Boomer Blog #12 Back to Work, or the Grass is Sometimes Greener

I don’t recall if I told you, but I was called back to my old job about a month or so ago. It has been an interesting couple of weeks.

First of all, it was supposed to be temporary.

I am the only person in my department that was laid off, so it was an almost certainty that when someone decided to retire I would be the one to replace them. So, when one of my colleagues went out for foot surgery, I was called in to replace her until she recovered.

I was laid off for over a year. During that time I kept afloat financially by working a part time job at a local grocery store and by working as a substitute worker in another department of the same factory that let me go. I didn’t care much for either position. The money was barely acceptable. I managed to pay what I was obligated to pay, but I had no wiggle room at all, so when I was brought back full-time, even on a temporary basis, I was overjoyed.

 Then one of my coworkers managed to get a job that he had been trying to get for a long time. Yeah for him and yippee for me! He got his dream job and I get to stay permanently. I am being reminded now of all the things that I hated about this job, but you know what? I am still overjoyed for all the good in it. I am getting a reasonably good wage, and I work with a crew of people who are absolutely wonderful (at least, out side of work if not always). When someone complains to me about the job, I still tell them that at least I am glad to have work. So many people still don’t, and I don’t want to be one of them.

The next thing that happened was that two other people went on sick leave. There are only seven people in my whole department, and one of them is an administrative person that very seldom works on the floor with us. Its means that the admin person will have to work with us almost every day, and we all will have to work like two or three people. There will be overtime like crazy for a few weeks, then the job will shut down for two weeks like it often does in July. So we will be rolling in dough, exhausted and then given a chance to relax for a while.

Life is a roller coaster, and I am hanging on tight screaming “AAAaaaaahhhh!” at the top of my lungs.

I am taking classes and working on writing stuff, just in case the job goes down again. But, if anybody asks me, I am still so happy to have my job back. I mean it.