Day 55

Good day everyone. Man oh man am I beat. I've been working my butt off. So here's the thing. This week was my 40 hour week, which meant that I came in Tuesday and worked Tuesday night, wednesday night, thursday night, and friday night. Friday night we were scheduled to have an extra guard here. I'm the one that makes up the schedules for me and the other guard, so the security company called me 6 weeks ago and gave me 4 days that they wanted me to write down. They said that two weekends in a row, a friday and saturday night each time, there was not going to be a maintenance person working the 3rd shift, and so an extra guard would be working and would be carrying the maintenance pager.

I usually only write the schedules up for every 4 weeks, but they wanted to get the documented schedule asap so I went ahead and did it 6 weeks out. It seemed like it took forever. I remember that morning very well. I was supposed to get off at 6. However, I completely forgot that I had planned to make up the new schedules, including the extra coverage days. So, at a quarter to 6 in the morning, I tried to write those up as fast as I could. I still didn't get out of here until 20 minutes after I was technically off. What the deal was supposed to be with these extra days was this. Since we were informed in advance about the days, then whoever of me or the other guard that was off that day would be the one to come in as the backup. For instance, Friday night I am still on duty as the main guard, and so Randy was scheduled to come in from 10:30 to 7. I made sure to remind him a week before, then a day or two before, then I called him on the day of to make sure, and everything seemed fine.

Well, at 9:45PM, I was monitoring a disruptive patient in the ER and I got a call. He had called in not 40 minutes before his shift, saying his daughter had to go to the hospital, bla bla bla. My boss was like "I don't know which hospital he lives near or if he is even already at the hospital." I was like "Well sir, I've been in the ER for the past hour and he is not up here." This guy has called out of work quite a few times since I've been here, and he has only been here a month longer than me. Yet, I'm the one that the security company asks to train other guards so that if needed, they can work here and cover a shift. Not to mention that I do all the paperwork such as scheduling, oh wait, I did mention that already. ;)

So, they got our buddy Eric to come in and work his shift. Poor guy. He works days, getting up at 4:45 in the morning, so he had been awake all day, and by 2 or 3 I was worried about him making it home on his motorcycle because of how tired he was. I even offered for him to crash on the couch at our house for an hour or so just to catch a power nap so that he wouldn't have an accident. I was like "I worry about getting off of work an hour after you leave, but in that time, being alerted that there was a serious motorcycle accident and the driver was killed." He responded with "oh, no don't worry. The wind wakes me right up."

So Saturday morning, having experienced several of Randy's call in's through out me being here at the hospital, I was skeptical. When I got the pager from maintenance on friday night before Eric got there, maintenance said they weren't suprised when Randy wasn't there. He had told them that he had big plans for the holiday weekend, and was bummed he had to work. I don't understand. Here I am, 27 years old, yes I'm younger than Erin by just a few years, but we both try to be the most responsible we can be. We work hard at our jobs, cover extra shifts, try to do the best for our kids, AND, we both are students working on our bachelors degree.

Randy is older than us both I think, mid 30's if I'm not mistaken, but comes across to me like he is 19 or 20, and just wants to party. If I call him at the last minute because I'm sick or whatever, I get "Sorry dude, I already have plans." Well, sometimes plans change. ;) Ask Erin, when I was with schwans, we would get told friday evening that we were all expected to work saturday. Some of the drivers were always like "Nick! Dude! I already have plans with my family!" And of course nick, our manager would be like "So? I do too!"

So, Saturday morning based on what I knew about Randy, and what maintenance said, I had a bad feeling. I texted my boss and simply said "Hey, I thought you should know. Last night maintenance said they weren't surprised when Randy called out of work because he had mentioned having big plans for the holiday weekend. Also, should Randy not make it to work tonight, which I have a bad feeling that will be the case, feel free to call me. I will cover it, and if needed I will carry both the security and maintenance pager if you can't find someone to work the midnight to 7 that I am supposed to be there for." Sure enough, 8:30 that night, I had layed down for a nap for a few hours, and then realized I had a voice mail. It was from my boss. Basically he said that Randy had not showed up and had not called. They had no idea where he was. I said "Alright, it will take me just a little bit to get ready but I will head on in there."

By 9 pm I was on duty, and locking up everything late, but hey, better late than never right? Better they have me they can depend on to pick up the slack that this other guard seems to keep leaving around eh? So at 10 oclock I called my boss back and told him that everything was locked, that I was here and just touching base with him. He said he still had no word from Randy yet, couldn't get him on his cell. He asked me if I would be available Sunday evening *tonight* just in case he can't reach randy. I said "I'm here if you need me. If you can't reach him, I will work his shifts."

He said he'd call me by 5pm if he couldn't reach him. 2PM he called and said he was planning ahead, that he couldn't reach randy still and that he was planning for the worst. He said "Worst case scenario, you work till wednesday night," *which technically I would get off thursday morning at 6 am I believe, "And I'm going to have you train a flex guy for 2 nights there and then he will work thursday and friday." I was like "What happens starting saturday?" Since randy's work week starts saturday, and my boss was like "I haven't gotten that far yet. When I get into the office Tuesday morning I will see what we can come up with."

So in closing, pretty tired. Tired enough that tonight I didn't even think about going out for my 2 mile walk. I wanted to, but at the same time it came down to "sleep? Or walk?" And this morning I slept 1.5 hours, had been in the REM sleep, and then the kids were being loud. I noticed that Erin apparently was really tired, because she stayed asleep. I was tired, but because of the deep sleep period, I was wide awake in a way, so reluctantly I got up and went downstairs with the kids. We watched a few episodes of different series' on netflix, and then I put "Country bears" on for them and started on lunch. It was 12:30 ish by this point. Pulled out these wrapped hamburger patties from Hyvee that we had gotten a long time ago called "Big Daddy Patties." It was I believe 3 large patties for $10.00. I thought "Potatos of some kind always go with burgers." So I grabbed 2 boxes of cheesy scalloped potatos. I got those in the oven and ready to go, and I started grilling the burgers.

Got everything on plates, had Lex take a plate and glass of water up to Erin, and then the rest of us lounged in the tv room eating our lunches and watching another episode of something. I think by this point it was before 3PM, and Erin came down with her plate, and kept working on her burger and potatos. When I was done, I took Zoe upstairs, layed her down for a nap, and then went to lay down myself. If I was off for the day, I would not have minded just staying up and going to bed early, but I knew I was now working *with randy no-showing and not calling*, so 1.5 hours would not be anything close to enough to get me to 6 am. Not even close. So I set my alarm for 3.5 hours, and went to sleep. I fell asleep fast, which was awesome because of how tired I was, and I was deep asleep when my alarm went off. It's amazing how, when you're deep enough, you won't hear your alarm go off initially. It's like, it slowly pulls you awake. You go from "Dreaming about whatever," to "dreaming about whatever, but starting to think you hear a beeping in the back ground," to "Less dream and suddenly the beeping is a little louder," to "staring at the alarm clock and your hand fumbling for it trying to shut it up." Fun times! ;) Was still tired when I got up, but any sleep is better than none I say.

On that note, I'm going to sign off for the night. Hopefully this week won't completely do me in! Talk to you all again soon. I will write more for you all again tomorrow.

Thanks for being here.

CB