Not scheduling any meetings and working over time next week

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DJ Ricky B

DJ Ricky B

DJ Extraordinaire
Mar 9, 2015
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Lately I have been working 6:30 pm to 5 am. I actually enjoy working the night shift. I get a lot done working at my own pace. I come home and go right to bed. Zonked out by about 5:50 am. I am actually getting MORE SLEEP than on my previous weekend 6 am to 6:30 pm shift. I am just sleeping during day light hours so it's an adjustment not waking up until almost 1 pm.

Since early February I have scheduled at least one phone call meeting with a prospective couple every week except the week I went on spring vacation. Not scheduling anything next week because my department at work is under staffed, and the lady who does the majority of the work during the week on day shift is on vacation. She is a good worker, and I would say she handles 65% of the work load while the other 2 employees on that shift handle the rest (One of them is what I consider a pay check collector...only sits and does two job functions all day, and won't help with anything else).

So my manager asked me to come in and cover, and work over time. My schedule will be 12 Noon to 12 AM Monday through Thursday night. I should hit about 6 hours of OT for the week. I hate going into work at Noon. To me, Noon is the worst time to start a shift, but he needs the coverage. Can't eat lunch before work. Can't really do anything, and I'll be working all day long. Should rack up a good amount of OT pay for the week though. This will be the only time I agree to working OT between now and Mid November. Then should be back to working over night shift again the following week.

I have a 70th birthday party tomorrow which should be the easiest event I do this year. Venue is 1.2 miles from my house, and it's a basic set up. In May I have weddings every Saturday plus a couple of Sunday weddings. Going to be a busy ass month in May! There will be a couple weeks I don't even have a day off. Crossing my fingers I can get through it, or I may have to take PTO to take a day off if it gets to be too much.

May and October this year are super busy months. Every other month at the moment doesn't look like more than 3 events in each month. Still time for another wedding or two or 3 to come in for September and November I believe, but I think now through July is likely wrapped up. About 3 weeks left in booking season then I should be able to call it a wrap for 2024 outside of maybe an outlying late booking wedding, and the December holiday party events
 
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rickryan.com said:
Man, I don't see how you physically handle those kinds of swings in work schedule. For sure, it puts a cramp into trying to do sales meetings with DJ clients. Good luck to you.
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I did that well into my late 40’s 60-70 hours a week at a sales jobs and gigs every Friday, Saturday and even probably 20 Sundays a month, once I hit 50 the check engine light went on, it was basically slow down or die according to the doctor
 
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tunes4046 said:
I did that well into my late 40’s 60-70 hours a week at a sales jobs and gigs every Friday, Saturday and even probably 20 Sundays a month, once I hit 50 the check engine light went on, it was basically slow down or die according to the doctor
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rickryan.com said:
Man, I don't see how you physically handle those kinds of swings in work schedule. For sure, it puts a cramp into trying to do sales meetings with DJ clients. Good luck to you.
Click to expand...

I don't want go into work at Noon. To me that is the worst time to start working. Have me start at 10 am or earlier or 3 pm or later. I'm only doing this one time because my manager is in a bind. Honestly, they have not been hiring for about 16-17 moths now, and it's getting old. My department is short 2 people. We need two diligent people on top of who we have now to be well staffed. Last year we had 11 (4 of whom were pay check collectors that did almost nothing), Another went to another department. Those 5 are gone. Now we are down to 6. With 2 people out, I am helping out as I was asked to, but I won't do it next time. It's not my fault they won't hire people, and are trying to run things with few employees.

I should have been put on day shift Monday through Thursday to begin with, but they won't because of office politics, and seniority of others who got that shift first. Now I'm on night shift, and enjoy working at nights alone. My sleep schedule is different, but it is working out well actually.

In regards to working 60-70 hours a week plus deejaying. I won't ever do that. I know my limits, and also I feel I only live once. 58-60 hours total between work and deejaying is about my maximum I can push in a week before I go nuts, and get pissed off because I'm working too often. I have a long weekend coming up on May 11th/12th, and I am already thinking that I will probably take that Monday shift off at work so I can have a day to relax a bit and rest. Go back into work Tuesday night at 6:30 pm hopefully energized and ready to be at work.

My brother is 50, and he just started working full time about 9 months ago. He hadn't worked a full time position in many years. He was only working part time jobs, or doing door dash plus deejaying for a long time over the last 7 or 8 years or so. He hates working full time, and told me yesterday that he wants his time back. He is actually thinking of quitting his day job and going back to doing door dash so he can set his own schedule and work lighter hours again. He told me he feels so drained from working and deejaying that working full time is causing him to not want to DJ, but he knows if he quits his full time job he would enjoy deejaying again and be in a better mood about having to go and do an event.

I am 41 now, and wondering how my work and dj life will play out 8-10 years in the future or even if I will still be deejaying when I get into my 50s. Lets say I level up in my day job or land a position paying 20K to 40K more per year. Would I care to even DJ any more because the need to DJ from a monetary perspective would diminish rapidly.
 
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What a week! Today I walked into work to a frantic manager, and a frantic co worker. I was providing coverage for 1 employee. Well, TWO OTHERS decided to call out for the day. It was a beautiful weather day, and I KNOW they just did not want to bother with work, and took the day off. The 1 employee that was frantic was leaving early at Noon, and she was frantic because she did not know how to do the Outbound functions that are handled in our office. They were so glad to see me show up LOL. Today, I basically held down everything myself, was all over the place. Did the jobs of 3 people myself. Really, 4 people because I have also been doing stuff that isn't even under my job function because nobody else does it, and a lot of shipments that came in needed to be moved out of the way so there is some room for tomorrow. Why don't I get paid 3 times my hourly rate on days like this?

My manager asked me if I wanted more OT and if I wanted to come in tomorrow too. That's a Big negative! Gotta hit up Costco, will take myself out to lunch since it's my birthday, then I have laundry to do, then load up my Traverse for Saturday's wedding, then download music I don't have and finish prep for Saturday.

Anyway, I didn't quite make it to mid night tonight. I was ready to go home. and done with work. Clocked out at 11:10 pm. I missed out on 50 minutes of pay, but I was just done with that place for the week. Told my manager today, I won't work a shift that starts at Noon again. Worst time ever to start a long shift.
 
Doing the work of three to four people? WOW!!
What is your job? Eating food all shift!
 
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sonic-vision said:
Doing the work of three to four people? WOW!!
What is your job? Eating food all shift!
Click to expand...

Actually, I did eat THREE TIMES at work yesterday. We get 3 breaks and I ate every break. One Marie Calendar's bowl. One Healthy Choice Bowl. Then my work was doing Nacho Bowls for Cinco De Mayo. I picked Cool Ranch Doritos. Had it topped with Steak, Cheese sauce, Tomatoes, shredded cheese, lettuce. It was set up like a Chipotle line. Tasted pretty good! :)

So my office was supposed to have 4 people there during the day. We were down to two. Plus I was using a Pacer to put stuff away and clear the dock because nobody is doing that. I ended up grabbing a clamp, and putting large bails of cardboard onto a trailer because nobody is taking initiative to move them from an area that is over piling and bringing them into a trailer about 350 feet away. Someone needs to create some room so things can be placed and moved off of the dock. So I did that last night before I left. They need to hire more people all around.

One thing I will say, is that my manager better step up to the plate and start lifting his fingers, and performing necessary functions that need to be done because relying on me or the others to do the work, and keep things moving is a slippery slope. He is on his phone a lot, and walking and BSing with other managers through out the day. He is a nice guy, but if you don't participate in performing some grunt work, and show the team how involved you are in wanting to make sure things run smoothly, then eventually your employees will lose interest in working to make things happen, and won't care any more. My co workers have been, and are "checking out" over the last couple months. They are turning into what I call "pay check collectors". Yesterday was a culmination point to that when two of them chose to call out for the day, and not care. The one employee I was working with yesterday won't even go outside of the office to help with anything on the dock. She will just sit at her computer all day, and handle appointments, and push paper work along. Manager doesn't even try to ask her to do anything else. Everyone just accepts that she works the way she works, and lets her be. Granted, those two tasks are time consuming, she had some down time to help out with other functions, but chooses to relax, and be on her phone, or chit chat with others at her desk and don't care at all about anything else.

If the manager is acting like he cares, but not showing that he cares things will deteriorate big time. My previous manager would go and unload a trailer himself to keep things running smoothly (and technically our department is not supposed to be unloading trailers, but we do because otherwise it will never get done, and there is an immediate need for an outbound empty trailer).

I unloaded one yesterday becuse they were short one trailer to load in outbound. I told the outbound manager in teams - "You know, it will speed up the process if you have anybody available to send over to me to help me lift these things off of the floor. There has to be a young worker somewhere in the building willing to help out. I am in my 40s, and have been the only one doing this for months now..."

There was no response to my comment. I guess if I was unwilling to go and unload that trailer, they would have never gotten an empty trailer to use, and not met their dead line. Eventually, that day will come because I will start checking out too if things continue the way they are going.
 
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Your right Ricky. You do eat for four people! In your 40's you should be doing most of the work you youngin' . LOL
 
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DJ Ricky B said:
Actually, I did eat THREE TIMES at work yesterday. We get 3 breaks and I ate every break. One Marie Calendar's bowl. One Healthy Choice Bowl. Then my work was doing Nacho Bowls for Cinco De Mayo. I picked Cool Ranch Doritos. Had it topped with Steak, Cheese sauce, Tomatoes, shredded cheese, lettuce. It was set up like a Chipotle line. Tasted pretty good! :)

So my office was supposed to have 4 people there during the day. We were down to two. Plus I was using a Pacer to put stuff away and clear the dock because nobody is doing that. I ended up grabbing a clamp, and putting large bails of cardboard onto a trailer because nobody is taking initiative to move them from an area that is over piling and bringing them into a trailer about 350 feet away. Someone needs to create some room so things can be placed and moved off of the dock. So I did that last night before I left. They need to hire more people all around.

One thing I will say, is that my manager better step up to the plate and start lifting his fingers, and performing necessary functions that need to be done because relying on me or the others to do the work, and keep things moving is a slippery slope. He is on his phone a lot, and walking and BSing with other managers through out the day. He is a nice guy, but if you don't participate in performing some grunt work, and show the team how involved you are in wanting to make sure things run smoothly, then eventually your employees will lose interest in working to make things happen, and won't care any more. My co workers have been, and are "checking out" over the last couple months. They are turning into what I call "pay check collectors". Yesterday was a culmination point to that when two of them chose to call out for the day, and not care. The one employee I was working with yesterday won't even go outside of the office to help with anything on the dock. She will just sit at her computer all day, and handle appointments, and push paper work along. Manager doesn't even try to ask her to do anything else. Everyone just accepts that she works the way she works, and lets her be. Granted, those two tasks are time consuming, she had some down time to help out with other functions, but chooses to relax, and be on her phone, or chit chat with others at her desk and don't care at all about anything else.

If the manager is acting like he cares, but not showing that he cares things will deteriorate big time. My previous manager would go and unload a trailer himself to keep things running smoothly (and technically our department is not supposed to be unloading trailers, but we do because otherwise it will never get done, and there is an immediate need for an outbound empty trailer).

I unloaded one yesterday becuse they were short one trailer to load in outbound. I told the outbound manager in teams - "You know, it will speed up the process if you have anybody available to send over to me to help me lift these things off of the floor. There has to be a young worker somewhere in the building willing to help out. I am in my 40s, and have been the only one doing this for months now..."

There was no response to my comment. I guess if I was unwilling to go and unload that trailer, they would have never gotten an empty trailer to use, and not met their dead line. Eventually, that day will come because I will start checking out too if things continue the way they are going.
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This sounds like most jobs I have had, nothing unusual 1 or 2 people who know what to do and actually do it and a lot of people who are all talk, then we can can’t forget the guy who goes home and tells his friends how horrible it is
 
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