Day Sixty Four: Schedule

I am a damn good scheduler.

This kind of goes back to my conversation about planning. I’ve always been good about scheduling not only my own life but also other events in order to make sure that they run according to the path of least resistance. Any party planner will tell you that no schedule is perfect and that is nearly impossible to make an event that runs seamlessly, but I have gotten pretty damn close.

This gift has recently become very integral to my life because I am once again doing the schedule at my shop. Creating a schedule that fits the needs of not only the company and the owners but also of the employees is never easy. Some people want more hours, some people can’t work mornings, etc, etc, etc.

I go back again to the story of the Weasel. You’ll remember this asshole from an earlier conversation about how I adhere to an internal moral compass. The Weasel was in charge of our schedule for a short time before he left. The little shit-for-brains piece of dog poop decided that since he made the schedule, he got to take all the good shifts. So, Monday through Friday he took the opening shifts, even though there are three people other than him who could have opened the shop. Just to complete the holy hell of disorganization, he refused to work weekends because, and I quote, “that was his time.” Finally, he made the great error of all scheduling errors and didn’t listen to his employees. I need Tuesdays off for many reasons, and he made me work every Tuesday. When I emailed him about it, his defense was “I didn’t make you work every Tuesday, just the next three weeks.” (The schedule only goes out three weeks.) When I told him I was completely unable to work Tuesdays, he took the shift away and gave it to someone else without replacing my shift, effectively knocking me down to two shifts, less than ten hours or work, a week.

I almost killed him.

Almost.

So, the moral of the story is, I’m good at scheduling. I do the schedule now at work and I like to think everyone is pretty happy. I try to give everyone the days off that they asked for and I try my best to work around personal schedules and make it pretty even between opening and closing for everybody.

So far, so good.

Challenge to my Readers:

Next time the opportunity comes up, be the person in charge of the schedule. Take the reins for the family reunion, for the staff meeting, for the sports season. See if you’re any good at it. If you aren’t, figure out a way to improve.

Google docs is a start.