup, five flights of stairs. You can bet by the time she's been there six months my tygrr will have THE tightest butt in the state!
The place she works at is a distribution centre for a major department store. A distribution centre is where all the products are sent to, and then distrubiuted to the different store branches. For instance, Sony sends them the tvs, Huggies sends the nappies, Revlon sends the makeup - any product seen in the BigW stores are all sent to the distribution centre by the supplier and then each store sends in its order for stock.
So tygrr's job varies from unloading the trucks from the suppliers to putting orders together for dispatch to the stores to dispatching orders to lots of other stuff she has told me and I have promptly forgotten. Sometimes when she has to put the orders together she has to get small stuff and sometimes has to lug around huge things like tvs.
Her distribution centre handles orders for four states, so if you live in the southern part of Au, then chances are the goods you see in your local BigW store have gone through her paws!
So, this is good. She survived her week of dayshift and training, although I nearly didn't. I hate dayshift. I only see her for a few hours after work when she's tired and grubby, she eats tea, has a shower and goes to bed because she has to be up so early. So it was with relief that she started nightshift this week and life settled into a semblance of normality.
They had been warned that things are relatively quiet at the warehouse at the moment but it will pick up in a couple of weeks as there is a sale catalogue coming out and all the stores will be ordering up big for that, but until then it could be quiet and sure enough she came home from work early today and is off the next couple of days.
We were talking about it after she got home and a major penny dropped that helped me understand her reaction to stand downs of casuals at her previous job too. Apparantly in the USA they don't have casual staff. It's either full time or part time. Well we have full time and part time here, but we have casual too. Casual staff are paid at a higher rate because of the convenience of having them when you want them, and being able to tell them not to come in when you don't want them. When you tell them not to come in, they are still employed by you, but not paid when they do not work. She hadn't understood that system when she had her last job which is why she took it so bad when she was stood down for a week before christmas. Here, if you are casual, you expect times where you are stood down.
That's why this job is a good one. While she's still casual, this company has the policy that if you work there for six months on casual and prove yourself reliable they will then offer you a warehouse management traineeship and put you on permanant staff - you know, that nice thing where you get sick pay and paid holidays? The previous factory she worked at didn't do that. They just kept all their workers on casual so they could call you in or lay you off as it suited them.
So, all is good in the tygrr employment front. And of course any anxieties over worth etc that she may have been having while not working have all disappeared and I have my usual happy tygrr back.
As for me, I have happily resumed control of my house again and have positively revelled in my solitude. I am off today for a jaunt to places that are going to feature in my novel to take photos and soak up some atmosphere and write it all down on the laptop. I was out that way the other day but time did not permit me to stop and do all that then, so I am going out there again today just to work on my book.
In other news we have a troll with a birthday coming up next friday and there's lot of discussion about What To Buy and of course lots of other discussions mainly instigated by her about What I Want etc.
Also, my siamese breeder friend has asked me to take on one of his cats which is a little skittish to see if I can calm her down and get her used to people and then find a home for her. She's a very pretty bluepoint female about a year old but was not handled a lot when young, so is rather shy of people and he just does not have the time to work with her. So I shall be collecting her on friday all things going to plan and then will begin the big Winning of Trust campaign. It will be interesting to see if I can succeed.
So, as you see, there is plenty happening to keep me off the streets and out of mischief, but not that much that it's overwhelming.
*looks out my window*
Well, the day is getting on, and I have places to go. If you are lucky I may even post some pictures of where I went next time I write, but for now, the day beckons!
Change tends to do that.
Heck, everything tends to do that with us lately!
So, the news:
Tygrr is handling her new job really well. The first few days were killers as it's a very physical job. The factory covers 15acres and is five stories high inside. It's open down the middle where forklifts etc work, including special high lifters that lift the products up to whichever floor they are stored on. Therefore, there are no lifts. It's all stairs. Yup, five flights of stairs. You can bet by the time she's been there six months my tygrr will have THE tightest butt in the state!
The place she works at is a distribution centre for a major department store. A distribution centre is where all the products are sent to, and then distrubiuted to the different store branches. For instance, Sony sends them the tvs, Huggies sends the nappies, Revlon sends the makeup - any product seen in the BigW stores are all sent to the distribution centre by the supplier and then each store sends in its order for stock.
So tygrr's job varies from unloading the trucks from the suppliers to putting orders together for dispatch to the stores to dispatching orders to lots of other stuff she has told me and I have promptly forgotten. Sometimes when she has to put the orders together she has to get small stuff and sometimes has to lug around huge things like tvs.
Her distribution centre handles orders for four states, so if you live in the southern part of Au, then chances are the goods you see in your local BigW store have gone through her paws!
So, this is good. She survived her week of dayshift and training, although I nearly didn't. I hate dayshift. I only see her for a few hours after work when she's tired and grubby, she eats tea, has a shower and goes to bed because she has to be up so early. So it was with relief that she started nightshift this week and life settled into a semblance of normality.
They had been warned that things are relatively quiet at the warehouse at the moment but it will pick up in a couple of weeks as there is a sale catalogue coming out and all the stores will be ordering up big for that, but until then it could be quiet and sure enough she came home from work early today and is off the next couple of days.
We were talking about it after she got home and a major penny dropped that helped me understand her reaction to stand downs of casuals at her previous job too. Apparantly in the USA they don't have casual staff. It's either full time or part time. Well we have full time and part time here, but we have casual too. Casual staff are paid at a higher rate because of the convenience of having them when you want them, and being able to tell them not to come in when you don't want them. When you tell them not to come in, they are still employed by you, but not paid when they do not work. She hadn't understood that system when she had her last job which is why she took it so bad when she was stood down for a week before christmas. Here, if you are casual, you expect times where you are stood down.
That's why this job is a good one. While she's still casual, this company has the policy that if you work there for six months on casual and prove yourself reliable they will then offer you a warehouse management traineeship and put you on permanant staff - you know, that nice thing where you get sick pay and paid holidays? The previous factory she worked at didn't do that. They just kept all their workers on casual so they could call you in or lay you off as it suited them.
So, all is good in the tygrr employment front. And of course any anxieties over worth etc that she may have been having while not working have all disappeared and I have my usual happy tygrr back.
As for me, I have happily resumed control of my house again and have positively revelled in my solitude. I am off today for a jaunt to places that are going to feature in my novel to take photos and soak up some atmosphere and write it all down on the laptop. I was out that way the other day but time did not permit me to stop and do all that then, so I am going out there again today just to work on my book.
In other news we have a troll with a birthday coming up next friday and there's lot of discussion about What To Buy and of course lots of other discussions mainly instigated by her about What I Want etc.
Also, my siamese breeder friend has asked me to take on one of his cats which is a little skittish to see if I can calm her down and get her used to people and then find a home for her. She's a very pretty bluepoint female about a year old but was not handled a lot when young, so is rather shy of people and he just does not have the time to work with her. So I shall be collecting her on friday all things going to plan and then will begin the big Winning of Trust campaign. It will be interesting to see if I can succeed.
So, as you see, there is plenty happening to keep me off the streets and out of mischief, but not that much that it's overwhelming.
*looks out my window*
Well, the day is getting on, and I have places to go. If you are lucky I may even post some pictures of where I went next time I write, but for now, the day beckons!