Five Free Hours

At the end of the day Wednesday The Boss promised to have a bunch of stuff red-lined for me to work on Thursday as he was going “out in the field” all day with The Other Boss. Okie-dokie.

I arrived at work and there was one little sheet on my desk. “Need a plan & profile sheet for this job.” Uh-huh. It’s a tiny little job and would take about 30 minutes to complete. Crap. I like the money they pay me, but I hate sitting around doing nothing*.

As I was contemplating how to fill the rest of the day, The Boss called on the phone (there is no extension at my desk – are they trying to tell me something?) and when I expressed my dismay at not having a full day’s worth of work he said that he was totally okay with me working on projects for The Other Boss in the office, so long as I wasn’t double billing, heh, heh, heh. As if, but I know he was joking. Considering what happened with the guy they had to fire, I understand it’s a valid concern.

I told him that I didn’t have any other work, but if he didn’t have anything for me, I would be happy to go home and take a nap. He was surprised by that, but I’ve been living on part-time minimum wage money for four years and doing just fine – one afternoon off is not going to blow my budget!

He said that between him and TOB they were committed to giving me full-time work. That will not happen this month and I know it. There are a couple of large projects coming in, but it won’t be until late this month or early next month and then I won’t have a minute to breathe, so taking a few hours now is a Smart Move. I think he was relieved that I understand that the company can’t afford to pay me for sitting around and that I’m willing to go home if I’m not needed. I’ll be writing my own ticket before you know it 🙂

So I left at noon and found myself with five “free” hours. A gentle rain was falling outside, so no one was around (maybe the folks in the trailerhood aren’t waterproof?) if I wanted to be outside. But, oh, a nap would be so lovely!

And so I did. Take a nap that is. Three full hours in the afternoon on a Thursday. Know what? It felt good! It felt so good that I want to make it a Regular Thing.

After our refreshing sleep, Sabu and I went walking and ran into another resident that we hadn’t yet met, Noreen and her dog Boo Boo. She informed me that we are allowed to let our dogs loose in the mule pasture so long as they won’t chase the mules. Well, huh! Cool! Off we went.

Two white mules were grazing at the far end of the pasture – I missed them when I was looking the other day because the pasture is much larger than I thought and I didn’t look around that big tree. As far as I know, Sabu has not been loose around livestock, so I had no idea how she would react. They shoot dogs ’round here for chasing livestock, but there’s only one way to find out if she’s a chaser.

The dogs were eager to play so we let them loose and they started running and acting like idiots right away, pals for life now. And then Sabu spied the mules over there. She took off like a shot, right for them. These are experienced mules who do not tolerate any crap from any dog, and they responded as you would expect to her attempts to herd them – they tried to take her head off with their hooves.

Oh, what fun! Luckily Sabu is very quick on her feet. Unluckily she was rather slow to pick up that these mules were serious about doing her harm. They actually ganged up on her and might have done for her if I hadn’t run up swinging her leash to distract them long enough to get that stupid dog to run back towards the gate. The mules followed pretty closely to be sure we left their domain. Scary smart creatures, mules. Hank and Henrietta are their names. I plan to go out without Crazy Dog and make friends another day.

Boo Boo was confused as to why Sabu would want to chase those mean mules when she could play with him, and being a smart guy, he did not even attempt to join in her moment of insanity.

No one was harmed and my heart rate returned to normal. Noreen and I will take the dogs to the dog park next time.

An hour of “free” time left and the vacuum came out. Exciting, I know!

It just feels really nice to be able to do some things that have fallen by the wayside for lack of time. It’s nice to feel rested at last.

Life is good!

* I’m good at my job. Fantastic, even. I regularly perform CAD miracles when someone else blows a deadline, or is about to. They can count on me to take care of things when no one else can. I have never met a drafter who can draw as fast as I can. I don’t say that to brag, it’s a true fact, and I have a theory as to why – it’s a good job that no one wants to lose, so they pad their hours, make it look difficult, lie about how fast something can be done and otherwise deceive The Boss to make their lives as cushy as possible. At three different companies I had to leave because the blatant wasting of time made me crazy and because when the bosses figured out that I was the fastest drafter, they insisted on using me and that caused some serious problems with the other drafters and well, I just can’t keep my mouth shut about that shit. I was even asked by one Boss to find ways the company could save time, paper and redundant mistakes. I found plenty of crap that should not have been going on. The other employees began a smear campaign – their theory was that since I was just one person and they were more, it made sense to train me in their methods as it would be quicker. They had it all worked out and were not willing to give up any of their (false) hours.  Sigh. It’s a huge problem. You might have guessed by now that I don’t do Office Politics 🙂