The winter of my discontent

Today is the two-year mark on my current job. Outside the Army, that’s the longest I’ve stayed in one position in the last fifteen years. Which makes it a shame that I’m looking for something else I can do … almost, anything else I can do.

The work isn’t that hard, but they keep changing the job. The company itself appears to be battling a loss of business nationwide, which means they keep cutting our hours — not mine, the total hours available to the store itself — which means they have to get by on fewer workers, which means those remaining have to do the same amount of work with fewer hands to carry the load. Several of the imperatives communicated to me operate in contravention to one another: cover my station, take care of the inventory that’s brought to me, carry out my closing duties (three shifts of every five are closing, two are morning), and do it all within the hours allotted me. Some of the things I have to do require me to go away from my station, but that’s not an excuse; some of them, if I can’t leave my station, require me to go over my hours once someone has relieved me. The totality of it makes a frustration that I don’t want to have to continue dealing with.

I’d like to get back into long-haul trucking; I loved being a soldier, but I actually more enjoyed the actual work of being a truck driver. The question is whether I could hold up to it physically now. I’m still fine at this point, but I’m at an age where things could start going downhill with no warning.

It would be nice to just pick a place and stay there. This one could have been it; the pay wasn’t great, but was adequate as long as other things were under control. As it is, I’d rather switch than stay and fight it out.