Is it vacation yet?
Green Lantern was ok...not great. I expected MUCH better in the story and acting department, although the effects were spot-on. Anyway. Last week was hellish at work. Didn't enjoy it. Here's why.
The company I work for supplies clients with business forms, be it checks, manifests, order forms, medical forms, RX pads, and so on (its especially depressing getting a traffic ticket that YOU printed). There is a customer service department of about a dozen people, who take orders, and then pass them along to order entry, comprised of 2 utterly incompetent people, who could both be fired and one GOOD temp could do their work at a third of the price. Order entry puts the order in the system, makes sure that all the art and instructions are there, and send the orders to us. We are the bridge between the production side of the company, which is a huge warehouse full of printing presses the size of school buses, and the wussy officey customer service side, who complain when their climate varies by so much as a degree. What WE do, in our department of 4 people, is take the orders, typeset/design them on the computer, make sure it looks good, and then send it to be plated. Each ink color of each job gets printed on a separate metal plate (imagine a 2' by 3' square of aluminum siding) that will then be sent to the press floor. So. There are 3 typesetters, of which I am one, and 1 plating guy.
Last week the plating guy was on vacation. I fill in for him when he's not here, IN ADDITION to my own job. So I am doing two full-time jobs for a week. That's bad thing number one. Two, we have record numbers of orders come in last week, so there is a LOT of work to do on both jobs. Three, order entry was down by half for two days, so we had to send one of OUR people up to help them out, taking our staff of 4 down to two. Four, one of our people was GONE on Friday, so we had two, and order entry had one. Five, in addition to this, it being a holiday weekend, everyone's wanting rush jobs done so that things get printed and shipped before the holiday. Now, you're thinking, no big deal, right? And that'd be true for lots of 1,000 up to say, 10,000. Think of it in printer paper boxes. Those things hold 5,000 sheets of letter paper. Some of these people are ordering lots of up to TWO MILLION forms, each of which may be 5 or 6 sheets. That's a LOT of paper. At 5 sheets per form, that ends up being two thousand printer paper boxes full. Enough to fill a few 18-wheelers. Anyway. So the press floor people are howling at me to get these jobs out quick so they can get them done, and the plating machine goes down. Mostly cause Kodak, who makes the machine, is stoopid, and didn't fix it right the last time they were here. Basically, the hard drive was fried. So it was down for a day and a half, got sorta-fixed and worked for half a day, and then was down another half day. It was BAD. Somehow, I still managed to plate 250 jobs, which is really good, all things considered.
We're getting through leftover nasty from last week, but will soon be back to normal, thank goodness.
The company I work for supplies clients with business forms, be it checks, manifests, order forms, medical forms, RX pads, and so on (its especially depressing getting a traffic ticket that YOU printed). There is a customer service department of about a dozen people, who take orders, and then pass them along to order entry, comprised of 2 utterly incompetent people, who could both be fired and one GOOD temp could do their work at a third of the price. Order entry puts the order in the system, makes sure that all the art and instructions are there, and send the orders to us. We are the bridge between the production side of the company, which is a huge warehouse full of printing presses the size of school buses, and the wussy officey customer service side, who complain when their climate varies by so much as a degree. What WE do, in our department of 4 people, is take the orders, typeset/design them on the computer, make sure it looks good, and then send it to be plated. Each ink color of each job gets printed on a separate metal plate (imagine a 2' by 3' square of aluminum siding) that will then be sent to the press floor. So. There are 3 typesetters, of which I am one, and 1 plating guy.
Last week the plating guy was on vacation. I fill in for him when he's not here, IN ADDITION to my own job. So I am doing two full-time jobs for a week. That's bad thing number one. Two, we have record numbers of orders come in last week, so there is a LOT of work to do on both jobs. Three, order entry was down by half for two days, so we had to send one of OUR people up to help them out, taking our staff of 4 down to two. Four, one of our people was GONE on Friday, so we had two, and order entry had one. Five, in addition to this, it being a holiday weekend, everyone's wanting rush jobs done so that things get printed and shipped before the holiday. Now, you're thinking, no big deal, right? And that'd be true for lots of 1,000 up to say, 10,000. Think of it in printer paper boxes. Those things hold 5,000 sheets of letter paper. Some of these people are ordering lots of up to TWO MILLION forms, each of which may be 5 or 6 sheets. That's a LOT of paper. At 5 sheets per form, that ends up being two thousand printer paper boxes full. Enough to fill a few 18-wheelers. Anyway. So the press floor people are howling at me to get these jobs out quick so they can get them done, and the plating machine goes down. Mostly cause Kodak, who makes the machine, is stoopid, and didn't fix it right the last time they were here. Basically, the hard drive was fried. So it was down for a day and a half, got sorta-fixed and worked for half a day, and then was down another half day. It was BAD. Somehow, I still managed to plate 250 jobs, which is really good, all things considered.
We're getting through leftover nasty from last week, but will soon be back to normal, thank goodness.
posted by Fliven | 4:30 PM
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