It Has Begun...

At work today, in our plant, the spring season officially started.

Now, our actual spring season began back in February, with potting and organizing and growing a few things at a time. Then as potting continued and the houses filled up, it became busier for us growers, esp. those of us who have small crews. Shipping began last month in some other areas; last week it reached us. But today was the first actual day of total disorganized chaotic nonsense shipping in our plant. The crew pulling from my section was slow all day, and they weren't done by 3:30 when they were supposed to leave. As a result, more people were called down to help at 4:00. I was unable to do my part until the plants were loaded and labeled, so I couldn't finish my job until they did theirs, resulting in me clocking out almost an hour later. The stickering and tagging process was haphazard at best, with missed pots everywhere and nobody having any idea who had the stickers or the care tags most of the time. This could have been avoided had the crew worked faster earlier and had people designated to do certain tasks. By the end of the day I was stickering pots just to help get them done so we could all go home.

And growers still aren't allowed to have overtime. Meaning anyone like myself who worked late has to leave early or come in late sometime before this week's pay period ends to negate the extra time worked. This really messes with our grower schedule.

On top of the crazy day, I found out that one of our best crew members is leaving us for an office job within the company. She's going to work with Availability and was offered a full-time position and a wage increase. I don't suppose I blame her, but the job itself sucks. I stay far, far away from the office politics but she's going to be right in the middle of it. I hope she does well; I know she wanted the core-employee status from the day she was hired. What I don't understand is why management approached one of our best growers when we're in such short supply already. Her husband is a grower in a different section that's often short-handed and I'm sure he's wondering the same thing.

Her transfer leaves me as the only female on a five-man crew. Blah. It really bites to be a female in charge of a bunch of guys. And my boss is male, and so is his boss... At least with S. around the scales were somewhat balanced. (Insert joke here: how many men does it take to do the job of one woman? Heh heh.) I'm going to miss working with her terribly... this is the second one we've lost to the office but S. is by far my favorite. My guys are going to be awfully mopey tomorrow when they find out. Ms. Hattie's leaving us? *Shock*

Side note: One of our section growers is having a particularly rough spring again. She was muttering to herself on the way out and looking frazzled, so I told her (in jest) to go home and have a Valium cocktail and she'd be fine. That got a laugh and a retort that she was going to make it a double... I hope she has enough to share, cause today is just the beginning.