When work just drives you insane

[Sou]

Work drives me insane every day, and the fact I dont get holiday's off unless they fall on my offdays makes it hard. The airport is always open.

[Caite-chan]

Work drives me insane every day, and the fact I dont get holiday's off unless they fall on my offdays makes it hard. The airport is always open.

Working at Round 1 we are open 365 as well and my day off just happen to fall on Christmas this year (thank god) but I also don't get time and a half for pay.

[Sou]

Working at Round 1 we are open 365 as well and my day off just happen to fall on Christmas this year (thank god) but I also don't get time and a half for pay.

uggghh, that sucks, it sucks anytime people have to work on holidays because other people cant plan ahead. You dont get time and a half for christmas eve though? If not, thats a load of poop. Personally, i feel like holiday pay should be double, to discourage forcing people to stay away from their families.

[Caite-chan]

uggghh, that sucks, it sucks anytime people have to work on holidays because other people cant plan ahead. You dont get time and a half for christmas eve though? If not, thats a load of poop. Personally, i feel like holiday pay should be double, to discourage forcing people to stay away from their families.

We get time and a half for Christmas Eve as long as we close so 7pm to 2:30/3am depending on how long it takes you to close. I honestly think it's stupid to force anyone to work on a holiday. That's a problem as a company you have to deal with. People want to be home with their families. Hell they work with you the rest of the time the least you could do is let them have the holidays off.

[Noblejanobii]

While I personally have never worked for a theme park, I know someone who worked at Carowinds for a while and the stories she has to tell are HILARIOUSLY stressful.

First thing to know about Carowinds for those outside the US or have never visited the park, it's built across the state line between two states, North and South Carolina. They even mark the line in gold paint between the two states and its a huge point of pride in the park for some reason. The main attractions in the park are the large amount of roller coasters, but they also have two water rides, carnival games that give out plushies and other toys, the whole nine yards.

So two stories that stem from this. The first has to do with the state line thing. So, as it turns out, the line being marked all throughout the park is not just for the amusement of guests, it's actually to help fill out the paperwork if someone gets injured. See, South Carolina and North Carolina have very different injury laws when it comes to amusement parks, so depending on which side of the line you are on when you get injured, the employees fill out vastly different paperwork. If I remember correctly, my friend said they always wanted guests to get injured on the North Carolina side because the paperwork isn't as strenuous on that side of the border. This actually connects to the fact that a friend of mine, seven-ish years ago, passed out from dehydration while waiting in line for one of the rides. The two of us were on the North Carolina side of the park, so they had my friend checked out, gave her some water, had her sign something (I was 12 or 13 so I don't really remember), and then sent us on our merry way. According to my friend who worked there at the same time, had the same thing happened on the South Carolina side, there's an extreme likelihood she would have been hooked to an IV and had to be taken to a hospital due to the laws at the time. Crazy stuff.

The second story has to do with those plushies I mentioned earlier. Like most amusement parks, Carowinds has carnival games where you can win prizes. It's actually how I got my giant Shaymin Sky Forme plushie I've posted pictures of here before. Thing is though they have to store those things and lock the doors because there's a large feral cat population in the area. What started as a means to quell the squirrels in the area (which is an entirely different story in it of itself) turned into a lot of cats everywhere. So anyone who knows anything about cats breeding knows cats like to nest before they give birth. So my friend had the unlucky duty of checking the containers where these plushies were stored one morning before Carowinds opened. Apparently, the guy who had closed the container the night before hadn't closed it all the way, because a cat had gotten in, nested, then gave birth. Let's just say it wasn't a great start to my friend's day.

[PV]

We have a ton of cats too actually, we're incredibly creative in naming them. (They always get named after the ride they live closest to, even if the ride is no longer there)

My favourite Animal story has to be the time one of the Monorail drivers accidentally closed their cabin doors with a pheasant in the drivers cabin. By the time they reached the other station, there was a considerable amount of... distressed bird residue that meant they had to take the train off the system for a week to clean properly.

[[Desolate Divine]]

I can't complain about my work. I am incredibly blessed to have my job, even though I am not necessarily fond of the work I end up doing, everything else makes up for it.

I work between two factories (owned by the same people, and are next door to eachother). One produces liquid seaweed, and one produces snail pellets, however the machines don't run very often (snail pellets don't sell as quick as the seaweed, so we run it for a week and make 10-20 tonne, then don't have to run it until we sell a bit of it), so it is mostly used as a workshop for the work cars, trailers, trucks and machines, as well as the bosses personal projects (my boss and his son are obsessed with Landcruisers. There are eight in this factory that they are in the process of fixing up. It is really cool until you need to get something out with the forklift, but there is a big *** engine in the way).

The tasks I do are usually a majority of the following:
-Cleaning brewing tanks. I like this task, as I have a little bluetooth speaker so I can crank some tunes, and it is the sort of task that takes 45 minutes to an hour to do, and is fairly simple and easy to go into autopilot on.
-Cleaning storage tanks (IBCs). I hate this task. Part of it is because the first half of it involves waiting (you put the cleaning chemicals in, then roll the tank onto each side for five to ten minutes to let it do its work) and if there isn't anything else to do, I can either stand there on my phone waiting and risk looking like I am slacking, or be bored off my tits. Luckily, I know where the blind spot with the security cameras is. Granted, as I wrote this, I remembered they just installed another one, which gets rid of the blind spot. But I don't know if this one streams to the monitor in the office like some of the others so I'll have to check, when I am in there next.
-Cleaning pumps. I like this one, especially if there are lots of pumps. Basically I gotta pull them apart, clean them so they're spotless and put them back together. There are two types of pumps. The electric ones, which take about ten minutes each to clean, and the air pumps which are a lot more intricate (you gotta disassemble it down to the very basic pieces, and lubricate it between every use). The sinks and work bench are near the big bluetooth speaker so I hook up my phone and crank tunes. Granted I gotta be careful with that as my bosses don't like hearing swearing in music. Otherwise they're pretty decent.
-Pumping out products. Half the time this is good. Half the time it is bad. See, we need to get 1025L into each tank. However some products are extremely foamy, and it becomes very hard to do that because of all the foam at the top.
-Cleaning the filter-press. Basically, we have this big machine called a filter press, which we use to filter products, and it needs to be cleaned every couple of hours. Whilst I don't mind doing this, I have other jobs I'd rather do.
-Jiggle filtering products. Sometimes when we have big orders, and we need to filter faster than the press can, we use a jiggle siphon through a filter bag. I haven't done a great deal of this.
-Consolidating. When we are short on storage tanks, and we have a bunch of half full ones, we have to go around and mix them together so that we can clean the empty tanks and use them again. I don't mind this, however it's a similar deal to cleaning the storage tanks. A lot of waiting around.
-Putting on brews. This depends on the brew whether I like it. Some brews are easy. Just chuck in the seaweed and potassium hydroxide and the only part about that that I don't like is that the potassium is nasty s***. Some brews get really complicated, with specific amounts of dozens of chemicals.
-Producing snail pellets. Never a dull moment. I don't mind it though. Basically the machines have to keep full to keep running, so you have to constantly be filling them.
-Bottling and bagging. Basically putting the seaweed products into bottles, and the snail pellets into bags and labelling them. I like doing that, because I can listen to music, and am mostly left alone in my own little world.

So yeah, the work is 50/50 whether I like it or not. However:
-I work 9 hour shifts (one hour being break) so I only have to go in once or twice a week to get by.
-My bosses are really relaxed. Our breaks always end up being longer than they are on paper but they don't mind.
-The people I work with are really good. Two of them are mates from church.
-My bosses are both really easygoing and reasonable, nice guys. I don't feel on edge asking for more work, or to leave five minutes early. Even when I wasn't working my best, my boss didn't have a go at me, but instead said "I just want to encourage you to put in a little more." and that was fine. Hell, for our Christmas bonuses, they bought us gifts. I got given a tent and a campstove this year.
-The pay is pretty decent. I am casual and on $24.42 an hour ($18.03USD).

So yeah, even though the work itself isn't glamorous, I enjoy working there for every other reason.