Yesterday sucked too

Well I’m just a bundle of joy this week aren’t I?

We were so busy yesterday (Friday) it wasn’t even funny. We started the day thin on staff and then someone who had been sick earlier in the week but showed up for work Thursday called in sick again. That was the tipping point. I sounded the alarm and everyone in the building that could came to help for a bit but at lunch it blew up again and stayed that way until the end of the day. I went in at 0500 and left at 1730 feeling thoroughly defeated. I did talk with my direct boss (not BossMan, the Facility Manager) and he admitted we were growing faster than he thought we were. He’s known me for a long time and took my warnings as old me doom ‘n gloom worst casing everything instead of a straight this is what’s going to happen. I can’t really blame him, we haven’t worked together much over the past ten years but we’ve kept in touch.

I’m off this weekend but I’ve told the Not Me One to call me if it gets bad, but she probably won’t, and I’m not really sure I want her to, and I’m not really sure how I feel about that. I keep telling myself I’ve trained her well enough and together we’ve trained the team well enough they shouldn’t need me there, but I also feel like I’m letting them down if I’m not there, even though it’s my one weekend a month off.

I’m going to send Facility Manager an email on Monday asking for four more part-time folks to help with the new business, and so my current part-time folks can actually be part-time and only work three or four days a week. They’re all getting tired, I can tell. Hell I’m getting tired and I don’t have kids to take care of when I get home. With four more I’ll have surge capacity for busy times and vacations without having to worry about OT or hiring and it’ll also give me a chance to start a constant hiring cycle, keeping one req open with HR all the time and when a really good candidate comes along snatching them up (because there’s always someone on the verge of being let go for attendance despite the leeway built into the policy) and not having to lower standards just to get someone on-board when I’m super short-handed. I’ve got too many full-time folks now, but once I lose two I’ve got a part-time person I want to make full-time, and then if I lose one more I think I’ll be balanced properly and can promote part-time to full-time as people cycle out.

ETA: I finally got the ginormous gable wreath down and stored, so my house doesn’t look weird anymore, lol.