I am, unofficially, back on overnights at my new job.
As part of my "I will do what is necessary and be a team player" mentality -- which is a very strong, important part of my work ethic -- I volunteered to cover overnights on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday this week. This is, generally, way outside of my normal work schedule (well, somewhat), especially as I'd been working Monday through Friday dayshifts for the past month, and as such I was offered comp time for these overnights I covered -- shifts which were 8pm to 8am, three in a row.
I took the comp time, of course -- and I don't return to work again until Sunday night (Easter).
What am I doing on the overnights?
Next to nothing, honestly.
Myself and about ten other colleagues are, essentially, rebuilding our program from scratch with this new company. Remember how I said I was working with many others who had jumped ship from my old company to the new one? Well, I am. And we're still doing the same things, the same jobs, we had at the old company -- but under a completely new leadership structure and corporate structure. We are trying to make our roles and what we do fit into that structure, and that involves a lot of rebuilding, rebranding, and redesigning our program from the bottom up. That also means we are in no way able to just jump back into owning clients and escalations yet, which is a major part of...well...what we do. At the moment we are a functioning skeleton crew of expatriates who have struck out on their own and dropped anchor in a new port. If that makes sense.
So, on overnights? I am basically sitting there and watching a chatroom on Teams, a room that has all of our corporate overlords' executive leadership in it, and am waiting for one of them to engage me on an escalation that I can pick up and run with/handle. On Saturday I worked one for about three hours, hardcore, and then it came to a stopping point. On Sunday I didn't hear a peep out of anyone, and on Monday night I was engaged on one in the early morning hours before I left, and worked it until I could pass it off to the morning shift.
And then my comp time started, and an on-call schedule started, and I won't return until Sunday night.
So, I mean, the work is the same. Roughly. It's just very odd right now with the way it's structured. That'll all smooth itself out over the next month or two and things will get back to "normal," more or less. This next week I assume I'll return to more of a "normal" schedule for me and we'll go from there, I guess.
It is what it is. Truthfully, I have a great admiration of the new company's principles and how they do their business, and my higher-ups will always have my respect. I've told them I'm here to help smooth out any transition issues and my knowledge and experience base can only be helpful in most scenarios. So, we'll see what happens. I can tell you I am very glad my pay is much higher than it was before and I am glad to be using a brand new Lenovo Thinkpad laptop instead of the ancient desktop with two giant bulky monitors I had for the old company, so that's a plus at least. If I really wanted to, I could work from my lounge chair in my office upstairs -- and I thought about it -- but to be in more of a "work mode" I have to be downstairs at my desk. There's something about the desk that puts me in the mindset of work.
Anyway, moving on.
As I've mentioned here previously, Daisy and I are now volunteering at the humane society. We've been doing it two weeks now, and it has been an intensely rewarding experience for me. It is also an intensely tiring one. I see volunteers there much older than us who are working long, hard hours -- not staff, mind you, but other volunteers -- walking dogs, cleaning kennels, doing large amounts of laundry in different machines, etc. I myself did the equivalent of probably four wash loads and six dryer loads in my time there yesterday, for example, and when my "shift" was over there was still enough laundry to give another person work for an entire day and night. An immense amount of animals goes through the shelter system every week, both intakes and adoptions -- not to mention the ones that come in who need to be put down because they've been hit by cars (that happened yesterday, while we were there) or what have you.
It is also a constantly busy, always-moving building -- not only with staff and other volunteers there but with the general public going in and out at almost all times. Most of the actual staff don't tend to be very pleasant or nice (there are, however, a few who are wonderful) and the public is, well, the public. Some of them are pleasant and others are oblivious or look at us like we're in their way.
Look, I just want to help. I know a lot of it is almost certainly thankless work, and I'm certainly not getting paid for it -- I just want to do what I can. One of the older volunteer ladies a few weeks ago mentioned to us, on the way out, not to get frustrated and urged us not to quit, to rise above the "drama" of the place. We sort of found that statement odd and kind of laughed it off at the time, but it makes a lot more sense now.
I did get to see kittens being born yesterday -- which I've never seen before -- and we got to learn how to mix food for the kitten feedings. That's likely going to be Daisy's passion project in our volunteering -- she wants to be the feline welfare assistant, the kitten feeder, and there are a lot of people in line for that particular position. I am content, as previously mentioned, being one of the people behind the scenes who takes care of the jobs (like laundry) that hold the place together, and helping out in the background where I can. I'm not in it for the glamour of it, though I will say that next weekend we are helping to run the shelter's youth volunteer day, whatever that is. Our shift is later in the afternoon and we'll be working out of the auditorium, so whatever we can do to help there I was absolutely on board for. If I need to give a presentation on how awesome the shelter is, I can do that on the fly, as I love holding the attention of an audience. We'll see, though.
We each have three uniform shirts, and I say "uniform" loosely because they don't even appear to be required attire; I see volunteers there every week just wearing street clothes with their name badges and keycards on them. Our first shirts we bought on our first day there -- Daisy got a short-sleeve deep purple tee and I got a long-sleeve sky-blue tee. Our second shirts were free shirts, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Humane Society this year; both are lavender. Our third shirts we purchased yesterday, both are the newest design and are a medium purple (though we had the option to get gold ones as well).
In case you hadn't realized at this point, I am really into this. And it gives me a lot of exercise I wouldn't normally get via other means or by sitting on my ass at home on the weekends. I am sore and tired when I get home from the shelter after our shifts, but it is a good sore and tired. I've done work, I've done something that contributes to the shelter and to our community. It doesn't have to be fun, and it's not about doing something fun for me. It's for the animals, and for the wonderful institution that has given us four wonderful cats in the past two years.
That being said, there are perks:
We got to meet these two little beauties yesterday, as well as their other siblings -- all of whom look pretty similar. All are scheduled to be fixed either today or tomorrow and then put up for adoption. We're very fond of the little one in front with the nose patterns; he is a little boy who purrs and is very lovey, just like Charlie was. Daisy is debating on whether we should "reserve" him to adopt before he's released to the adoption pool, as we can, legally, take on one more cat if we'd like.
I'm not opposed to adopting him if Daisy wants him, but he is one of several beautiful little cats there right now as we are just now entering into kitten season. I told Daisy he's a wonderful little boy and I'd love to have him in the house, but I'm more of the mindset that I'd rather wait for Pete to pass and then have more clarity on what cat(s), if any, we want next. If we'd lost Pete two weeks ago, I told Daisy that I would've reserved this little cute-nosed boy and his more traditional-looking seal-point sister (not pictured) in a heartbeat. As it stands, we're going to see new kittens there every week, sometimes a LOT of new kittens, from now until the fall and it's going to take a very special, almost cat-of-my-dreams-level cat, to get me to be all in on adopting a new one -- but if Daisy falls in love with one she wants in the interim, I of course will not stand in her way.
I also want to give Pete all the love we can with the time he has left. While he's mostly okay, he does have his good days and bad days, just like Maggie and Sadie did during their last several months of life. Some days he's really active and wants to eat a lot and run and chase the laser pointer (which I find remarkable at his advanced age) and other days his kidney-failure scent is strong and he just wants to lounge and sleep a lot. I have a feeling we'll know when it's his time, as it will be quite evident -- as it was for the girls.
He turns eighteen in five days. Officially, anyway, based on the day I've always marked down as his birthday. Unofficially he's likely been eighteen for several weeks, as I only have an approximate date of birth for the old man.
Hank turns two next week. There will be photos of both boys with party hats.
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