bad day.

had my worst day so far at the new job. still better than most days at the last job, but it's frustrating nonetheless.

my job is officially miracle worker. customers make ridiculous demands, salespeople promise to meet said ridiculous demands. net result? pissed off customers yelling at pissed off salespeople yelling at me, for failing to do something I told them was impossible to begin with. whatever. we have to ship out a huge job by friday, and it won't be done. but because of xmas, it HAS to ship friday to get there in time to be unloaded before the holiday. gee, too bad the customer changed the specs on us last week and we had to scramble to get new parts in and deal with all the hassles of changing a unit that was already half built...

but that's not why today sucked. sure, I had to spend much of my day on the shop floor, trying to help build shit with zero mechanical inclination... but that's normal.

no, today sucked because they killed xmas. or more specifically, they killed the xmas break. the powers that be decided that since the week off at the end of the year was ACTUALLY supposed to be a week off in july, anyone who wasn't around there in july doesn't get the week off. so while everyone else will be enjoying their week off of paid holiday time, I, along with the three other "newbies" have the choice of taking the time off unpaid, or working. except if the shop guys decide to work, I HAVE to work. if I luck out and they decide they just want the time off unpaid, I'll be "on call"... if a customer needs a parts order shipped out quickly, I'll get called into work to write the order, fill it and ship it. I'm not totally opposed to that, as it would probably amount to less than an hour's worth of work each day... but it's just the idea of being told I'd have this week off, paid, at the end of the year, and then have them renege on that two weeks before it's supposed to happen...