Forklift Friday

It was forklift Friday for me today. I am most definitely an office worker, but in a small company there are times that you do whatever needs to get done.  On Fridays, I'm the only one here who knows how to drive the forklift. That is not a picture of our forklift.  The one in the picture is way cooler looking than ours.  Looks like you could go off road with that bad boy.

Today was an interesting challenge - find the one crate out of thirty-two on the pallet rack and take it down, all while maneuvering in a very tight space because the guys had left a whole bunch of stuff crowding the shelves in the warehouse. It would boring to explain it, but let's just say that it would have made a good YouTube video. The one where they play goofy circus music while you watch the dummy on the forklift - move forward, back up, move forward, back up, turn too far, pull the pallet halfway out, push it back in, move forward, back up, pull the lift up too fast and dent the shelf above, back up, move forward, turn too far, etc. There were also various scraping noises involved.  I did successfully get the 400 pound crate on the ground and nobody was killed.

The next task was to try to put the crate in the back of a guy's SUV.  Ha!  He did not witness the previous forklift episode, but I showed him the dented shelf and told him that was my handiwork.  But I was the only one here and if he wanted to try it, I was his only choice.  He was a risk-taker. We tried it.  It actually went well - no scraping or denting this time.  It just wasn't possible to do it without crushing the back door of his SUV. We jointly decided against that.

There was almost a third opportunity to drive the forklift today because we had a truck come to pick up two outgoing crate shipments. But I decided not to push my luck and let the truck driver do it.  I'm actually not a bad forklift driver. The pallet rack incident was the first time I felt stupid.

So how do I know how to drive a forklift?  Just had one of the guys show me - on-off, forward-backward, up-down. Not that hard.

I have always had a good amount of what you might call blind confidence.  I just never think that there is any reason I couldn't do something.  And if there are doubts, I have the ability to act like I know what I am doing, at least until I really figure it out.  I can't say that this has led to an exciting life full of daring escapades or stupid risks.  It just leads to things like trying to juggle eggs in Beth's kitchen when I was a kid.  I was sure I could do it!

Or driving from Boston to LA by myself in a borrowed car in five days when I was 24.  Stopped at the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis and the Grand Canyon.  The rest of it was just highways and motels. How could anything possibly have gone wrong there? (And nothing did!)

In college, driving the church van by myself in New York City to pick up the local disadvantaged youth and bring them to Sunday school. Going in to seedy looking apartment buildings to get them if they weren't waiting outside (even though the priest told me not to.)  I wasn't going to just leave them. How could anything bad have happened?  (Nothing ever did.)

Going into a crack house and watching a woman who was overdosing have seizures while I was training to be an EMT in New York City.  In this case, I wasn't actually required to do anything.  I was just riding along as part of the training.  How could I not pull that off?

Moving to California in my early twenties with no money, no job, using credit cards for everything and having only a friend's living room to sleep in.  How could that NOT be a recipe for success?  It all worked out exceptionally well.  Found a great job that made me an imaginary millionaire for a brief time.  Found a beautiful, rent-controlled apartment right in San Francisco and lived there for eight years.

Okay, maybe I have done some stupid things.  Now that I really start to think about it, there were plenty of stupid, risky things I have done based on my blind confidence that nothing bad could happen.  So I must be blessed or watched over by guardian angels.  I am grateful for that. They haven't had to work too hard lately.  My life has been relatively sedate these past years.

But you never know.  If I find myself in Beth's kitchen again, I might have to try that egg juggling trick just one more time.  I know I can do it!

Angel by Abbott Handerson Thayer, 1889

Diplomacy

At work.
I get an email from a coworker requesting that I write a letter for him and send some materials to a prospective customer.

My first thought:
I am not your monkey.
Write your own stinking letter.

There is no reason he can't write his own letter. None at all. He has a good grasp of the English language and knows how to use a computer. Have to nip this one in the bud or I'll be doing all sorts of stupid crap for him.

So my diplomatic reply is:
Why don't you write the letter and I'll gather up the materials to send?

Can't you just feel the cheerfulness oozing out of that sentence?

He wrote his own letter.

There's a customer on the phone. One of our designs shows just a portion of a table with a cloth over it.  It is really just the edge of the table. There are dark and light shadows underneath the tiny part of table that does show. She wants to know what is under the table. She really needs to know.

My first thought:
Are you out of your mind?
Do you really have that much time on your hands that you can worry yourself about things like that?
Holy crap, lady - SNAP OUT OF IT!

My diplomatic response:
I have no idea what is under the table. We can erase that part out of the picture, if you would like us to.

I seem nice on the outside, but evidently my uncensored thoughts are not so nice. Like a chocolate-covered espresso bean. Looks good on the outside and at first it seems sweet. But when you get to the center, it's all dark and bitter.

Mr. Excitement

At work I emailed someone with an address to use in case they needed to send something by FedEx. This was his exact reply:

Ok!! Got it!! I’ll make it known to the Lender as well. Thank you for the clarification!!

Dude. Time to lay off the caffeine?

Or maybe he has some form of Keyboard Tourette's Syndrome and can't help but hit the exclamation point.

I'm going to email him a phone number change and see what happens.

Monday in my head

Every Monday I have an existential crisis. It starts at exactly 10:00 A.M.

Let me set the scene. Monday morning we have a Management/Sales Meeting immediately when I get in. (Yes, I go into work at 10:00 in the morning.) The meeting includes Enthusiastic Sales Guy and The Boss Man (a.k.a The Big Idea Guy.)

I love Enthusiastic Sales Guy. He is unfailingly positive and tenacious out in the field. Rejection just bounces off of him like those crazy, rubber balls that we used to get out of gumball machines when we were kids. He moves on to the next prospect with unabated optimism. Enthusiastic Sales Guy has been selling for a long time. Let's just say that he started well before computers were so ubiquitous. He is not very technically savvy. I am always helping him figure out little problems with his email and his laptop. I get annoyed sometimes, but I give him a lot of credit for trying to use technology as much as possible, even when it is not one of his strengths.

The Boss Man is the classic entrepreneur. He is not afraid to take risks and he is always pushing us forward. I call him The Big Idea Guy because he’s constantly coming up with new things to try and new angles to pursue. One of the main reasons the company has grown so much is that he never stops thinking ahead to what is next and pushes endlessly for us to do more.

Big Idea Guy has absolutely no understanding of how much work goes into executing his Big Ideas. We just created a beautiful new marketing piece – twenty pages of gorgeous pictures using our product along with all the calculations and pricing needed for our distributors to easily sell them. A week after we first talked about doing it, he was wondering why it wasn’t done yet. I said, “Are you crazy?! Do you have any idea how much work this is?”

We work well together. I have no problem smacking him back into reality and he’ll take a step back and let us do what needs to get done.

So first thing on a Monday morning, Enthusiastic Sales Guy and The Big Idea Guy are sitting around the table. I have only a few sips of my large coffee in my belly and the caffeine has not had too much of a chance to start flowing to my brain. Enthusiastic Sales Guy starts his report about what he has recently heard from our customers on his visits. Can we do this? How about we start that? Can we send some of those to all four hundred customers?

Big Idea Guy has a list of his own. We need to do this and that. Can we change those? Oh, and here’s a whole brand new thing that we need to do immediately.

And that’s when it hits me.

Why am I here?

How did I get here?

Does any of this really matter?

So much busyness. So much energy expended. So much of my own energy and internal resources used up... spent... depleted...

And for what? So we can try to sell more stuff that nobody really needs? Stuff that doesn't add a bit of authentic meaning or true fulfillment to a single person's life?

Oy.

I sip my coffee, take notes and plot my escape.

Mädchen im Romanischen Café (Berlin) 1911 by Lesser Ury

Weather, Walk, Work and Tempeh

It was 80 degrees here today. Went for a walk in the park this morning and saw some deer.


Sorry, I haven't been blogging lately. I worked 40-45 hours this past week. Tough life I have, huh? I had been working about 28 hours because the economy is kicking our ass and we had to cut everyone's time. If our sales don't increase soon, we'll have to lay off a couple more people. But I'm an optimist. I think we'll make it.

This week I worked extra hours because someone was out with a back injury all week and I had to fill in for her. But also because I got absorbed in some of my projects and just kept going. I do that sometimes. I'm such a good worker bee. It's a little bit obsessive.

I realize that when I work a full 8-hour day, I just don't have the creative energy it takes to blog. Yes, I know. You people with multiple children at home must really be feeling sorry for me right now.


Today I am going to try to make Herbed Bulgur-Lentil Pilaf and cook up some Tempeh to go with it. No meat gloves needed today.

According to Tempeh Info Website, tempeh is "a fermented food made by the controlled fermentation of cooked soybeans with a Rhizopus mold (tempeh starter)." YUM!

I've had it before. It is good. I swear, one of these days I'll become a vegetarian.

Another boring day at work

Today at work, one of the chickens pooped on my shirt and then jumped on my head. Luckily she didn't also poop on my head.

Oh....maybe I should back up.

Yesterday we found a couple of chickens in the parking lot where I work. Our building is in an industrial business park in a highly populated part of town. Most of the area is filled with commercial buildings - big strip malls, building materials warehouses, furniture stores, auto repair places, self-storage facilities, some restaurants and convenience stores. There are sections of houses and apartments too. Busy, main streets where the speed limits are about 50 mph. Lots of traffic all the time.

But there aren't ANY places near us that resemble a farm, farmland, or any other place where you might naturally find chickens. We have NO idea how they got there.

They wandered into the parking area near our warehouse doors. One of the guys at work used to raise chickens as a kid, so he recognized that they were healthy, good-looking chickens. One was so friendly that he was able to catch it rather quickly. The other one was not as easy. It took about 5 of us at least 30 minutes of running around the parking lot, trying to corner the chicken as she ran under parked cars, around bushes and up and down the sidewalks. That chicken could haul ass when she wanted to.

We finally got her when she walked out from under a parked car and didn't see one of the guys standing there ready to grab her. We brought them inside and gave them water and crackers. We called animal control, but they couldn't come to pick them up before we closed for the day. So they spent the night in one of our bathrooms. We gave them water and more crackers and covered the toilet so they wouldn't fall in and drown. We also put a blanket in there.

You can't imagine how much chicken poop comes out of these birds in a mere 24 hours.

This morning I went in to see them. I never thought much of chickens, but they were really cute. They looked like this picture:


They were also really friendly. They were on top of the storage cabinet in the bathroom which is about the same height as the bathroom sink. I was feeding them some crackers and they kept coming closer and closer. Then one of them started looking at me and I could tell she wanted to jump on my shoulder. She did a little bob up and down thing with her whole body like she was getting ready to try to jump. I thought, "What the heck," and leaned closer so she could jump. She jumped on my shoulder.

But then, being unsatisfied with what she had just achieved and taking no time at all to savor her accomplishment, she immediately jumped on the top of my head. At that exact moment, my boss turned the corner and saw me with a chicken on my head.

I don't blame the chicken. If you were a bird and you saw my curly, long-past-due-for-a-haircut, mop of a head, you'd want to climb up in it too.

So after the chicken was safely deposited back on the ground, I saw that she had pooped on my shirt. People at work said that it is good luck when a bird poops on you. Somehow I don't think that the Good Luck Fairies would bestow any luck on someone who was stupid enough to deliberately let a chicken climb on her shoulder. That's got to be some kind of automatic disqualification. I think this one falls into the jurisdiction of the You-Get-What-You-Deserve Fairies.

We cancelled the pickup by animal control because one of the guy's friends wants the chickens. He has about 5 acres of land at his house and he's going to build a chicken coop. He put them in a big box and took them away this afternoon. I'm going to miss them. They were fun to have around.