Ah!!! Another Furlough Day!!! I am really getting used to my unpaid days off from my day job! The weather is beautiful. I have the house to myself, and once I get done with this post, I will devote my day to beading since I have the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival coming up on Oct. 17-18. I need to make pumpkin, witch and ghoul earrings. What could be more fun!! Oh, and yes I will take a “break” to cook something really nice for dinner (Pork and Fennel Ragout braised in red wine with mashed potatoes and celeric)
This Saturday and Sunday I will be visiting my daughter Jasmine where she is working on a Reservation. They will be having a pow-wow there. I hope to take some great photos, especially of the kids.
So in this spirit of really doing nothing…and since it is a Furlough Friday, the day when I post about my day job, my post will be about “spinning wheels”.
The complaints we get are really funny (once we get done being aggravated by them). We have to take them at face value, despite our suspicions. We have to believe or at least give credence to the allegations, and go and check them out.
I was once assigned a complaint that on paper sounded really serious. It alleged all sorts of hazardous conditions, and for the type of industry the complainant claimed he was working for usually does has several problems.
I saddled up my trusty(?) government vehicle, took some equipment with me and drove about an hour and a half to the address given on the complaint. Once I was there, I was bewildered. Hmmm….yes, I was in the right town, the right street, and the sign had the correct number. There were two business, neither of which had the right name, neither of which had a name that even pointed to the right type of industry I was looking for.
The parking lot was empty except for one car. Not a good sign. Standing there dumbfounded, and wondering what to do, I was about to knock on one of the doors when a lady came out.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Uh…yes, I am looking for XYZ Company.”
“Oh…yes”, she replied, “they moved away two years ago!”
TWO years ago?? This complaint was only 1 week old. Hmm… wonder how the complainant shows up for work!! I wonder if he noticed that he no longer gets paid.
There are more times than not when we are given only the cross roads of a field when we receive a complaint about field workers. Often we will find out that the roads do not cross, but run parallel to each other. Sometimes we are given incorrect business names. Other times, even if we go out immediately on an agricultural complaint, there is no one there. Crops are long harvested, employees are long gone.
In going to check out a complaint, we never know what we will find. Sometimes we find nothing at all. But as they say, it all pays the same. Whether the complaint results in a nice drive in the country, or finding a crappy place wrought with hazards we get the same pay. Sometimes it is a nice “break” to be assigned a nice drive.
So…with my day off….I will go chase my beads which is much more fun than chasing windmills during my day job!!
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