Putting out fires at work

12 days until I meet my fiancee at Logan Airport.

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Sometimes things don't go exactly as you planned. If you are normal, things hardly ever go as planned. Life's biggest challenge is to overcome obstacles and be flexible to adapt to situations as they develop, even if they are not to your liking. Such was the case for me at work today.
I had assumed that I would be working overtime tonight, since I have been doing overtime on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays recently. At our staff meeting this morning, I was told that someone else was going to work the overtime in my place. I didn't have a problem with this, since I have worked many overtime hours recently. A night to get home early would be nice. Maybe I could run some errands or check my post office box before they close for the day.

Oh no. Not going to happen. At 4:30 my boss comes in and says that we don't have enough of a certain material to do the production run tomorrow and that the machine we were going to use needs to be broken down and cleaned - tonight. So that we can use the equipment tomorrow. Now I have mentioned before that cleaning this equipment takes time, and is not something that can be done in 5 minutes or even an hour or two. The machine has to be taken apart. But before you can do that you have to heat it up to loosen a few parts. Then parts of the machine get really hot (~230 degrees C at the nozzle) and after everything is loose you are supposed to let it cool down before you take it out of the machine. Then you take the barrel out and bring it to the workshop where it has to be reheated, etc.

So you can see that the process is long and involved. Not to mention wipe down and reassembly of the whole thing. So without complaint, when my relief came I began the above process. Later to be joined by my co-worker, who complains constantly about everything.

Long story short I was supposed to leave at 5 PM but ended up leaving at 8 PM. Twelve hours is a long enough work day for me. He still wanted to finish up a few things, so I don't know what time he left. He still may be there.

Now my boss has many things on his plate and he told the complainer NOT to complain. If only so he wouldn't have to listen to the same complaints over again. Did the complainer listen? Did the complainer take the hint? If you said noooooo, you would be 100% correct. I sat there, a silent third party to this conversation, rolling my eyes and urging the complainer to shut up! Plans change. Instead of doing what you had wanted to do or thought you were going to do, do what is needed (within reason, of course) and do it without complaint.

On a side note, I saw a reasonably large buck (male deer) tonight outside one of the mirrored windows at work before I left. He was too far away to snap a quick piture with my cell phone camera.