the postal service once again makes me its biatch
This probably won't make a whole lot of sense to you unless you or someone you know works at the PO, but I just gotta unload!
Today I got a text message from another substitute carrier asking if I could do her primary route for her because she was sick. Fair enough... her turn will come again, so I agreed. Plus I knew that because the hours are drying up around here, that I would have an easy day tomorrow. The supervisor had me scheduled for the shortest route (2 hours!) on Saturday.
What I had forgotten to consider is that I am an idiot.
At the end of a very long day made longer by the fact that I didn't know the route I was doing very well, I came back to find a note from the supervisor that said "see me when you get back."
She changed the schedule. Now I'm assigned to the two shortest routes... both of them. Together they take about 6 hours to do. So I no longer have most of Saturday to work on my sermon.
Then she said, "Do your remember Reginald?*" Reginald was a sub that we trained about a year ago. He never quite got it, but he didn't seem too eager to do the kind of work required of a carrier either. He disappeared, but was never taken off the sub list, which means, technically, he was still employed.
So yes, I remember Reginald. And now not only will I be doing two routes tomorrow, I'll also be (re-)training Reginald on those routes... which will take more time, not less. This means I'll probably go over the allocated time and therefore wind up working for free while Reginald gets paid for every second he works.
Everything changes. A schedule is subject to change without notice, even after it's posted, and often while you are out on the route! I was a fool for not remembering that when I gave away my Friday. Now I've lost Saturday too.
And people wonder why I don't like my job.
*Not his real name.
