All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Never has the phrase been so symbolic of my life as it has over the last few months. Between weekly mandatory overtime and a suspended drivers license I haven't been having nearly the amount of fun that I'm used to. Also, I'm very aware that the material goods that I have been purchasing with my overtime money don't even come close to filling the void left by the lack of a physical connection with someone. AKA: Sex.
It seems that, in my line of work, too many people place way too much importance on money. I truly don't believe that all the good things in life are free, just that you don't pay for them directly. But, on the other hand, I don't think the secret to life is working your ass off for an employer that will fire you in the end for being a minute late one too many times. I've never been punctual and this has always been a problem.
"Well Jack, I see that production in your area is up 60% since we moved you over there and quality is well beyond any recordable data we've kept. I know you hate that project with every atom in your body, but we're going to go ahead and keep you there until we decide to fire you for attendance. Which I'm sure will happen sometime within the next six months or so. Basically, we know that you'll miss a day eventually and since I'm uncomfortable with things I can't control I'm going to go ahead and promote Jimmy-the-window-licker because he never misses a day."
Oddly, this isn't a once-in-a-lifetime situation and isn't even as fictional as it should be. I've had this conversation with my boss before. True story. Except for a few rare occasions, this is pretty much how things always turn out, but I have yet to understand the logic in it.
Maybe that's the problem I suppose. There I go trying to push logic into a situation that has everything to do with an emotional response. I do have the innate ability of shattering the illusions of power that many bosses try to hold over their employees. Basically, when they piss me off I throw a wrench into the gears and watch as they twist in the wind and grow a full head of grey hair within the course of a week.
One recent example is when I was moved over to the laser shop at work because they were getting unbelievably behind. It was just me, the guy in charge of that shop, and three lasers. Since I had a background of running these types of machines I tended to pick up things pretty quick and things ran smoothly at first, but after getting the lay of the land in the first hour of my shift the other guy decided to have me run two machines to his one. My problem with this was that his machine took an hour to produce parts and fifteen minutes to prepare for the next batch. That left him with 45 minutes to do nothing and that's exactly what he did during that time frame. Meanwhile, my two machines took longer to reload than they did to cut. I realized right then that he was definitely management material.
"This simply won't do." I thought to myself in my best Dr. Seuss monologue. "He will not help me over here. He will not help me over there. He will not help me stack these parts. He will not help me load those carts."
Unfortunately for my manager friend I happened to know a thing or two about what it takes to make the lasers run and, more importantly, how to make them not run. I adjusted a setting, turned a dial, pushed a few buttons and waited. After a few minutes of run time the machine had over-heated and ground to a halt. I innocently went back to the control panel, pushed a few buttons, turned back the dial, and readjusted a setting, but the damage had already been done. The machine was inoperable for the time being.
At that point what could I do but go tell the guy in charge? I found him lounging in the break room with a good 15 minutes left before his machine would need reloaded. He followed me back to the damaged machine and looked at the error message that was still flashing on the screen for laser number 3.
"Awwwww.. Fuck!" He cursed to himself. "It must be messed up from yesterday when I crashed it and is slowly losing focus." Then he turned to me. "I guess you can just run the other laser for the rest of the night. I need to fix this and try to keep laser 1 going. If day shift finds out I wrecked it I'll get my ass chewed."
Suddenly I felt like the balance had been met. Now the person responsible for the department being behind was doing the majority of the work and actually sweating a bit as he did it. My work there was done. At the end of the day he even gave me a good review to my direct supervisor for out-producing him.
But even with all the small victories I've been having at work I still feel like there's been something missing and it's really been wearing heavy on me. I am Jack's shrinking libido. Turns out that sore muscles and good old physical fatigue makes for a bad sexual partner. This is the point where you realize that working too hard promotes celibacy even more than World of Warcraft does. Something has to change.
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