Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Punkin's Okay

He's fine. Feeling a little better. I was surprised as heck that he let the Vet mess with him this morning with no biting. He only growled once. He got a steroid shot and some antibiotics that I have to give him for a week. We tested him for FELV and he was negative, thank God. Gotta get him vaccinated soon. His vaccinations are not current. My bad. Right now he's sleeping on my desk in front of the computer as I type away. He loves me. He's a great cat.

He followed the neighbor kids home two Thanksgivings ago. He was a sick little kitten - had diarrhea for awhile before we got it under control, and had a little respiratory thing going on, too. Since it was Thanksgiving and he was orange, I called him Punkin. It fits also because he is a little Punk sometimes. Acts real tough. Then he climbs up on my pillow and wraps himself around my head and we both fall off to sleep together.

Getting real busy at work. Lots of people printing photos for the holidays and making photo greeting cards, among other things. I don't mind being busy. It makes the day go by a lot faster. What I do mind are the very small number of customers who take up a lot of your time. Not the ones who need your help because they've never used the photo kiosk before, but the ones who aren't real sure what they want or how they want it so you have to try several different things before they finally decide. And you know you explained something but they weren't paying attention so whatever you did wasn't exactly what they wanted so let's try it this way. And there are the ones who are absolutely sure they didn't order what the machine printed. Forty seven copies? I didn't order 47 copies. Well, I only print what the computer tells me to print, and the order came through for 47 copies. Sorry. No you don't have to pay for it and we can fix it and we'll do it all over again so it's right (i.e. the way you want it). I'll get someone to come over and help these other three people waiting for help while I take care of your problem. I can even tolerate these folks, but it's difficult when you're as busy as we've been getting as Xmas approaches.

I'm supposed to end my shift at 8:00 p.m. but didn't leave tonight until after 9:00, and that included skipping lunch because there were just too many things going on for me to walk away for a half hour. I suppose part of that is me thinking that no one will take the time to help the customers like I will. But part is also that it never fails - as soon as I'm ready to take a lunch break, a group of photo customers shows up. Then I'm stuck until I can either get them finished and out of there or find someone who can cover for me. Now, there are a lot of folks who can "work" the photo lab, but there aren't any who know as much about how to do this and that as I do. So if something out of the extremely ordinary happens, I get pulled away from my PB&J sandwich to advise.

Job security? Not really. Anyone could do my job. It's just that, right now I'm doing my job, so there's no reason for anyone else to do my job. If I were gone tomorrow (traveling to Tahiti to spend my lottery money, for example) someone else would learn all the little things that I know. I think. I hope. And the photo lab would go on.

Enough for now.

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