The people flying in the forms got off the mat, apparently, on Sunday, when I was told a big shipment of forms that had to be done were going to come in. It was so important, in fact, that my boss came in, and he usually doesn't do that. He called off the dogs, however, when he was told the shipment would not be coming in until the night.
The shipments, I have been told, are not consistent -- that is, not only does my department not know how many forms come in every day (although my bosses have a rough estimate determined by past yields), we are not even guaranteed a shipment every day. I mean, we get shipments every day besides days affected by inclement weather. But it's a shock to me that we don't really have a good grasp of the level of work, let alone the timeline, when we come in every day. I kind of thought that happened. And I kind of think that should happen.
So that leads to last week, when we were told one day that our grand shipment from Memphis was grounded. And that also leads to Monday, where I was yanked out of filing early because a thousand forms, about five times the usual load we get on Mondays, was coming in. And then, some time in the afternoon, that estimate was upped to 2,000. My boss was scanning folders as soon as they were treated by the technicians. One co-worker was pulled from filing to help. In fact, three other people from my department who were not scheduled to work that day (one of them being my co-worker on Monday who had the day off) came in that day to work. And even the revised estimate was too low; by the time my boss' boss told us we needed to go, we ran through over 3,600 forms. I don't remember ever going through that many forms in a day, even on a Tuesday, when we usually get the most out of any day of the week and we are fully staffed. And for the first time ever, I saw that we were leaving work behind for the late shift because we couldn't work more than ten hours. And the work was still coming in.
While we were toiling through these forms, we were speculating on how long it would be until we "got back to normal." Didn't happen Tuesday, where a relatively pedestrian morning turned into a rolling cavalcade of work in the afternoon that had me staying an extra 40 minutes. And it didn't really happen yesterday, either, even though we were good enough that we got all that day's work done and got to leave when we were supposed to leave.
Now, all bets are off. The winter storms were last week, but any of us who thought we were finally caught up with forms that needed to be shipped here last week has to divest ourselves of that notion, because there is a decent chance we will get much more work than we usually do today and tomorrow.
For that reason, my boss has told me that overtime will be granted, if only for this week. I don't remember the last time we were allowed OT, but this changes my schedule. When I was capped at 40 hours and worked my tail off Monday and Tuesday, I actually e-mailed my boss about when I needed to leave today and tomorrow in order to stay at 40. (His reply is when he told me OT had been allowed.) Now, I guess I'll just work full days. Shoot, if they need me Saturday, I can come in in the afternoon, after I take Father to get his first vaccination. Don't know when I'll get to accrue time-and-a-half again.
The downside is that I had plans I made for Friday afternoon, and I was formulating plans for Thursday afternoon, assuming that OT would not be given. I had planned on getting my shoes shined, and my hair cut. I also wanted to see ******a for a massage, and to get tested. Unless the form spigot dries up and we're back to getting cut early, I'll have to do those things another day. But hey, time-and-a-half.
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