I am so very tired

Tonight is my second night of three in a row. All my machines are running good. I have no orders coming off. No tools need to be changed. I can't stand nights like this. It's hard enough the stay awake working these hours as it is but when it's totally dead makes it even worse. I didn't get much sleep today because of the Tuckerman needing attention so I am hurting.

If I had more PTO hours I would leave.

Last night I was so busy that I could barely catch my breath and I am not too fond of those nights either but it sure does beat night like this.

I hope things get a little more busy for you but not too much. :)

Hopefully things got a little busier for you. Today you can catch up on your sleep.

Hahahaha catch up on my sleep. That's a good one. Even with the hubby home all the pups want to be with me. I managed to get around 4 1/2 hours of sleep.

I have 3 machines that will need new orders on them tonight and hopefully I'll have some tool changes to go with them but its going to be another long hard night again.

I came very close to falling asleep last night. I was shaking, that is how tired I was. I even drank a cup of coffee before leaving so I could drive home. I tried getting the hubby up so he could be up for the 90 minutes of puppy play time that I deal with in the mornings but he wouldn't help me out. Nice, huh?

Sorry you only got 4.5 hours sleep and your hubby wouldn't help out with the pups. Do you give them more attention than your husband does? If so, that is why they want you, plus you are probably with them more than him. They're are like having kids around got to give them attention.

All I can suggest is drink lots of coffee to stay awake tonight. Maybe you will be surprised when you go in and there will be just enough to keep you busy so the night isn't so long.

Well here I am sitting in the parking lot. I honestly don't know if I can make through the whole night, safely.

I think the pups favor me because I give them the love that a mother would give to real children. I know things will get better as Tucker ages but I don't want him to grow up. He's just a crazy little fellow.

I got them a small plastic pool and if, by chance, I feel okay when I get home at 6 tomorrow morning, we are going to get really wet!

What type of work do you do? I would never make working in the evening/night these days. Did it while in college and it was tough.

I'm a machinist. I set up and operate 7 CNC lathes that make phaco tips for eye surgery.

I figured you were giving them most of the attention and spoiling them lol
Well Tucker is a real cutie, don't blame you for not wanting him to grow up. Your right as he gets older he will calm down, but that could take a couple of years.
With the heat we have been having I think you will enjoy the kids pool as much as the pups. Lol

Tucker is such a good puppy....... When he's asleep. Bwahahahahahaha

I'm definitely sitting in that tiny pool tomorrow.

To keep myself awake I am messing with a few of the guys. I'm making them fail their parts so they have to start their inspections over and I'm making my work take a long time. I still have one maching coming off at 3 am and that will give me 30 of something to do. Until then, the guys better look out.

LOL your bad, messing with those guys. LOL

Oh I had fun. When we do a first piece set up inspection, it's very detailed and it takes over 5 minutes to do one so when you are almost finished and I press a button and enter it there's a whole process that you have to do to explain why the piece failed plus you have to redo it from the beginning so its a royal pain.

The games began when the one guy squirted me with the alcohol bottle, we have battles with this stuff a lot but it leads to other mischief. We are the only crew out of four crews that mess around and laugh and carry on little children. The supervisor doesn't know the games we pull on each other but he does hear us laughing a lot and we are his favorite crew. He oversees a few other departments too and we have no issues with each other so he doesn't have to babysit us and take care of stupid little battles. He has personally thanked me for helping the moral of our crew. He told me that he really likes how we all interact with one another and from what I understand I brought a lot of that with me when I came onto the crew.

I did bid on a different department two nights ago and I'm sure he'll be upset when he sees that. I doubt I'll get the position but it doesn't hurt to try. If I do get it I will be going back to a normal second shift (2-10) job. That's my favorite shift but if I do get it I'm going to have to hire someone to come over and tend the pups for me in between me leaving and the hubby coming home. There will be too many hours in between for Tucker to be locked up in the house.

Interesting you are a machinist. My Dad and God Father both owned machine shops. I have been sat in front of a lathe to watch it til it was done - boring.

Some jobs are boring but when you have 7 machines that run parts as fast as these machines do it can be a real headache sometimes. I wish I was back in a normal machine shop so I could run different parts because making the same stuff over and over again does get tedious sometimes. There's a lot of trouble shooting some nights but if you have more then one machin with problems and end of orders or change overs (that means a different style of phaco tips) it can be very overwhelming.

You should see the tooling I work with. They are so tiny and some of the tolerances are very very small.

Google "phaco tips" and you can see what I make

Good luck on getting the second shift job. I think it makes for a nicer work place if everyone gets along and can kid around like that. Maybe if you get on second shift you can bring fun to that shift.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by wobblypops

Some jobs are boring but when you have 7 machines that run parts as fast as these machines do it can be a real headache sometimes. I wish I was back in a normal machine shop so I could run different parts because making the same stuff over and over again does get tedious sometimes. There's a lot of trouble shooting some nights but if you have more then one machin with problems and end of orders or change overs (that means a different style of phaco tips) it can be very overwhelming.

You should see the tooling I work with. They are so tiny and some of the tolerances are very very small.

Google "phaco tips" and you can see what I make

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Wow very small. I don't think their smallest lathe would even do those. Hope you are able to get the other shift. My Dad's shop had 4 lathes and he would have 2 or 3 running at once - which was why I got to sit and "watch" it for him. Just when it got to the end we would back the tool back and put it in neutral and yell for him.

Oh, it sounds like you we're watching a manual lathe that was put on an automatic feed. I was never too good at the manual mills and lathes. Basically I am just a glorified button pusher where I am at now but the benefits are good and so is the pay.

By working that 12 hour shift I work 78 days a year less then a normal five day a week schedule so if you take in account that I travel an hour each way it helps with the gas and wear and tear on the cars plus I do like having the days off during the week like I do. I like being home alone but they changed our work nights.

Here is our old 2 week schedule: work Monday, Tuesday Friday, Saturday Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday.

Now our new schedule is work Monday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Sunday.

The new schedule is the reason I want out of the dept. I either get off at 5 AM on Sunday morning or I go in 5 PM Sunday night so now I no longer have a full weekend off. It use to work out that I had 52 days off during the weekend to be with the hubby but now it's down to 26 weekend days and I don't like that at all especially during the summer months when we like to go to the camper.

One big thing ill lose if I get this other job is .75 and hour plus an extra PTO day each quarter and a few extra paid hours each quarter. Our department and my shift is the only one who gets the PTO perks because its hard to find anyone to work those hours and now they made it even harder to fill the night shift by changing our work nights. Plus the new job I will be in a corner all by myself with no one around me. There's a few good points and bad points about that but as long as I have my iPod I think i'll be okay with it.

I do CNC machining also, and to run 7 machines at a time is ALOT! Especially if you're dealing with small parts, that's the faster the machines run.

Cool! It sounds like both of us gets pushed to the limits at our jobs. What do you make?

I wish I could go into more details about the job itself but we aren't allowed to invade we end up sharing secrets. I will at this though..... Working with all that cutting oil sucks especially when you're sweating and there's around 50 lathes all running at the same time. It's supposed to be air conditioned but our dept is always the hottest.

We make bearings for windmills and military helicopters. I hear ya on the coolant makes you smell too.

I did rocket nozzles out of graphite years ago and other military stuff. I don't know what was worse, the dirty graphite or the stinky cutting oil.

I'd say graphite without a doubt!

Yeah graphite was very dirty. I use to come home looking like a coal miner. They didn't have a shower for me because I was the first and only female that ever worked for that company but with close to 50 lathes running with lots of hoses on each tool I get really slimey. After a shower I was cleaned when it was graphite but I always smell the cutting oil on me. I really stink when I use my friend's pool. The chlorine really bring the oil smell out for some reason

It is funny about that cutting oil. You never forget that smell. I had to go to one of our customers to pick up a check. When I walked in his shop it was like walking back in time. The smell of cutting oil permeated the place. If I remember it smells since it has sulfer in it.

I didn't know there is sulfer in that stuff. I ought to look at the MSDS sheet. I know it tends to burn my skin. By the end of the shift my arms are red but I think part on the reason is because its a little on the hot side. Not hot hot but its a little past warm, if that makes sense.

I have to store all my work clothes away from my good clothes because the smell never comes out.

See if you can find some Odoban I bet that would get the smell out of your clothes. I bought the Original scent years ago and I have used it on things to get odors out and it worked great. I was given some crochet or knitted blankets that had been in a house with lots of cigarette smoke and dogs. Just washing them didn't help, I soaked them in the washer with water and odoban then let them go through a wash and rinse cycle, then ran them through a again with detergent as a just in case and it worked great. http://www.odoban.com/

I would try that stuff but it would be a waste of money because I'd end up stinking of cutting 5 minutes after I start my job. At least we all smell that way at work!

Wow, I guess it would be a waste if you start smelling like that, that fast.

We have moisture collectors on eachachine but its just way too many lathes running at the same time. In after of minutes we are oily and stinky. When we have to reach inside to do tool changes and whatnot we come out of the machines dripping in the oil, it's that bad. We all have towels with us and go through many wipe towels a night.

Yuck, I would hate that, but I'm sure you don't exactly like it either.

It's not the highlight of my night especially when you're sweaty to begin with. An 8 hour shift would be decent but 12 hours totally sucks. Oh well, what is a person to do?

I'm already all sweaty and ill be going in soon. This is the killer week that I have every other week. Out of 7 days I only have 2 days off.

Hopefully your week will speed by and you won't be bored.