Middle Aged Journeying

 Work's been basically nuts last couple of days. And honestly, I'm doing my best not to lose my cool more than I already did today, because I have been lied to my face, bullied, and generally treated like crap for over a year now, and today I totally lost my ever loving s**t. I had a meltdown ON THE LINE, y'all. Just too much stress, too much pain in my foot, and I couldn't take it any longer. Our sole lead is a good kid, and he did his best to let me blubber it out while rubbing my back. His wife is one lucky woman for him to be that careful when a gal is falling apart in front of him. And I'm old enough that it is long past being hormones. It's just the total stress load and I can't take much more. The shop has got to take off because otherwise, I have a feeling I'll end up off work for a while for mental health issues. Can't afford that, so just yuck. Yesterday wasn't too horrible other than halfway to lunch, the chiller motor blew up on us an...

 Got a pizza and filled up on that and cheesy poof corn. Good stuff, Maynard. At least for junk food Sunday dinner. While waiting on the pizza to get cooked, I ran across the street from the gas station (yeah, gas station pizza here is pretty decent) to the dollar store and got Bandit a new squeaky toy. If she's got one of those to tear apart, she leaves the cats alone. She was so excited to see me pull it out of the bag. She loves squeaky toys so much. If it gets her to ignore the cats, I'm all for cleaning up toy guts off the floor. I need a hot shower so I can be clean to go back to that friggin' hellhole of a job in the morning - well, my morning. Car's closed up tight for the night because it's supposed to storm midmorning, while I'm still sleeping. I'd rather not have to ride to work in a wet car, ya know? Course, I'd rather not have to ride to work at all. Having a Just Over Broke that you hate really sucks hind tit. A LOT. It pays the bills and a...

 My sort-of direct boss at work (because we're supposed to have TWO leads in there and only have one, so John has to do EVERYTHING himself) told me yesterday that he found out that we are working at least two - TWO!! - more Fridays. The one after Labor Day and the Friday after that. WTF? Supposedly, it's because the chickens are "staying too long on the farms." And this is our fault how, those on the line? WE didn't ask for four ten-hour shifts. We asked for LESS OVERTIME to be able to spend more time with our families. We did NOT ask for a change in schedules. We liked what we had. We rarely worked a weekend then, and if we did, it was generally not a kill day. It would be for something like the patty and nugget lines to play a bit of catch up, and would be generally half a day, so nobody really minded too much. Plus, depending on how many people showed up, half of them could easily get offered to go home without a point, and still get four hours pay (mandatory b...

 And not on anything fun like the blog or the shop. Nooo. I get to go to the freakin' Just Over Broke in a couple hours for up to a full shift because they screwed something up somewhere. So part of my three-day weekend is gone to them instead of to myself. Oh yeah, and with Labor Day coming up, heck yeah, I'll get a four-day weekend, but then I have to give up that Friday again because, gosh golly gee darn whiz, we just CAN'T have a Monday holiday and still get our three-day weekend afterwards - production suffers! Dudes, y'all forced this crap on us, with four on-three off, and we were promised that our weekends would NOT get hijacked. Like I believed that crap from the get-go. I know that place better than that. Add in, I somehow popped my right wrist last night at work and the whole shebang from thumb to elbow is still sore. Good way to ensure I'm injured on the job and work even harder on the shop as much as I can. I devote at least an hour a day during the wee...