An Awesome Day!

I wish I could have more days like today. Today, so many things went right. The day did start off nicely with me finding a quarter while walking around the gift shop at work. Incredibly, I would keep finding pennies during the day (almost like an Easter Bunny left them) and ended up with 31 cents. Not much money but it was still neat. I brought some grubby clothes to work because our operational manager asked me to. The day before, he asked if I knew how to paint. I answered no (which is truthful) but I could improvise. I think that pleased him. Sadly, I didn't get to paint as they had to try to figure out what colors they wanted. I was little disappointed as I really wanted a chance to make some good job points with him. Little did I realize that I would get my chance to impress.

A massive shipment of glasses came into today. Normally, a shipment wouldn't be a big deal but it is when it's 26 pallets worth! We don't have that big a warehouse. Worse still, the truck didn't have a lift gate (a lift attached to the truck that can be used to lower loads from the truck to the ground) and we didn't have any way to offload the truck except manually i.e. manually take every one of those boxes off the pallets, restack them on a different pallet, and take them into the warehouse. That would've been an impossible job with so many boxes. Initially, the ops manager refused the shipment only to find out it was our fault there wasn't a lift gate (the shipper hadn't been notified that we needed one). The ops manager ended renting a forklift which we used to offload the first two pallets. Someone was going to have to get inside the truck with a manual jack/lift and maneuver the rest of the pallets to the end of the truck so the forklift could take them off the truck. I ended up being that someone. It was hard work but I was delighted to do it. I found it a trip that a skill I learned while volunteering at SHARE had come in handy so much at work.

Half way through unloading the truck, I saw to my surprise my general manager. He saw how hard I was working. I was delighted that he got to see that. For the last week, I would've sworn he was peeved with me about something. With me being close to finishing my three month probation period at Medieval Times, I was very anxious to keep him happy. At times, I felt like I was walking on pins and needles.

I continued to slog away at getting the truck unloaded. I finally finished and was told to clock out but I wasn't ready to quit. I came back and offered to work for free. I wanted to finish the job. We still had to move everything in the warehouse. I found out that if anything were to happen to me while working for free, the manager in charge would be in big trouble. It was agreed they would write down the additional time I worked though to honest, I don't care about that time as I'll explain later. I summarily took over the job of throwing boxes up to folks that were restacking them so we could get all the boxes in the warehouse. We must've stacked them 14 or 15 HIGH! I worked for another hour and by the time I was done, my hands were black from all the grime on the boxes and my arms felt like they wanted to fall off. Those of us who had toiled hard at the work walked out and to our surprise, the general manager praised us for what we did. The man is not light with praise so it was very sweet to receive it. That alone made it worth slogging away so hard. Also, it came at a great time. I have four days left to my probationary period. Unless, I royally screw up, I think I'll get through it all right now.

I drove home very contented. As luck would have it, I had a pound and a half of steamed shrimp flavored with Old Bay seasoning and some cold Sam Adam's Boston Lager in the fridge. It made for a wonderful meal.

As I mentioned in previous posts, I recently finished the college class I took this spring. I decided to see if the grades had been posted for my class. I called up the website, logged in, and then nervously called up my grades for the 2006 Spring Semester. To my delight, I'd earned an "A" for the class. I was thoroughly delighted.

So, it has been awesome day. I wish I could have more days like these. God knows, I've had plenty of rough ones. Tomorrow, I'll face another day of challenges. Which is why for now, I'll savor today. It has been a wonderful day.