...but shit went to crazy town for a while!
First, and most important (to me), is Rocky and I are friends again. It seems he thought I had called his boss's boss's boss's boss and said that he wasn't doing his job. While he drives me bonkers sometimes by getting distracted worse than a kid with ADD at a mirror museum, I would NEVER rat any friend out to their boss, let alone go that high over anybody's head (also, if you know me at all you'd know that I just plain don't call people). You just don't do that sort of thing! If you can't resolve something with a coworker, you ask your boss to talk to their boss. Well apparently *some* people didn't get that memo because, while I didn't place the call, somebody did. And I felt terrible that any side comment I may have made could have precipitated it. At any rate, it made life pretty ugly for poor Rocky at work. He was forced to report in every 30 minutes and explain how he was productive for the previous 30 minutes. How on earth he was supposed to be productive when he had to call somebody every 30 minutes is beyond me!
Anyway, after letting him vent for a while without really saying anything (it seemed that's what he needed) I tried to slowly guide him back to the productivity I needed to get *my* job done. After he cut me off yet again when I was trying to explain something he had asked of somebody else, I ended up breaking down in tears again (so embarrassing!) from shear frustration. I was trying so hard to do whatever it is he wanted and it kept being wrong! Well, that seemed to calm him down a bit and we slowly worked back to where we had been before the fate full phone call. Apparently that was enough to get us moving and we've made enough progress that the Powers That Be are for the most part leaving us alone. I really wish they'd give us more support, but leaving us alone is better than breathing down our necks.
The second thing is we started (and finished) our first installation. It was totally crazy because a) it was the first one, and b) our schedule for it got moved up almost two months! I, personally, was totally unprepared for it. To add to the insanity a "huge snowstorm" came through Tuesday afternoon causing everybody to freak out and go home early, and then not come in to work at all Wednesday. By "huge snowstorm" I mean we got like one inch of powder. Needless to say I stayed for my 12 hours on Tuesday and was at work bright and early Wednesday morning for another 12. We were supposed to start the install last Monday, but the stars didn't align and we didn't even get close 'til Friday. I spent most of Friday running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get signatures and whatnot that my so-called partner was supposed to have gotten days previous. I have no idea what she does all the time, but apparently it isn't the paperwork portion of our joint job. I was super stressed out and everybody telling me to "calm down" or "take a deep breath" just made it worse. Rocky tried to explain that it's hard for people to function when I'm blasting my distress every which way, but it's still hard for me to keep a lid on it. My man is the only one who can really get me to calm down when I'm like that, and this whole thing made me miss him that much more.
We finally got working Friday afternoon but were soon stricken with issue after issue. First, they didn't order enough bolts. That took several hours to figure out a work-around and to make sure we'd get the right ones before our schedule date. Then we had issues with a pair of Insulators who should never have been allowed back on the job as they had a few months previous been run off the site for getting a little too friendly with each other at work, if you catch my meaning. Also, they just generally have a bad attitude. I've never seen my site manager that stressed out. I think he swore more this weekend than the entire rest of the time I've known him combined. Then the only guy tall enough to reach the stupid thing without a scaffold didn't show up to work Sunday (yeah, we worked ALL weekend). So we wasted another couple hours getting a scaffold built. Then the screws weren't long enough and since it was Sunday we couldn't get new ones from anywhere. It seriously felt like we were never going to get done. In the end we finished only a day behind schedule, which isn't too bad when you think that we weren't even supposed to start 'til like the second week in March.
Thus ended my first full week of walk-downs (physically exhausting) and my first install (emotionally exhausting). Hopefully Rocky and I can become a walk-down dream team and pound out mark-ups fast enough to keep the wolves off our backs. At least we have a little breathing room before the next install, so I can focus on one thing at a time for a bit. Although my partner, who I was supposedly only covering for while she was out on maternity leave, is leaving as soon as she has surgery, probably by the end of March. If the PTB don't get me more support soon, we are all going to hell in a hand basket and it is NOT going to be pretty!
