When Things Get Back to Normal

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How much of your life can you kid yourself into thinking there is ever going to be anything "normal" about your life?

I'm almost sixty-five years old and I still hear myself telling me, "When things get back to normal, I will walk (or exercise in some way) every day." "I will have time to think about finding and fixing the kinds of food that will help me lose weight." Or, "I will have time to count calories." (It takes MUCH time. I've done it. I know that much.) "I will get into a routine of getting things done at home so that they don't get so piled up" (in out of the way places).

"After inventory" has been my target time for things getting back to normal ever since I started to work.

But it never has happened. Why do I keep deluding myself?

Some how, some way whatever I accomplish is my life is going to have to fit into an unpredictable time schedule.

This week I was scheduled to go into work on Monday at noon. To me, that is totally abnormal. I can't get my head around it. For one thing, it doesn't work for me AT WORK. It doesn't give me enough time to do my order. But, it really doesn't help me out much at home either because it just extends the weekend into later Monday morning. I don't have the mindset to do much.

On Thursday this week, I was scheduled to go in at 7 AM. That is totally out of the ordinary. I've never been scheduled to go in at that time unless it was for inventory or in the extreme cases when I had a huge reset to do that warranted more time before customers arrive... but even with those, being scheduled to go in that early is rare.

And to get off at 5.

Okay.

Ten hours of work.

Actually that it IS a much more reasonable way to schedule me if expectations are that I am to get out all my freight by the end of Thursday without anyone helping me. I finished up the last of my freight around three. From then on I was frequently called to the registers.

Finally, at 20 minutes until five, I put up my closed signed. The CSM asked, "Are you taking a break?"

I said, "No, I'm due to leave here in fifteen minutes and I still have my department to recover."


Now, that wouldn't be such an unexpected question IF we didn't have daily schedules posted on almost EVERY register that shows when we come in, when we go to lunch, when we leave, AND when we are supposed to be called to the registers.

One of my pet peeves is that the CSMs do not read the schedules. They live in a bubble that includes nothing but their own world. Their world is a small one-- albeit important. They are to greet customers and make sure there are cashiers to check them out. BUT, they are given a schedule to use which is supposed to let them know who should be on call to the register and when they can come. They just don't bother look at it. So they'll call for you to come for register duty when you are at lunch, when it's someone else's time to go and THEY ARE NOT UP THERE already, and anytime they get a whim to do it.

Like I say, pet peeve. I suppose one reason it peeves me is because the CSMs for the most part are just standing up there. It's not like they are so busy with WORK that they don't have time to look at the schedule and see what's on it. Most of the time it's because they are too busy talking (in one case) or "just don't get it" (in the other).

Anyway, I got back to my department and hurriedly cleaned it up, called for a manager to walk it and then was trying to tie up a few loose ends and get out of there. I came by the frame shop and an employee asked, "Did you get that call?"

No.

Someone, a male, called for you twice. (I didn't even hear the pages.)

I'm not sure why I didn't hear the pages. Possibly because it was when the manager was walking my department.

She asked, Do you think it was your son?

I said, "If it was he will have called my cell phone". Sure enough, when I checked my cell phone, he had called IT three times in the last fifteen minutes. (I RARELY EVER feel that phone vibrate in my pocket when I'm getting a call.)

It was Tim calling to tell me that the doctor was putting Daxton in the hospital for RSV and could I watch the girls (Felisia and Lexia) and let them spend the night and get Felisia to school Friday morning.

That worked out because I don't have to be at work until 12 today. I will meet them before I go in and deliver Lexia to them. Later today, Felicia's parents will get both girls and take them home with them for the weekend.

Daxton will be in the hospital at least until Monday.

Tomorrow evening I will go to Jeni and Jef's to keep grandkids, so they can go out. I guess I'll spend the night.

So, what I need to do is figure out a way to get things done that I want to happen in my life regardless of the fact that my life is never going to be "normal". Normal for me is no routine at all. From one week to the next, nothing is ever the same.