Meiter Monday
Monday, June 3rd, 2024 11:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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79F and sunny this morning, on it's way up to 84F.
Groceries were on the front stoop when I got downstairs, so I brought them in and put them away.
The laundry in the dryer is getting one final spin this morning.
I should call Mr. Taylor about buying the house this week, but I'm not feeling it this morning.
I did order a couple things on Amazon this morning... A belt-clip, retractable keychain holder, and small moving boxes.
The key hold is for work, obviously. I don't want them in my pocket all day, getting mixed up with my car keys.
As for boxes, I have plent of larger boxes, and can get more large boxes anytime I want from work, but the small boxes are harder to come by, and they're more useful.
I'm trying, with this move, to keep each box to a reasonable weight.
And, asside from furniture, most of what I'm taking isn't that big... it's mostly stuff that lives inside drawers, and smaller objects like table lamps, coffee makers, toasters, etc.
You know, I think I need to buy one of those luggage wheel cart thingys for after I'm living in the tower, because we have to park in a garage a block away.
So a cart like that would make it a lot easier to get stuff from the car to the apartment and vise versa.
I'm thinking specifically about those 30 packs of beer, but it'd be handy for anything else.
Like, I don't know if I can get groceries delivered to the building, but I can always have an order put together for pickup at the store, and a hand truck would be good for getting them that final block.
First full week at PVHS!
Unfortunately, I'm hearing we have to go to the elementary schools to help move furniture on Tuesday and Wednesday so... that'll suck, because it's gonna be in the 80s.
But at least it's not a whole summer in one of those buildings.
Not sure what's in store today, but at some point I will be lugging in my meiter saw and tools.
No Tom today at work. He had the day off.
Mark was a bit impatient about the giant wall patch, so I asked him to walk up there with me and give me some guidance.
Managers like when you ask for guidance!
But his guidance was quite good, and the result of the latest coat today is a huge improvement, though it's still not done.
Mark also had me tearing out some shelving in the wood shop, and pitching it... which I managed to knock out faster than I think he expected.
Later in the shift I brought a cart out to the car to get my tools and battery chargers inside, and I spent some time sorting them and setting up the chargers.
Then I got the meiter saw into the shop and set that up, with a fully charged battery on it.
I'm joining Mark and Tom tomorrow at Ferry Elementary to help with the big furniture move going on there.
I have to be there by 10AM, so I have to be up by 9:00 at the latest!
So, in an effort to save time in the morning, I picked up tomorrow's smokes tonight on the way home, and then when I got in the house, I went upstairs and got the coffee ready for the morning.
I then came down here and got my lunch ready to go.
So it'll just be a flip of a switch to get the coffee going... and if I remember to turn it off, I won't have to go back upstairs and check before leaving.
Then if I skip mail check, and garbage detail, I should be able to get out the door pretty fast.
Gotta leave at 9:40 at the latest.
It's gonna be upper 80s and humid all day with no air conditioning.
The classrooms are being cleared for carpet removal and painting, so... if every last damn thing has to come out of every room... yeah, that's gonna take forever!
There's gonna be pressure to stay late, and it's gonna be difficult to duck out for a smoke.
Big nightmare!
And it's gonna continue into Wednesday until the job's done!
Oh, how I miss last June!
When I got out of that bullshit by going part time, and was home every day by 6PM, to hangout with Yvette, Snoop & Prowly in the back yard while the sun was still out.
Sprinkers going to water the brush pile site, and Natalie.
Bats flying around overhead at sunset.
Getting approved for new credit cards left and right.
Charging them up, then paying them down with loan money, watching my credit score tick upward.
I had a vision of the future, and a plan to secure it.
One grumpy underwriter knocked that all down.
And Heaven didn't lift a finger to stop him.
Well... at least while I'm sweating all day tomorrow, and nic-fitting, I'll be getting $21.00 per hour to do it... rather than $16.23.
And as bad as tomorrow and Wednesday are gonna be... at least it's not the whole summer at Ferry, or Grape, slaving in the heat.
Mark says we have a lot of our own classrooms to fix up this summer... enough that he's worried we'll get it all done!
That's a good thing, as far as I'm concerned.
Possibly a chance to redeem myself after the botched wall patch, that's still not done.
I feel like now that most of my tools are there, I'll be able to be a lot more effective.
They don't have shit for tools there.
Not even any impact drivers, just drills, that you can put a screw-bit into... like it's 2003!
And Tom's DeWalt drill is still an 18 Volt!.. which went the way of the dinosaur seven years ago!
He was jealous of Scott's newer 20V Dewalt Drill!
So today I put Scott's drill on Tom's cart, with a fully charged 5AH battery.
They're behind the times.
Very few battery tools at all. Most of them still old, klunky, corded versions.
I'm in a unique position, because I'm able to introduce so many new tools, bought and paid for, without having to be bitchy about ownership, because I have no more use for them in my personal life.
I already know from Grape & Cloud, how stingy the school district is about buying anything new!
I could've argued for tools like this until I'm blue in the face and never seen them materialize.
And they would've been like, Who is this asshole who can't just do things our way with the rusty garbage we've had laying around for 20 years?
Instead, they're gonna get to see it all, and play around with it.
That meiter saw is a handy ass little saw!
And it's portable! You can roll it to the site of the job in the building and do the measuring and cutting right there!.. rather than running back and forth to the shop to try your luck with the corded circular saw.
They're gonna want to be assholes about it at first, like it's just some little voodoo version of a real meiter saw (which PVHS doesn't have)... but at the end of the day it's a new toy!
And they'll come around to it.
And if I tread carefully, they'll eventually concede that some of the practices I employ are also sound.
The leatherman on my belt, and the go-bag, and the bigger kit bags... all adopted over my years at the hospital.
There is a push and pull going on between me, Mark the boss, and Tom, the old hand.
Tom's been shit talking me already behind my back, I know from Mark today.
But Tom also shit talks Mark.
Last week Tom & Scott together explained how Mark, who's a bit younger, was once just one of them, but advanced into management.
Thus, they resent him.
But that means Mark's looking at me, who is younger still, as somebody who will resepect him.
So I'm the monkey in the middle, who needs to somehow seem cool to both of them... which is a tightrope walk.
And I can say from experience that the best balancing bar to use on a tightrope like that is... inspiration.
It's about altering the script, but in a novel way, neither side was expecting... that's got a positive twist.
Like, Hey guys?.. have you ever seen this? It's called a, cat's paw!
Initial response will be... Yeah, so what? Just use a claw hammer, or a prybar.
But a few weeks later... Hey, I'm takin' the cat's paw! I'll give it back when I'm done!
A few weeks after that... I bought one of those cat's paws for home. Man those things are great!
Youth brings inspiration!
And if you're 20s to 40s, that may sound like a joke, coming from a 54 year old.
But youth, especially in the workplace, is relative!
I'm 54, but to them I'm the green horn!
I'm the new guy, and I'm also the young fool.
But it is always the perogative of the young, to impress the old by dint of their familiarity with the novel.
That's the angle I need to play, over the next 90 days, to keep Mark, Tom, and the army of custodians who are always keeping tabs... from writing me off as just... lazy, incompetent, a snowflake, an ass-kisser, a rebel, a rat, too fast, too slow, a show off, a slacker, etc.
The goal is to be eventually accepted by all sides as... reasonably cool, and reasonably reliable.
And with that!..
I've gotta get my ass to bed!
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