Log 7: Break Time
Now that my black eye has mostly healed, I’ve had time to notice the appearance of numerous other injuries on my body. My arms and legs are covered in small cuts, scrapes, and bruises, most of which I don’t recall getting.
Today my Uncle Graeme is in Chicago, which means that there’s not really anyone to order me around and continuously give me tasks to complete. Which means I have no idea what to do. I basically just go around asking people if I can help them until someone lets me do something. This morning, first I went to see Tom in graphics, but he had nothing for me. Then I checked in with my Uncle Preston, and he was all set too. At that point, I’m thinking, Um, should I just clock out and go home? But then I went to find Chris in the saw room, and he asked me to route the edges of 600 small blocks of pine one at a time. This is an ideal job for me: time-consuming, headphone-friendly, and hard to mess up.
A couple hours into the block cutting, I was interrupted by Chris telling me it was break time. I haven’t really figured out how the breaks are interspersed throughout the day. This is probably because usually, no one thinks to tell me when it's break time, so I just keep working right through them. But not this time. I tentatively followed Chris outside to the loading docks, where most of the guys who work on the main warehouse floor were hanging out and smoking. I don’t think they are used to the presence of a nineteen-year-old girl at their breaks, but they welcomed me, nonetheless. After fifteen minutes, it was back to the blocks.
By the time I was finished routing blocks, it was lunchtime. In the break room, Chris, Bob, and I started chatting about TV shows we would recommend. I tried to interest the two of them in starting Love Island, but was met with resistance. Apparently commercials for the US version play on the break room TV daily, and as a result, they’ve already formed a negative opinion of the show.
I then tried to explain the cultural differences between the UK and US versions of the show, as well as the entertainment value British accents provide, but was unsuccessful in my efforts. As we ate, I explained to the guys that I was taking the coming year off from college, so I’d be around the office for quite a while. Chris looked a little taken aback. “What are you going to do here?” he wondered. I wish I knew, Chris.
Highlight: I discovered that while I have been spending hours on end painstakingly sweeping up the saw room for the past 2 weeks, there is actually a high power vacuum for that job. It has been sitting next to the brooms this whole time.
