Yesterday, M with the sparkly eyes told me to watch out for putting a particular brand of paint in the shakers, ’cause they were exploding. Why? The metal in the cans was too thin to absorb the force of the paint vibrations. Now that seems like a real problem to me that should be reported to the manufacturer. But since I’ve yet to meet a rep for that brand, who to tell?
Telling the bosses anything appears to be kind of a waste of time. My boss interestingly enough called ‘M’, told me he was radically changing my schedule. Why? Because another boss put me down for the majority of shifts starting at 5 AM. Since the store doesn’t even open ’til 6 AM, and nothing much happens before like 9:30 AM, that’s a waste of my time. More importantly, I am not available at crunch time. When is crunch time? If yesterday is any indication, it’s from like 9:45 AM ’til about 2:30 PM. That’s when all the contractors come in for five gallon buckets of paint. That’s a much slower production that mixing an isolated gallon here or there. The five gallon buckets are heavy, weighing between 50 and 60 pounds. So we have to get a platform with a grabber, move them individually between the shelf and the mixer, add the tint, close the bucket and put in in the shaker. If it’s a dark tint, that’s a longer shake. I estimate all this about doubles the time for the task.
It also wears us out faster. Most of us aren’t young whippersnappers. Another M – I’ll call him M the Elder – who opened at 5 AM yesterday, left early because he was worn out. Being worn out in the paint department is risky. We all have to preserve our strength so we don’t make any mistakes that could get us – or one of our peers – injured.
So why am I telling you all this? Because after Sunday, I never heard from ‘M’ again. As such, that puts me in the wrong time slot for most of the rest of the month, as I have 7 more shifts that put me in at 5 AM and then out by either 9 or 11 AM. That means I miss the crunch times. Now I have no problem with that, but really, people! As we are decidedly short handed anyway, does that really make any sense? So I’d say my schedule needs some shaking. But will anybody do it? We shall see. I will report further developments. In the meantime, I will definitely try to avoid that particular brand of paint that is exploding in the shakers. Who needs that?
