My job requires a certain amount of flexibility; more importantly, as a contractor I must be cognizant of time worked in a given week. And, the state of the economy being what it is, my week is typically capped at forty hours. Which is reasonable, and fine by me.
Occasionally, though, circumstances will dictate otherwise, and today was one of those circumstances.
I had a pretty simple plan for today. I had two jobs to finish, and I expected they wouldn't take more than four hours, which would leave enough daylight to cut the grass and do a bit of yardwork. After that, dinner and world domination (*more on that in a bit).
I arrived @1215, and got down to business- after all, I had a Plan. After a bit of initial difficulty, I started moving rapidly through the first of the two jobs. The door behind me opened and in walked the imaging tech that was on duty. "There's been a change to this job," he said. He put two mockups on the desk, one marked "Old" and the other "New" and began to relate how the customer came in ON SUNDAY and wanted changes made AFTER the job had started printing! He then began to describe how heads needed to be move to different RIPS, and something about blankets and the next thing I knew a Romulan Bird of Prey had blown open half the roof, and the two Romulan sisters were shimmying down ropes, obviously intent on doing no-good to Marty McFly and Indiana Jones... of course, they had not counted on Yoda who was crouched on top of one of the presses blocking their way.
"How long do you think it'll take" the imaging tech asked. "Probably two to three hours," I replied almost instinctively. "But, there's no one here that can do it. I'm on overtime as it is- let me make a phone call." This satisfied the tech, and he left me the mockups and departed.
I called the programmer but got no response. Next, I called my boss, and he said he was aware of the changes, and the imaging tech should call his boss. At which point I said that these were new changes from the customer. That phone call pretty much ended with my boss telling me to get details and get back to him. I got all of the info I needed from the pressroom supervisor and then relayed it to my boss. The twenty-five words or less answer from my boss was NO WAY.
Time for another trek to the pressroom supervisor. He called the customer service supervisor, and on speakerphone, we tossed some ideas around. The customer service supervisor finally decided he would get one of the customer service reps that is on this account team to come and get a new press layout, and would talk to my boss. The pressroom supervisor had prepress shooting new plates for the press, and making backgrounds for my department. Now that everyone had a Plan, I went back to my office and finished working on my Plan, which would be torpedoed before the next paragraph is concluded.
I finished the second job, put everything away, and was getting ready to fill out my timesheet when the phone rang. I answered it... I will NEVER learn. The pressroom supervisor asked how long it would take to reprogram. "About three hours", I replied- it's got to be some sort of autonomic reflex! Fine. I hung up and went back to getting ready to leave- my four hours were up. The phone rang again. I picked it up-again. This time it was my boss. "How late can you stay?" Hmmm, Plan vs money. I'll take the money. He said he was able to contact the programmer, who would be in ~1900-1930.
The programmer arrived at 2000; at 2100 I popped open a Monster Absolutely Zero. At this point it doesn't matter, because as Rufus said, "the clock is always running in San Dimas." My boss said take all of the overtime you need to do the job right- this is on the customer.
So I apologize for no programming, spreadsheet or exciting data updates. In the time waiting for the programmer, I got as much prep work as possible done, and then spent the remaining time researching web hosts; I think I found one that I like, but need to bounce it off Jennifer first. And speaking of Jennifer... we're supposed to get storms tomorrow, so no grass cutting or yardwork; dinner didn't happen tonight, but we may get to continue our game of Civilization V which we started yesterday. And, best of all, we're going to pick up some catfish nuggets tomorrow.
Timehack (2nd posting) 1810
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
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