Day 6 of the toleration process

It is day 6 of my “work” process.  It has turned off cold with a north wind.  When I got here it was in the 70’s and felt great.  Over the past few days it has receded almost 30 degrees.  Now the early morning walks are becoming a “toleration” contest.  “Can I stand to stay out long enough to make my 45 minute daily walk”?  This morning it was really, really hard to finish up but I made it.  It is very strange because I lived in a very dry place in Colorado and the dry cold was tolerable if you can stay in the sun and it didn’t feel that cold (most of the time) but here when it get cold it is just DAMN COLD!  Maybe if I could only be out in daylight hours it would be more like my time in Colorado but unfortunately I am out by 4am for the walk, in the office shortly after 5am and the sun does ont come up till way after 7am.  By then I am frozen and cold and it takes the rest of the morning to get warm.  I know it sounds like whining and it is!

Speaking of the “biting”  cold, there is another type of “biting” going on here.  We are in the focus or multiple changes.  First we had new management come in 6 months ago.  Immediately they started implementing “penny-pinching” strategies to align with a reduced revenue but much of what was being imposed was causing  job performance to go down.  It h as continued and now new work schedules and contracting is being implemented and the employees are not happy.  A strike was averted by having a 7am town hall meeting on Saturday and another one last night to detail managements plan but the workers are not happy.  This along with numerous other strategies is causing a serious lowering of the work attitude here.  This old saying is very much in tune with current situations: “The beatings will continue until the attitude improves”.   I also like this Dilbert it is very relevant:

Tomorrow we will graduate the last group of our long-term students and send them out to be future supervisors.  I sure hope I don’t have to be on one of their locations – ha!  This comes back to the fact that “experience is a great teacher” and I am not fully able to impart experience training when the student is not willing to accept the work assignments associated.  We are only able to get them involved in “‘class-room intervention” as they do not feel that physical work is necessary for them to know how the jobs are done and need to be done.  They consistently balk at doing any form of “hands-on” labor so in turn their experience is extremely limited. The number of job failures and job problems speaks volumes about the lack of experience some have.  If they had been exposed more through experience,  many silly mistakes or just plain lack of understanding errors would be reduced or eliminated.  It all comes down to a risk calculation by many levels of management – put in cheaper less experienced people and take the risk that they will learn before they make costly mistakes and only hire the high-priced “experienced” people to get you out of the problem should it happen.  There has to be a better way than “See one, Do one, Teach”.

I have also taken on a touch of either sinus problems or a small cold.  My whole family had this before I left and I thought I had escaped and still I think I did.  Unfortunately, the wearing of the 31 hour day and being in close proximity of so many people on the airplanes and in the airport cause me to now have possibly caught it from someone on my long flights or someone once I got here as there have been many that have lost their voice and sniffling around here? Mine is still not bad yet, just a little runny nose at times and so much drainage that I am drowning at times. UCK!.

To be positive about all this – I only have 22 more days of this to put up with, this time.  Time to start thinking about Ham Radio activity for the winter and projects in the shop during time off.  Sure wish I had got that new Windom Antenna up already – maybe I will have a warm day and get it strung up for testing anyway in January?  – WD0AJG