I did indeed help on the paperwork to make this happen. I'm part of a group that writes and edits reports that are used to track waste like this from cradle to grave. It's challenging work, but I certainly enjoy it. Well, parts of it. Some of it bears the ickiness of any job, but you put up with a lot for a paycheck.
This part, about 45 minutes in, piqued my interest. They mention "Go[ing] to your GNC checklist, the pink pages," for one of their emergency power procedures.
In my early days at the RWMC, I was the writer in charge of the emergency alarm response procedures. When they were revised and placed in the Operations binders, they were indeed printed on pink paper. It's been a good decade since I was in Operations space out there, so I have no idea if that's still the practice there. But it would be interesting to know. Maybe I should put in for a transfer back out there.
I got a real *bad* temper.
Aside from the poor laid-off co-worker, looking back at this time I consider them the halcyon days in my current job.
I'd built up enough experience and credibility among management both there and in town to be trusted as the sole tech writer, taking the Accelerated Retrieval Project through, I believe, four more ARP iterations. Three of them, as I recall, totally on my own.
Were the documents perfect? No. They're not perfect now. But they were good enough to get the job done, and that was a good feeling.
Some days were hectic, with document changes needed almost immediately, often within hours, sometimes before the end of the day.
I didn't complain. I just did the work because I enjoyed my co-workers, the relative freedom from oversight, and the general feeling that what I was doing was making a contribution to a big project.
Those feelings have faded over time.
I'm trying to learn new things.
But the trust has eroded a bit. As has the git'r done attitude.
In fact, I await castigation on Monday for a job poorly done in which I was poorly trained and not given much time to practice. Not that the latter two will matter all that much.
I have co-workers from the better days who have moved on, who have retired. Whenever I interact with them, this is what I feel:
That's at least ten years down the road, depending on the economy and so many other factors it makes my lips numb just thinking about it.
A friend says he can work at any job for about ten years, but after that it gets harder. I've been at this job for in the neighborhood of 16 years. The "getting harder" part is here in spades.
I spent a good portion of my day making a document worse because the template's set up that way.
I've also - slowly - been developing a template for another type of document. I'm purposely leaving it as open on headings and format as possible, so we don't end up in a situation like the one I find myself in now.
Templates are good. They help us to remember to include what needs to be there. But while some documents are template-friendly in their rigidity, others not so much. We need more guidelines than rules.
And while the template I'm working with isn't as sinister as the Black Pearl, it's still going to be a jolly time this Monday explaining to my customer why things have changed so. Which means in making the change I have to be very, very precise. Which is going to take time. Which will upset the customer. But my job often entails listing to the one who makes the scariest threat on a given day, so that's the way things go.
I still very much like this job, enough I've encouraged Michelle to apply for a similar position that just opened up. It's amazing what we'll put up with to keep a roof over our heads. I hope she gets the job. Then we can commiserate more over things like templates.
On the heels of this, another bombshell. As of July 31, teleworking at the IEC will be no more.
I've always known full-time telework was a privilege, not a guarantee. But when Trump called for federal workers to get back to the office earlier this year, I figured our time was numbered, though we work for a contractor, not the feds themselves.
Last week, the company announced that hybrid teleworking situations would end this summer, meaning those who worked sometimes at home and sometimes in the office were to return to the office. Those who were on full-time telework wouldn't be affected by the policy.
But in a staff meeting today we were told full-time telework would end. I understand it's because those who were on the hybrid telework situation felt targeted and that it was "unfair" for their opportunity to end while others would be able to continue.
It came down to a group of adults complaining that if they couldn't have it, nobody should have it.
And again, I get it -- work from home was never a long-term guarantee. But still, why mess up something for someone else just because your situation has changed? That seems pretty juvenile to me.
No matter. At least where I'm assigned I won't have to go back out to the site, but will work in town. And it means I'll get my second desk back in the study. It kind of removes part of the need for the home network I was putting together, and I may still do that, particularly since I've already bought the tools and other materials I need to put it together.
This has the potential to be a long week.
Week before curtailment -- the traditional Idaho National Laboratory mandatory work break between Christmas and New Years -- is bound to be slow. We might have a little paperwork cleanup to perform, but there's going to be a lot of general cleanup going on this week as any starts to new projects will be put on hold and current projects will gradually begin to be understaffed as people take off early for the holidays.
My plan is this: I'll work this week, and the following Monday. That Monday will be extremely dead. Then the Thursday after New Years.
Plans for the holiday include making progress on a few home projects, including the basement bathroom, finishing the hole around the water shutoff valve, and some work on our home network, including (I hope) the installation of additional lines tied to the router with an ethernet switch.
That's going to mean tile on the floor in the bathroom, poking some holes in the walls for ethernet cable, and hopefully getting everything tied together before I have to be back to work in January.
I have had an interesting week.
Got handed two rather complicated and convoluted document revision jobs at work.
Spent a lot more time than I wanted grading papers after the day job and am still behind in my teaching work.
I'll spend this evening helping to paint an enormous pile of pumpkins for a city pumpkin display that has to be ready on Saturday and has a good chance of being snowed on.
But I do have some itty-bitty tomatoes growing in my window well, so that kind of takes the curse off it.
My boss said she couldn't tell if I was OK with the second assignment -- as my response to her request to do the work was just an emailed "OK."
I should have displayed more gusto, I guess, but I assured her I was certainly okay with the work and got it out for review pretty quickly.
That helped me recall the latter third of my career supporting the Accelerated Retrieval Project at the Radioactive Waste Management Complex. Back then we were siloed as writers, supporting individual projects. When I started there I was on a team of five writers. We got the RWMC through several startups of different waste management facilities, each time creating and revising about a hundred documents each time. The last third of my time at the RWMC I was the sole writer, and saw two iterations through without outside help.
I mean, it was stressful times, but I had a lot of support and we got through it, to the point now that work is done and the facilities are being dismantled and the procedures inactivated. So to be handed two emergency procedures in the same day wasn't all that bad, though it's been awhile.
Not trying to brag here, it's just how things were. I was the writer, we had to get things done, and by golly we got them done as a team. Same game today. Some days it felt more like Police Squad! than Emergency! and in a way I miss those days. I worked with a lot of good people. The people I work with now I don't get to know as well, partially because we're not siloed anymore and support all sorts of projects, but mostly because I work from home. The isolation is a bit odd, but the benefits of work from home still outweigh the disadvantages.
Spring has sprung. The weed and feed I've put out on the grass seems to be doing wonders. And we're in Week Three of filling in for the boss and for the most part, things are going fine.
I'm sure I'm doing things wrong; that's inevitable. But I like to think I'm doing a lot of things right. I've talked this over with Ross, the other guy who's taking on some of the responsibilities, and we both agree what struggles we're having are not from a lack of information, but from a lack of experience. It's like we're working on a fantasic jigsaw puzzle, trying to put all the pieces together.
So it's going all right. We'll see what happens when next week rolls around, but I anticipate more successes than failures. That feels good.
So though there's a lot of stress still around, mentally I'm doing better than I probably have the right to be doing. I've asked God for a lot of help, and I have received a lot of help. My family's been really supportive as well, and you can't ask for more than that.
One concern: I keep getting occasional numbness in my right arm. I'm not exactly sure what's causing it, but I have to be careful how I position things. I suspect it's some kind of carpal tunnel syndrome, as I have been at my desk a lot.
I went to bed last night having stress dreams about things going wrong at work. As I mentioned earlier, I'm temporarily taking on new duties while our boss is on a well-earned vacation (proper level of sucking up achieved).
Before I went to bed, I asked God in my prayers to help ease that stress. I also asked my students and family to pray for me to help ease the burden of these next few weeks. I testify that prayers work.
The dreams turned into dreams of me accomplishing the work using what I've learned in the past few weeks. That was a nice way to start the week.
