Hello Work Life community. First off, I had rough issues getting on here this morning. It took 4 hours to get logged on. I did have an upgrade on my phone, not sure if it was that or something going on here. I feel like I'm in catch up mode now. Hey today is day 7 of publishing an article every day, something I have never done. Anyways today's post is about yesterdays work and how my job dictates what I get to do sometimes.
The day started off just like any other day. First thing we did was check out all our material handling equipment. What you see in the picture is one aircraft loader raised up all the way and another lowered down. I took this picture inside another loader just about half way raised up.
The second photo is all the cargo we will be loading later that night. The load consisted of 12 pallets and 1 aircraft tow bar. This is what we consider an easy load. A lot pushing pallets and we only have to strap one piece down. It's much easier than loading heavy wheeled equipment where we would have to secure them with chains.
We had to come back into work at 8:00 and load up the loaders with the pallets. It was about 7:30 that it started to snow here. You see it doesn't matter if it's sunny, rainy, sleeting or snowing we still have to keep to the schedule of events. This equipment is not just a simple transfer of equipment. It is cargo needed to support a particular operation set for a unique aircraft to perform it's mission.
I can always show you how I do my job but I can't tell you the particulars on what it's for. This includes where it's going, how long it's going, what some of the cargo is, how some of the cargo is used, and what it all accomplishes. All of this dictates what I'm allowed to do with my time when I would normally be off.
You can say I'm expected to perform my work duties at a drop of a hat. The weather, time of day, and all days are not off limits. There have been days where I have absolutely been jobbing. Once I worked 19 hours straight and another I worked close to 30 hours within a 40 hour period. Also I have worked every single holiday on multiple occasions. Today I just worked 3 hours of extra time to my already scheduled work shift. Today it affected me by not being able to go to my son's basketball game. Several times I have missed out on special occasions. I'll admit I complain sometimes but most of the time I suit up and take pride completing my part of the overall process.
This type of work does have its rewards if the right people are in charge. Actually I believe that can be the case for a lot of jobs. Well I told you I may have to work on a drop of a hat, I can take time off with relatively no notice if I choose to. So when something pops up unexpectedly like a family member visiting unnoticed I can request time and often get it.
There's not many employees that are that flexible. Of course we still work around the big picture, the mission. It's not every day we work an onslaught of weird and unusual hours. It does feel like a give and take employer & employee relationship which is great.
Well back to the job 😊 I mentioned earlier that this was an easy load to do. It was really easy for me because I drove one of the aircraft loaders. No putting my butt into the pallets or pushing them. I had the best job being inside a comfy warm loader. I just had to use some controls to move the pallets across its automated rollers closer to the aircraft.
Once I was done dumping the pallets off my loader I went to a staging area where there were 3 more pallets. I had to spot (give directions) a fork lift driver to bring those 3 pallets to the aircraft. This took awhile and a lot of us including me wondered why the load master wanted to do this instead of just loading them up on the loader.
Well I stayed back awaiting for the forklift to come back two more times. A little bored so I took some pictures of the loading area of the loader. It was starting to snow a little harder and snow was accumulating on it. I also took some time to make a snowball. It may have ended up on the forklift windshield some how 😊
Once we were done we headed back to the shop. One last thing to do before we all can go home. We had to sweep the snow off the loader bed and tarp it.
I got home around 11:30 and spent some time winding down here at hive. I probably got to bed a little after 1:00 than got up early around 5:00. I did manage to take a nap today because I couldn't keep my eyes open. Well tomorrow is Sunday and I have to work another mission in the morning. There are breaks in the action but my job stops for nothing.
Take care, stay safe and enjoy the rest of your weekend. Until next time.