Poor Pitiful Me

I'm in my first week at Amazon doing the "hardening" process. And, hoo boy, do I need hardening. Naturally, we're working on concrete. My new shoes don't seem to be helping as much as I thought they would. So the knees and and hips and ankles (esp. the weak right ankle) are protesting. So far, aspirin seems to be doing a good job. Have found out that mandatory overtime starts next week. That means five 10-hour days instead of four.

I've never worked for a huge corporation, a national one, and I don't like it. It's like working in a prison. You have to scan your badge to get in, scan your badge to clock in, scan your badge to clock out for lunch, scan your badge to clock back in after lunch, scan your badge to clock out. To get in and out of the building, there are metal cage-like revolving gates. To get in the break room you push a button; if it flashes green, you go on in; if it flashes red you have to go through the metal detector. You have "demerit" points to start, a bank, and there are a list of infractions and their point value; if you get down to zero points you're fired. Getting back late from lunch is a big demerit. Stretching exercises are held at shift start and after lunch.

Yesterday was orientation, videos on workplace violence etc. Today I was on the line in Receiving, opening boxes and scanning each item into the computer, putting them in totes and sending them down the conveyor. Boring. Very hard on the body just standing. We had a meeting at end of shift and I told the guy that standing is hard on me, so he said he'd put in Stowing, which is putting all the scanned items in bins so they can be picked later.

Okay, enough whining about work. Let's talk about the new sites we all had to move to yesterday so the City could put a sewer line in where we were. They were supposed to have the new RV park ready Sept. 1st, then Oct 1st., then any day now. We finally moved yesterday after they made a concerted effort to get our six sites ready. Then we had the really big storm. When the Lindas got home from work, their truck mired down half in the parking site and half in the road. And when I got up this morning, I noticed I wasn't level any more. I opened the door and realized I'd sunk in so far I no longer needed a step to get in and out. The City sent someone to haul me out. See the pictures. All in all, it's been an eventful day.