Clutter and Sale Wages

It's been a long time, but it was bound to happen again.  Actually, given the state of the economy these days and how many businesses have fallen in their tracks, I'm surprised it hasn't happened many more times than it has.  What am I talking about?

Phil went to an auction.

This one hit a little closer to home than some do because it was one of our customers:  Seattle Aero.  I don't know any details, and it really doesn't matter.  All I know is, Phil sent Derek and Martimus down the road with the truck and this is what they brought back:

You can never have enough file cabinets when you work in a place that can never have enough paperwork stored in boxes in back rooms.  You can also never have enough very large plastic bins that may come in handy some day.  Of course, you know why Marty is bringing all these down here don't you?  Of course--for me to forklift up to the upstairs auction storage facility.  They also brought back a half dozen homemade workbench things I forgot to get a picture of.  I'm sure they'll show up here in a picture someday though--probably in whatever place they actually get used (if they ever do).
Funny thing:  When they went back on their second trip they brought back mostly a bunch of chairs, and it turns out almost half of them weren't even ours to pick up.  Oops!  Driving the truck to get the stuff was probably the most useful thing Derek has done in months.

This is the time of year when we fall victim to the hourly rate "fire sale" slave labor requirement.  That glorious time when all the employees are required to work 10-hour days for straight pay.  I hate that.  It's like we get a 3-day weekend for each of the two holidays and get punished for it.  This is the first year I've ever seen a specific listing of names though.  I'm sure it's the direct result of placing a computer and printer within reach of Bzzz.  I wonder how many days it took him to type this up:

Last night I ended up staying to 6pm.  As before, I felt I got a lot of work done, but there was no indication by looking at my inbox.  It was unchanged.  It was the first time since I've worked there that I can recall seeing both a 6 o'clock start time and 6 o'clock stop time.

At about 5:30 I was talking to Dave Cogburn when one of his second-shift workers went walking by on his way back to the CNC area.  I don't know his name, but he's an older guy with snow-white hair.  Nice guy.  Anyway, he was carrying his lunch bucket and his coffee thermos back from the lunch room, and with every swing of his arms he was sloshing coffee out of his thermos.  It was obviously not even close to being tight.  He was so oblivious that had Dave not hollered at him he probably would have made it all the way before noticing.  Funny stuff.  Poor guy though--probably ruined his whole evening losing most of his coffee...