They call it work for a reason. It's work.
Okay, that made more sense in my head, but bear with me. Alicia has updated her personal blog, but since mine is supposedly dedicated to aikido stuff, and since I haven't been doing much aikido lately, this is the place for me to keep you updated.
I started working for River Rock Casino about five weeks ago now, and started running the valet services for them a week or so ago. Doesn't really sound that impressive, but the paycheck combined with the tips has made for a very happy pay day. Unfortunately, pay day is the only day that I look forward to at the moment. Work, as I put it so well above, is work. Hard work. I have 12 employees, 8 of which take their job seriously. Most valets up at the casino are young people -- about 21 or 22 or so. There are definitely good parts to working with young people -- they have high energy and are quite flexible when it comes to scheduling. The problem is, they also expect the schedule to be flexible for them. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I definitely have had some trouble keeping my employees showing up to their shifts.
I hear all kinds of reasons for not showing up -- "I have allergies." "I have finals coming up." "I got Giants tickets!" and more. Most of them are totally reasonable, and I don't just blame the employees for not working. I understand that for most of these people, work is just for beer money, or their valet work is just supplementary income. Unfortunately this means they're less likely to consider my position when taking random days off.
Take this weekend for example. We need like 6 people working for Saturday. Right now, we have 4 scheduled. I'm supposed to be in Yosemite this weekend for a search and rescue event. Probably not gonna happen now. DOH! Yeah, so people somehow thought that a holiday weekend coming up meant they could take the weekend off and go somewhere, even though they work every Saturday (or sunday). Aggravating. Quite.
Oh and those employees that are college students are finishing up their finals -- I understand they might want some etra time off to study. The problem comes in when students decide at the last minute that they're going to go home for the entire summer. I get phone calls or emails like "Oh hey, I can't work next weekend." Okay, I think, no big deal, we'll handle it. "And probably not at all during the summer." Umm, what? "I think I'm going home for the summer." When's that going to be? "I'm leaving Monday." Right.
So we're understaffed as it is -- now we need to staff for the people who are leaving as well. Can't have a bunch of new people working together -- need to move the experienced people around, which inconveniences them and me. Oh and it's budget time. I've been asked to assemble an operating budget for the valet service. That's the cost of man hours, equipment, insurance rates, uniforms, valet tickets, and any other miscellaneous bits for the entire year. Gotta figure out how many uniforms each full time employee will need for the whole year, and how many valet tickets we'll have to have printed. Lots of little things.
Plus, there's search and rescue. I was asked to head up the annual Cal-ESAR Yosemite Summer Camp. It's nine days in yosemite where trainees are exposed to all aspects of being a search and rescue volunteer. It's a great camp, really jump-starts people who are interested in doing search and rescue, but it's taking up a lot of my spare time, planning, etc.
Then, last but certainly not least, is the wedding planning. Getting married in August. Lots to do with that too -- though to be fair, Alicia's handling most all of it.
Oh, did I mention I'm applying for local law enforcement agencies in the area? I'm putting in an app with Napa County Sheriff's Dept. this week. Should be interesting. If it doesn't work out this year, I'll probably stick with River Rock Casino until next year, try again, and see what works out.
All in all, lots on my plate. Poor Alicia having to deal with my stress. I've had one day off in the past five weeks -- I went down to Monterey this past Sunday to visit my grandfather. My one day off and we spend it in the car (for the most part) driving back and forth. Fun fun.
I think I'm actually stressing myself out more by typing all this out. I try not to think about it all...
So that's where I am, what I'm doing and how I feel these days. Good times.
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