Golly, What A...Night?

It has been so miserably hot in the plant these last two days, and I know it sounds cliche, but it's true.  It's not the heat.  It's the humidity.  It was getting up to 91 at my work station, but it felt like the air was absolutely clinging to me.  

To make matters worse, I think my little window unit in my bedroom has kicked the bucket.  It's not cooling and I don't hear the compressor cycling on and off.  I'm not mad, though.  It's nine years old and I've worked it hard since I got it.  And before you ask, yes, maybe it could be repaired, but honestly, it's cheaper just to buy a new one than buy the part then pay someone to install it.  I'll look at Walmart tomorrow and see if they have any in stock, but I may wait a week or two to buy one.  At least until after this next cold spell. 

Speaking of, I talked to Supervisor Green Jeans about the possibility of frost, and he said he hopes it doesn't.  His tomatoes are still inside, but he's got corn in the ground.  He said he might buy a bunch of visqueen and cover his whole field. 

But I digress...

As I was saying, it's been so muggy I came home and turned on my central air for no other reason than to get the humidity down a bit in my house.  I was so miserable last night, I didn't get much sleep.  

Well, and I was watching the Weather.  It was quite a night.  Several of the meteorologists and storm chasers I follow have said there were 728 warnings issued, and that included both tornado warnings and severe thunderstorm warnings.   One of them posted this graphic, of just the tornado warnings. 

And this was all of the watches and warnings from yesterday. 

So, since most of you follow the same weather watchers that I do, I won't spend a lot of time on this, because I'm sure you already know what I'm telling you anyway.  

In other news, I got a picture of that weed I've been pulling up here lately-- the stringy stuff with the circles of leaves around the stems. 

Google thinks it's Galium aparine, sometimes known as sticky weed or stickywilly.  The description seems right, and even though it's supposedly edible and has medicinal uses, I don't like it and don't want it in my yard.  It also causes skin irritation in some people...like me.  Next year, I'm going to be on the watch for it and try to catch it early, before it spreads so much. 

In work news, there I was at work just a working away.  A couple of the other braziers were talking. I could hear them, but wasn’t really paying attention.  One was old school, and the other has been out there less than a year.

Suddenly the old school brazer called across the way to me, “Becky, when was the last time we got a bonus? It’s been about ten years, hasn’t it?”

I thought for a moment and said, “It was the first year Nadir came, sooooo 2016. Yeah, right about ten years.”

Nadir was the name of the director of operations who put an end to our employee incentive bonuses when he came.  He said that if it were up to him, we wouldn't even be getting a bonus his first year, but the home office in Dallas had already funded it.  He said we didn't deserve bonuses.  Someone in my meeting asked him why we didn't deserve a bonus if we met the criteria for getting one, and he snapped, "Because you don't!"  He never did explain why we didn't, but that was the end of us getting an employee bonus. 

I relayed all of this information and the new brazer said with an air of shock and disbelief, "Then how do they show employee appreciation????"

I laughed and replied, "Well, first they'd have to appreciate us!"  I then told her we used to get a monthly attendance bonus, equal to a day's pay, but they cut that out, too.  Now we only get 2 hours extra vacation time for every month of perfect attendance, but that's valued at less than $40 for most of us. 

And we started talking about all of the COVID relief money the government had been giving to industries and such, and she was telling us all that her job had been giving them, and it was quite a bit.  I said that we got a can of Lysol and a bottle of hand sanitizer.  A few months later, they handed out brown paper sacks with three masks and a stick of gum in it.  A few weeks after that, they gave us another can of Lysol and bottle of hand sanitizer, and that was it for our COVID relief.  

Speculation is that that relief money is what our Director of Operations at the time was embezzling.  Not Nadir.  They'd already gotten rid of him.  It was the next one, and one of the engineers or IT guys, I don't really know.  

On a similar note, we might have Saturday off, if we can get our numbers up.  The production side is off, and I was remarking that I remember the good old days when being 8 hours ahead of the lines was the goal.  My coworker said, "I know, right?  I don't even know what they expect from us any more.  I really don't."

All I could do was shake my head, because I didn't have an answer for her. 

Anyway, if we do have Saturday off, I was thinking I might try to mow my front yard, depending on what time the storms are supposed to get here.  So far, they've all been well to the north of us, but the ones Saturday might reach this far south.  

I'd thought about running up to Batesville, since they are still remodeling our Walmart and I can't find anything, but after checking the forecast, I think I'll just hunker down here. 

But knowing the plant, they'll make us work just because they can.