When we have a shortage of supervisors, they frequently make on sergeant over a couple of houses. Or sometimes three, with the yard sergeant picking up the slack in between.Tonight I was both the 10 house and 30 house sergeant. I thought "Okay, between the two of them, they'll have something for me to do. Maybe I can stay busy and the night will go by fast."
Nope. Nada. Zip.
I walked down to the house with Punkin and he showed me where my office was. It had a desk and a computer and a coffee pot with a bathroom right around the corner.
He said "You have to help E-wing with 4:30 count and again at 10:00. And you help take them to chow at about 3:20 or so."
"And after that?"
"You help bring them back from chow."
"And then?"
"That's it."
"Really?"
"Yup."
And that's what I did. Pretty much all night.
I got up and prowled around a little but it was making the guys nervous. I went over to 30 house and checked on them but everyone was behaving themselves.
So I went back to my office and made coffee and fired up the computer. There was supposedly a tutorial on there about how to do the employee performance reviews that all the supervisors have to do. And the yearly reviews are due at the end of January so I figured I'd better get a handle on the process.
Ever sit through a PowerPoint presentation? Even in a class with 20 or 30 other people after the first ten slides your eyes start to get droopy.
Imagine doing that in an office all by yourself.
Now imagine that you are sitting through a PowerPoint presentation on a subject that you know absolutely nothing about and imagine that the presentation is 100 slides long.
One freaking hundred pages describing the employee performance review process from start to finish. Repeatedly and in great detail.
I'm lucky I didn't slip into a coma.
After every twenty pages or so I would get up and go outside in the rain to smoke and wake up a little. Walking around in little wet circles, listening to the rain spatter off the top of my hat.
The top of that hat holds an amazing amount of water, by the way. Enough that if I tipped my head the right way it would douse my cigarette. Found that out totally by accident.
The next night I get like this I'll flip through the presentation one more time and take some notes on some of the salient points. Hopefully I'll be a little more prepared when the time comes to actually do the rating sheets.
And some time next year they will send me off to supervisory training to actually learn how to do the rating plans properly.
Whaddaya wanna bet they show me the same PowerPoint presentation in the class?
Tuesday is going to be National Fruitcake Day and apparently nothing else.
You celebrate this one. I'll get the next one.
I'd like to see that. I've just re-read the policy a few times. I can answer the first question now by Gawd! Any rumor on where and when they're sending us?
ReplyDeleteI love fruitcake, but haven't had a taste of one in about three years.
ReplyDeleteIf I had a choice between fruitcake or a PowerPoint presentation, I'd choose to be hit over the head with a 2 x 4 (or maybe the fruitcake!)
ReplyDeleteWell, if you ever get thirsty, I guess you can drink out of your hat. That was an amusing touch, by the way. I can almost imagine the little *ssst* when it put the cigarette out.
ReplyDelete(The captcha word is "resemeso" which is a soup that someone makes by tearing their job resume' up and cooking it some chicken broth. Usually the result of someone getting wayyyy too frustrated with a job hunt.)
Drew- Dang! I forgot I was going to mail that to you. If I get near a computer tomorrow I will. I'm waiting to see where everybody moves around to and hope to stay on 3rd shift.
ReplyDeleteDonna- The next time I get one I'll mail it to you!
Lolamouse- Me too!
Bryan- It covers my head better than the old ball cap but drips water right down where my cigarette ends. I had just lit it, too.
I think my resume' would make better soup than it did as a resume'.