Doing the silly happy dance...

This requires a bit of backstory so fill your coffee cup now..


I'll wait...


Ready?


About a year ago, at work, we were just finishing up the standard audit.  Our team hit over 200,000 homes in just under 3 years.  Now that's only impressive when you consider that at that point we only had a dozen team members.  Yes we averaged about 100 homes a day each, but it was great!  We did it all from the ground with the help of binoculars and meters.  When we found someone that was hooked up illegally, we marked them down then on Mondays we did all of the disconnects.  That means that my ladder stayed on my truck all days except one.  The someone, in their infinite wisdom, decided to change shit.  Now we were climbing at every pole, cleaning up other people's messes.  Our productivity cut in half.  We went from a team of 12 down to 9 as people quit, transferred, or were fired because their body couldn't handle spending 7 hrs a day either hauling that pig on their shoulder through back yards or standing on it.  In January.  On snow and/or ice (it's Wisconsin people).  February got worse as it always does.  We no longer saw our trucks and every member of the team had sprains, strains, aches and the moral did a nose dive as it was announced that this would be our life for the next year.  People started quietly looking for new jobs, me included.  We had an occasional break as the powers that be decided that we would start doing two different types of audits at the same time.  The other audit was checking installations that had been done the previous week to determine if the techs were placing the equipment outside that they were supposed to, and where.  Which is the local supervisors job.  Not ours.  I know for a fact that 2 of the guys got fired directly because of things that I found, which is the wrong way of looking at it I suppose.  They got fired because they didn't do their jobs properly, but I'm the one that reported the info.  Now the fun began.  My boss (let's just call him C) started pushing us for numbers.  IE  The company was bitching because we weren't passing enough homes a day.  Moral was so low that the supervisor called an all-staff meeting and actually apologized for not doing his job properly.  Now, in his defense, he had HIS boss's hand so far up his ass C could have given the man a manicure with his teeth.  We all got REAL blunt at this point and literally told C's boss what the problem was.  Him and his grand ideas.  Spring approached and the work got easier.  We were still hauling and climbing all day long but it's infinately easier when you're not fighting 6 to 8 foot snow banks.  The company was still bitching even though our production went up marginally.  In June, someone finally listened to C and we were put back on a version of our original audit.  We didn't have to clean up the tech's messes anymore, we only climbed when we found an illegal, but it was still climbing every day.  At this point we were so happy to not be spending all damn day on the ladder that we accepted it gratefully.  Today that changed.

WE ARE BACK TO THE ORIGINAL VERSION OF THE AUDIT!!

I locked my ladder for the first time in 10 months.  I'm not going to get that bitch off my truck until Monday.

WOO HOO!!!

I can finally say, I can love my job again. :D

Insert funny title here

Are you sure it's Tuesday?  Meh - feels like Monday to me.

Nurses and Wolves and Slaves Oh MY!

Instead of going to our usual munch group, we traveled up to Upper Michigan to go to a Halloween party with Kaya and Scott.  They very graciously accepted us and our dogs into their home, and made us welcome.  I got to play a bit with baby girl, then off we went to the party.  Kaya was hauling around goodies in her basket, and I was busy putting said goodies on lots of girls bewbies, when I realized that this would be the perfect time to enact a friend of mine's revenge request.  I had M take a picture of me giving her a hug, then claimed that it didn't turn out right.


When he set up for the next picture I delivered the request

Bus schedules anyone?