About This October

October is our busy season on the job, but this year is going to be different- management has outsourced a lot of the seasonal tasks to contractors. There are temps of all sorts working for the organization, and I am sorry to say that my part-timers have had the rug pulled out from under them, hours-wise. Even worse, the employees of the contractor that is handling our work are incompetent- there have been multiple occasions on which they have been caught sleeping... this has even happened at 7AM, when these guys know that the day shift will arrive. To compound this shitshow, upper management doesn't seem to be doing anything about it.

There are also some new faces in the organization. In one case, a new hire has been appointed daytime Manager On Duty for one of our sites. I immediately took a liking to the guy- he comes across as low-key and competent. He wasn't given a master key to the site he's managing, and his alarm code is a temporary one. There is one master key that a bunch of employees have to pass among themselves like the Graeae passed their eye and tooth. I met with him last Saturday to give him the combination to our retail shop drop safe, and left with the thought: 'This poor man doesn't know what he's gotten himself into.' He was thrown into the deep end of the pool, and I have confidence that he will be a good swimmer, but it's not because management is helping.

From a staffing standpoint, upper management keeps moving the goalposts, and I am not happy about it. I had cobbled together a schedule for October and November by the end of the first week of August, but I currently don't have an approved schedule due to main office dithering. My immediate supervisor, a great guy, has been doing his level best to convince the muckety-mucks to commit to a schedule, and one which doesn't totally bone by part-timers. I've gotten to the point where I've said my piece, lobbied for the guys in my department, and finally thrown up my hands in frustration... though I should be able to finalize an October schedule tomorrow.

My job has never been like this before. The organization has always hired a small army of seasonal temps to help pull off our fall fundraisers, but this wholesale outsourcing is something new, and my department, usually insulated from this sort of thing, has been negatively impacted by the hiring of incompetents. October has always been a bit rough, but this is unprecedented and nonsensical.

The one thought that is getting me through October without banging my head against my desk is 'Winter Is Coming'.