Drill for Skill

Each week, when the machine produces our work schedule, there is a block reserved on Friday from 6-8am.  This is the time we are to meet and be reminded of the inferior nature of our job performance.   This early morning hellish morsel of time has gone by a few names.  First, it was called "bootcamp." But when The Union (oh yes, we are) caught wind of that, and its punitive connotation, they sent a 6th-grade-reading-level e-mail to someone whose reading capabilities almost match that level.  This is an outrage!  Changes are demanded!  How dare you compare a meeting to a strenuous weekend warrior cardio cross-training routine?!?!  Again, it was the disciplinary overtones of "bootcamp" that ruffled the feathers of our Union representatives.

And so, possibly by those who were also in charge of naming Operation Hi-Liter, the name of our Friday morning meeting was elevated to "Drill for Skill."  This appeased the Union who apparently decided that the "drill" mentioned must neither have been one referencing military exercises nor the tool which bores holes--in this case, into skulls.  

But, it rhymes...so how bad could it be??  It almost sounds fun!

Drill for Skill is scheduled for every Friday because the Union (bless their incompetent hearts) wrote us up a nice contract that demands the schedule be posted one week in advance.  So Cock Bombay cannot, in his hasty anger at 4:30am, plan a meeting for the following day.  Instead, the meeting is always scheduled.  Then the managers can, in their benevolence, send a text on Thursday night (usually around 10:30pm), telling us that the meeting has been canceled.  This poses a dilemma for the soldier worker.   We should technically show up at 6am for two reasons:

1) The schedule was not changed far enough in advance to be identified by the Union as valid.

2) The text message came in on our work cell phones, while none of us were on the clock.  So we should not have seen it until we clocked in again at 6am which, as those of you smarter than the average party involved know, would be too late.

It has crossed my mind to show up at 6am, only to wait outside of locked doors for 2 hours to prove a point.  Yeah, a fleeting thought.  Instead, I occasionally program my phone to send a text message to Cock Bombay at 6:15am:

Hey, where is everybody?!?

This, I believe, is why the Germans invented technology.