We had three days off this week...the first to have all of our days off in quite some time. As it turns out, when we got to work on Wednesday, several of the regular Amazon workers said they got a call to come in on Tuesday due to the volume of work. We didn't get called and surely would have come in for some additional overtime.
Instead on Tuesday we decided to find the closest Barnes and Noble and have a "reading" day. Found that the closest one was in Tulsa so late in the afternoon we headed there. Filled up with diesel on the way for $2.29 gal (saw gas for $1.43). Been a while since we could fill up for under a $100 and it was very nice. Hung out at the Barnes and Noble for a few hours and got home around 8 or so.
Last Saturday (our last day of work before our days off) had seen a spike in the number of Christmas orders coming in. When we had our stand-up meeting they told us that for the first time Amazon had broken the 200,000 order mark and did it with flying colors. They had always had that "glass ceiling" of hoping to get to that number of orders but had never experienced it until now. Last week they had said that at one point (on Friday or Saturday) orders numbered 9000 per 5 minutes on the internet...WOW !
Last night, shortly after we started picking, I could hear music...loud music coming from the floor below (keep in mind we are up on a 3rd tier platform where Linda and I work). Since I wasn't near the railing, I couldn't see where it came from but it really sounded like a marching band....hmmm....I closed out the tote I was working on and went over to the other side where I could see the floor below and sure enough there was a high school marching band parading through the plant, playing Christmas songs. It was very cool ! You never know what Amazon has up there sleeves....how neat to make arrangements with the area high school to have them come in and play for us. It was a little pick-me-up to get the night off to a good start. I've read where, at some point, there will also be a caterer that will come in and have dinner for us some night. Although there were alot of orders last night, there were a ton of pickers...89 at our second stand-up. At one point, in the night, I was picking in an aisle with two other pickers....too crowded and it really spreads out the work and makes for a lot of running (again). Tonight may not be so bad, although many of them will be putting their overtime night in tonight. Wednesday is always the overlap night for the two shifts, which makes it unusually busy. By Friday and Saturday, it should be back to just our crew and it will be much better. When we finish up Sunday morning, we will be taking the rig up to Peterson Industries to get the last of our warranty work done on the rig. Will be about a 7 hours drive to get there. We'll spend our days off up there, getting the rig worked on and be back in time to go to work Wednesday afternoon. We are on 11 hour shifts "until further notice" AND we have to pick to work one of our days off each week. That won't be possible this next week since we already had this appt for almost two months to get the rig worked on.
The wind has finally died down here. Has been blowing hard for the last four days....gusting over 30 m.p.h. and rocking the rig. We realized last night that several other workampers have left. Not sure why but seems the number of us remaining is dwindling. We are here for the duration.....
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