It was a blood, er, Bird bath

Yesterday all God's chillin threw a big "finish off the bird feeders" party.  At one point there was a squirrel on the bell, two birds on Laurie's feeder, and three sparrows waiting in line for their chance, as well as Mr. Chipmunk on the ground waiting for scraps.  Here's some of what it looked like.

Guess what? The camera actually saved the pic of the Red-Bellied Woody from the other day!  Not a great pic, but there he is!

Scrappy modeling as I made sure the memory card was now working.

Class clown- Mr. Squirrel.

Newest member of the pig club is the chipping sparrow , sitting under the chickadee.  He stayed on that perch no matter who joined him.

Chickadee gets his turn.

Of course the funniest part came when Scrappy and I went out to see if Mr. Squirrel would ever leave.

Okay here you see our porch, and on the left you see the neighbors porch w/shed.  Squirrel still hanging on bell.  When we came out, he kicked off the post- so hard, in fact, he sent the bell flying- bounced off our fence, hit their fence about six feet away, made it to their shed roof in a single bound, and shot across the shed roof and disappeared- all in approximately a second and a half.  I never saw a squirrel (or for that matter anything but a bird in flight) go that fast.

Today, Laurie's feeder is still in business, but the bell and all but the (formerly) top disc of suet on the other hanger are gone.

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Last night was the OT night at work.  Again, we were assigned to one of the two box-making areas.  This area- the less-busy- is where the fancy boxes for the .com stuff are made.  Five color-coded types of boxes, each with a regular box and a box with a gift box inside.  We make them and either put them on the stock carts around the work area or store them on the floor in our area.  Each cart has certain boxes that are SUPPOSED to be on it... yesterday, I spent 20 minutes sorting them out, because first shift had totally mixed the size-green regulars and gift boxes.  Not only putting them on wrong carts, but actually had one cart that was supposed to be regulars, and had a stack of gift boxes with one (1) regular on the top of the stack.

No sooner had I done this than the picking area boss came over and took me and Dan to "wholesale boxes".  Unlike the .com, which is picked in old, beat up boxes and then put in the nice boxes, wholesale is picked in the boxes they ship in, each one getting a bag (color coded by shipping priority) inside of it.  Boss told us that one guy didn't show up, and they were "really busy".  I said, "Good, that'll make the day go faster."  Someone passing by said, "Yeah, that's what you think when you don't know any better."

Famous last words.

There was a period of relative (but not real) business until about a half hour before first break (AKA 5 PM).  Then one girl left because she "didn't feel good"; she was replaced with a girl who actually wanted to work.  By break time we were building boxes when we had room and stocking the pick areas in one and two boxes at a time- in other words just about what we'd been doing in .com.  At ten minutes to lunch time (AKA 7:50), we got to get in line because the company bought us all Pizza Hut.  It got busy again just before that- mainly because the other original girl left do to various aches and pains around 7:30- and that lasted until about a quarter past nine.  At 9:30 the kid we had been working with in the other area came over and said he was going home.  By 10, I was sweeping the area (and it took half the area before I even saw the dirt I was sweeping).  I said to myself, if the boss comes by before break (10:30), I'll ask her if they thought it was going to get busy again, or else I'd go home.

At 10:112, our lead from the other box area wandered by, and I stopped her to chat.  Seems the computers were down again.  Two nights ago, they had quit at 11:20 and were still out when I went home at midnight.

Last straw.  I went to the boss, she took me to the shipping supervisor.  I explained to him the situation, and said, "It's hard enough to try to do "something" on regular time, but doing it on OT doesn't help anyone."

And the supervisor told me a little story about the company philosophy on OT.

Fort Wayne locals and longtime readers remember the storm early this summer that knocked out most of the power in the city for between a day-and-a-half and a week.  That night, they sat there in the dark, on OT, and called extra people in, for over 8 hours, expecting "the power will come back any minute".  That said, Supervisor said, "It won't hurt my feelings," and as long as I wasn't about to screw myself on attendance points, he "did'nt blame me."  So I left at last break.  As I told Dan I was leaving, his comment was, "Good."