So... the last time I blogged was in August when I was making the best of my time in Package Purgatory and waiting for training sessions that seemed to never come.
By September I had accepted that I wasn't going anywhere. When October 1st came around, I had resigned myself to another few months trapped in Purgatory because the powers that be don't normally put people into driver training so close to the holiday rush.
On October 7th, I was happily snoozing on the couch after working another punishing day of slinging packages when my phone blew up. "You might be driving tomorrow, if you don't hear anything..." went the text messages.
I was excited but scared at the same time. And I felt cheated because I wasn't given a chance to say goodbye to my coworkers. The next day I started my training. Worked one shift, was laid off for several days. Worked one shift, was laid off for several days. And on it went. Once the training supervisor had set me loose and allowed me to start doing the route alone, I found myself lonely and stressing out during lunch breaks.
I'm terribly sorry to the two or three people who got to hear how I was getting my ass handed to me routinely for 20 workdays. I appreciate all the pep talks, support and Give 'em Hell's that came my way. You guys really made my days more tolerable.
That said, in the end, I sucked. Got called into the office and told very nicely that I just wasn't fast enough and that I was being sent back to my old job.
I had feared when the day came that I would cry and embarrass myself in front of upper management. I knew it was coming. I had been so frustrated the day before that I had spent my lunch break sitting in the truck crying because nobody was answering my texts.
And so back to the early morning package slinging for me. Which I did for about two weeks before they started bouncing me back and forth between shifts. As an on-call driver, that's just the way things go sometimes. I landed back on driver shift for most of December, delivering out of a 16' rental truck. I could go on and on about the misery of delivering out of a rental or the misery of having a loader who just randomly threw shit throughout the truck but I've decided to let it go for now. Next December will come soon enough.
Now that the holidays are over, I'm back to my old shift with my old coworkers and my old miniscule paychecks. I'm trying really hard to not have a second job this year. I can't seem to figure out who would hire me and give me a schedule that won't conflict with my DOT Hours or on-call schedule.
I went to Portland with a small army of Bruce Campbell fans for Portland Comic Con. I'll be blogging about that soon.
In the meantime, I'm trying to re-adjust to my sleep schedule. I'm trying to wrap my brain around the drama and misery that Package Purgatory can be sometimes. I'm going to do whatever I can do to back up the people who've had my back when I needed them. I'm trying to keep my head down and shut my mouth and do my job.
And I'm still going to take my job too seriously and too personally. And I may still invite people out for drinks even if I am too much of a loser for people to ever want to hang out.
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