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Chris Robinson & New Earth Mud- "This Magnificent Distance" (2004 - Vector Records) Ex- Black Crowes frontman, in fine form.... My Photographs You like photos? I love taking them. Click here, if you wanna see some of my work
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Monday, Feb. 06, 2006 - 9:19 p.m. Boring Superbowl, don't you think?....Plus- a story about my future at NDDOT- Mohall storage.... The Fed Ex commercial was laugh-outloud funny, though. The game itself was a snooze (unless you are a Steelers fan, which about 90% of the people in Ford Field appeared to be). No Bears, so I didn;t care much anyway.... Spent most of the last 2 weeks organizing and handing out stuff from the old store room upstairs at work. I found a box filled with cardboard signs dating back to the 1970�s (I think, anyway) buried under some other junk that I didn�t know were even there. This one cracked me up, so I had to hang it up right outside of my toolroom door. The arrow was even pointing in the right direction:
Since we are leaving our present district and being taken over by the headquarters office 2 hours to our south (In Hicksville, whose name is becoming increasingly appropriate), my present managers wanted me to divide up all of our old stock evenly between our 5 counties. This makes sense, because only 3 of the counties are being reassigned. The money that paid for all the supplies upstairs came from London's budget, not the new district. The purchasing agent in the new area has a reputation statewide of being a huge anal-retentive horse's ass. He told my present P.A. that he planned on sending a truck up on July 1st to haul everything he now possess that he doesn't think we need to control ourselves. Anal retentive horse's ass, as I already said. He is so tight with his stock he won't even divide the allocated money up between the counties- he just keeps a budget for the whole district himself, and tells everyone what they can buy. The largest county in his present district has 11 employees and 12 trucks. Mohall has 27 full timers, and 26 trucks. Maybe he can get away with keeping all of his marbles in his personal coffee can down there, but a storage as large as ours will grind to a halt without a stockpile of usual and customary replacement parts on hand. Oh yeah- the day I met him last summer, the first words out of his mouth were,"What do you need a toolroom person? We use clerks at my storehouse, and they don't make the money highway maintainers do." After he left, he told our engineer that he don't want us to have a toolroom. So I guess you can say I don't think much of this pompous egotist. Who is he to decide how we run our facility? His title isn't "personnel coordinator". It's "purchasing agent". He should just stick with purchasing supplies, and stay out of our day to day business. What he doesn't understand is what my entire job duties entail. Yes, I purchase supplies for the storage. All his �clerks� do is control inventory and hand out supplies. That�s it. He does the purchasing from contracts (I do that for our 5 counties right now) fcor them. Can�t give up any control to anyone else, right? But in the course of a day I also : Keep inventory of major supplies. Also do a yearly inventory check of all inventoried equipment (the computer printout is over 10 pages long ) Answer the phones and radio. One day last summer, I counted my phone calls in one shift. I had over 75, including 9 from different police/municipal service operators with emergency things in need of attention. And that is a typical day. Add snow or other bad weather, and all I do is answer the phones and radio all day. Not proud of it, but I do all of our janitorial work. Keep the floors buffed to a shine, and make sure that the layers of dust don�t get too deep in the offices. Troubleshoot computer problems (to my ability, anyway) for our storage�s employees, and help the other storages out where I can over the phone. Manufacture brine when nobody else is around and it needs done. Help our mechanic by lending an extra hand when needed, and locating parts for him as soon as he needs them. That way, he can work on another one of our obsolete pieces of equipment until his parts arrive. Keep the storage yard neat and clean. Mow and trim the lawn in summer (about 2 acres of grass, btw), keep the plantings looking good, grow flowers in the front of the building and trim the trees and hedges. Plow snow anytime it falls. Any other inclement weather that needs attention, too. Fill in on the road in a pinch. I would be out there more, but both of our lead workers would rather have me in the yards doing the rest of the list above. From what I have been able to gather, nobody in the new district has the guts to stand up to this man. He has them all kowtowed, doing whatever he wishes without any disagreement. He is 58 years old and also has 38 years in, which means he has maxed out his retirement. He could leave today and start drawing a pension check LARGER THAN HIS PRESENT PAYCHECK! What an idiot! I�m not writing this entry to say �Look at me and all the wonderful things I do!�. Far from it. I know I have a job that many of my co workers would take in a moment. I like what I do (on most days, anyway). My bosses want to keep me in my present job. If I was out of the toolroom (and all it requires) my workday would get a lot less stressful. But the purchasing agent in Hicksville wants me back on the road. Even though he shouldn�t have any say over what I do for my paycheck. I spent my first 16 years at NDDOT on the road. Done every dirty job there is, and some we don�t even do anymore. If I have to go back on the road fulltime, it�s no sweat off of my brow. Unlike the control freak from down south, I plan on retiring as soon as I am able to do so. At 50 years I will have 29 years in (32 is max out for our version of state pension). I can deal with less than 6 more years of about anything (remind me to write about the 11 years I was stuck sandblasting and painting all of our equipment every year so day). Let him try to control this big storage (and the other 2 counties joining us) from Hicksville. He has no idea how much extra stress this will cause him. He�ll probably end up dead before he ever draws a dime of his pension�
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