Working man's blues

So for a time i had and was very appreciative of what has become to be known as the golden ticket. In these dark times, this crappy economy....a job for the winter. the goal with most construction jobs is to make it through the winter when things are slow as all get out and then in spring people start building stuff and like the trees, the cycle begins anew. I had it in my hands and it was snatched away.

the job was rather high profile, gigantic building in downtown Lansing known formerly as the Ottawa street power station. 9 stories of Art Deco goodness. A guy died there via falling those 9 stories down an open elevator shaft, so in addition to the increased hubbub of being a classic fixture in the Lansing city skyline, they also scrutinize pretty much every aspect of construction. my employer was set to do all of the supply power which more or less consists of giant conduits and large wires to feed the electrical panels. another Lansing contractor got the stuff between the electrical panels and the plugs and switches. we'd have liked to get it all, but that's how things go. part of them scrutinizing every aspect of construction was the enforcement of affirmative action. no mind you a lot of this will come across sounding bitter or racist, so i will try to be as fair and rational as i can. I apologize for any of that. it wasn't my company's policy that ousted me but rather that of the christman company

affirmative action for those of you who don't know (mostly because i know one person who had never heard of Charles Manson) stands up for the minorities to ensure that places maintain fair and ethical work practices and such. imagine wal mart hiring all white people...wouldn't be very good, then lawsuits and such. here's how it goes down for me. my employer to be compliant with this policy had subcontracted out some work to another minority owned contractor (whom I had worked for in the past) to do some of the outside the building work. laying about 20,000 feet of 4 inch conduit in the ground. a rack of 10 pipes that exit the building and run for about 200 feet outside the building, after the pipes were in it gets encased in concrete and then later wire gets pulled through it, and we hook up panels and transformers and so on.

the time came and we said , hey, next week you need to get this done. he says hey, I wont be able to do it, sorry..... this is a double edged sword in a way and I am sure you are figuring how this will end up. good news is, instead of essentially hiring someone to do some serious gravy (very easy) work we do it ourselves and eliminate the cost of his overhead and his employees whom may have had limited experience in such matters. the downside of it is that we had 4 white guys working on a 9 story office building that had about 50 construction workers on it.

we got that whole rack in in less than 2 days. I got the boot a couple days later. not really the boot....maybe the sock, I got switched to a different job, but i lost my golden ticket. they actually got rid of 2 guys on that job, and brought in a minority worker, but he's a good guy, good worker and i like him so i am happy for that.

so i did a bit of bouncing around helping other jobs wrap up for a bit, which is a horridly bad sign at the end of summer...the idea is to have a home to go through the winter. and eventually I ended up at sparrow hospital. there are a lot of politics and rules at sparrow. the jobs go slower (which i don't prefer, i like things to be a bit faster paced) Things are mired down in procedures. a lot of the work I have to wear a full set of scrubs and make extra efforts to avoid dust. and did I mention It is third shift. so for 5 days my wife and I sleep separate. two days she has night school so if i want sleep I have to sleep from when i get home till when Alex gets home from school. that way i watch the kids while she is gone. then there are two days where she has morning school and we already had a routine there since i was usually working, Noah is at daycare and she goes to school so i can do things around here and sleep before work. (the idea is to maintain the same rhythm as before the shift change, wake up go to work, get home stay awake for a bit and then go to bed for 8 hours in time to get up for work)

so i cant ever establish a sleeping schedule and now the politics and procedures of sparrow have things bogged down. we are approaching a time where there might not be enough work for 2 guys for a bit. we are looking at shortened work weeks to keep us going, 32 hours and possibly 24 hours. the goal here is to fare better than unemployment and still have our health insurance and benefits paid. guys actually sit down and figure this shit out. so what do I do? I am a skilled electrician that works hard (evidenced by still having a job at least in these times) but even that is looking bleak. right now I am at a bit of a crossroads. well maybe I am on a road and i see a sign that says future next three exits? not really a good analogy for this. anyway for the last decade I have done electrical work. I am nearing mid 30. things are crap everywhere for work. I'm really contemplating a change here, perhaps something that is a little less dependent on the weather. I always kind of felt sorry for the lab rats of society who go to the same place and do basically the same thing for like 30 years but they do it for 30 years. i doubt they worry about working through the winter. sure they have cutbacks and layoffs but i would really hope that it is not a yearly ritual. right now i get to thinking that it would be nice to have something to fall back on, even if its for a year or more till things pick up. no matter how you slice it I am screwed. It'll be a bleak winter for me. good news is I fixed my ipod, replaced the screen and batter for less than $20, bad news is nobody reads this blog anyway