Today, I am celebrating Memorial Day. It has been 220 days since I left Houston, and yesterday was eight months since I left Salt Lake City. I had wanted to take last Saturday off, but I was the only fork lift driver at the post office, period. One of the other fork lift drivers was away doing a training class, and the other two were away on R&R. Yesterday evening, I was sitting on our small fork lift with three empty "cookie sheets" (a "cookie sheet" is about 8 feet by 10 feet, made of aluminum, and is used to load freight onto an airplane) looking at the back doors of the post office. I was wondering whether I could bust thru the doors, make a u-turn, and be out the front gate to "Outside" before anyone noticed, and how far I would be able to go. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered. I finally got off the fork lift, opened the doors, and took the cookie sheets to our warehouse lot. I went to my supervisor's office and asked if I could take my holiday tomorrow (on what is now today). The day was open, so here I am, off work for a day, for the first time since early January, if you don't count the move to Speicher as a partial day off.
I had told myself I would spend the day looking for a new job. So far, I slept too late to do breakfast, finished a short book I started two weeks ago, didn't get dressed til noon, had a nice leisurely lunch, and got current on my email. There will be new contracts taking effect in August for civilian jobs over here, and no one is telling whether any jobs are changing companies or not. The company has been putting out propaganda about going to work for other companies, recommending that people compare the benefits of working for the company against the benefits of other companies. Possible benefits of working for the company are paid entry visa, paid transportation home if you quit early, paid vacation with a paid travel allowance, and a few other things I don't remember. What they don't say is the possible benefits of working for another company are, being treated with dignity and respect (no guarantees there either), possible higher wages, possible better living conditions (not likely, really), and possibly working for a company that cares about the quality of service it renders. If anyone knows of any companies working over here, that try to hire a higher quality employee, someone who takes pride in their work, and is willing to go the extra mile to keep the customer happy, please let me know about them.
