Work, Exhaustion and the Flour Ninjas

It's been a crazy couple of weeks over here in NY.  I officially started my new job at the bakery on August 18th and have been working like a madwoman ever since.  That first week I only worked two days, one with the bread bakers and one with the pastry team because I was still finishing out my final 2 weeks at the veterinarians office.  However, last week I officially started full-time on the 25th and have worked every day since.  This doesn't sound so bad except that weeks at the bakery are scheduled from Monday through Sunday.  So, since I started on Wednesday, to work a full week I worked every day through Sunday = 5 days.  Then on Friday they put up the schedule for the next week (starting today) and I'm working Monday through Wednesday with Thursday & Friday off, and then again on Saturday and Sunday.  That doesn't sound too bad until you realize it means that you're working 8 days in a row, and friends let me tell you, I am exhausted!!!  I'm still getting used to how physically intensive this job is and I'll be starting day 6 in a row tonight.  My whole body is sore, plus flour has now become like sand after you leave the beach - it somehow gets everywhere, and even when you think you've cleaned yourself off completely and changed clothes - there's still flour!  I'll wear one outfit on my way to the bakery, change into my work clothes, come back to change after working my shift and somehow the clothes I wore on my way into work will already have flour on them.  I think flour ninjas break into my locker at work while I'm downstairs just to smear flour on everything.  I'm not crazy - I will bet $5 and a loaf of sourdough bread that there are flour ninjas....oh man, I think I am going crazy *sigh*

So yes, I started out almost 2 weeks ago and everything went fairly well.  Like I said, it's really labor intensive work, but I think I'm managing it alright so far.  After all, I haven't cried OR thrown up so far from the stress...I know you're impressed, you don't have to say anything, I just know.  Of course this being me, my first day couldn't go off completely without a hitch.  For whatever reason, they couldn't assign me a locker on my first day, so I had to put my bag on top of the lockers.  I've since switched to carrying an old NYSC backpack, but that first day I was so nervous that I'd forgotten to switch all of my stuff out of my regular purse.  So I go about my work shift and get told I can clock out, only to find that when someone else had opened their locker, my purse strap had fallen over the side and either they hadn't noticed or didn't care, because they closed their locker door on the strap and lo-and-behold, I couldn't get my purse out!  I was so embarrassed having to go back downstairs to tell my supervisor that I couldn't leave because my purse was stuck in someone else's locker.  Three other people tried to yank it loose and finally one of the other guys came in wielding a gigantic pair of bolt-cutters, said, "to hell with this!" and cut the person's lock off!  They all assured me that it wasn't my fault, plus the company has extra locks so it all works out in the end.  It was just ridiculous to me that my good first day could be taken down by my damn purse strap.

I'm still having trouble adjusting to my new schedule.  It's a lot harder than I expected to get used to going to work at the end of my day as opposed to the beginning.  I'm so used to waking up, getting ready and even if I'm not totally with it yet, heading off to work and being ready to go by the time I get there and taking care of my own stuff later when I finally get home.  Now I have to start organizing my own day better so that I can get up, try and be productive at home in the morning because I don't leave for work until about 3pm.  I'm also trying to force myself to go to sleep as soon as I get home (around 1:15am), but this is a lot harder than you might think.  Even though I might be physically worn out from work, my brain is still whizzing and it takes me a good hour to relax, calm down and be ready for bed.  This also makes it a lot harder on Dave and I, because when I'm working so many days in a row, we don't really see each other at all except for when he wakes me up to say goodbye in the morning before he leaves for work, or if he manages to stay awake long enough to see me come home at the end of my shift.  We've been able to see each other a little more over the weekend since he doesn't have work, but since my body's still adjusting to the amount of work I'm doing, I wound up sleeping through most of the morning.  I'm very lucky that he's so supportive though, and I know he definitely understands that my schedule's going to be pretty wonky for a while, but it's still really hard, and I miss him a lot.  I'm hoping that after the high holidays are over that I won't be working for more than 5 days in a row at a time, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

On a more amusing note, I forgot how much fun it was to people-watch on the subways.  It's been so long since I've ridden the train enough to have a monthly pass, but now that I do, I get to see a lot more of the other commuters.  I'm sure I'm no site to behold at the end of a long shift, but some of this stuff is just too funny.  I saw a guy on my way into the city wearing an ankle monitoring bracelet, riding the train with his girlfriend (she could do better) and some hipster who, at 1 o'clock in the morning was doing nothing but playing some game on his iphone and every 30 seconds adjusting a different piece of his hair to ensure that it was strategically and deliberately messy - get a comb you idiot!

Oh!  I almost forgot, I have a request for all of my lovely blog readers.  Send me bandannas!  I quickly realized that wearing baseball caps at work was kind of uncomfortable for me, plus, every time I went to wipe flour off of my face (damn flour!) I just got it all over the brim of my hat.  Then I noticed that most of the girls wore bandannas - genius!  The only problem being that I didn't think I had any.  I managed to find one, that I'm pretty sure was part of a pirate-themed birthday present from my friend Erica from several years ago, but it's the only one I have.  So if you would feel so inclined to send me bandannas, I will wear them with pride.

Cute, no?

And, I save the best for last.  Some of you may have already heard, but I had my exit interview at school a couple of weeks ago, and even though our official graduation ceremony isn't until November, I got my diploma/certificate already.  What's so exciting about that?  Well, as it turns out, my good pal Valerie and I will be sharing co-valedictorian honors for our class!  It's so surreal to me, I've never gotten top grades in anything before, but I guess I finally found out what I'm good at, which is feeding all of you!