running the whole show, walang tulugan

[Happy 3rd Anniversary to my favorite Kiwi-Pinoy publication, a true community paper, KABAYAN magazine!  thanks and acknowledgment for the pic above to sensesofcinema.com! ] IN MY late, so-called adult life (so far) I’ve learned to work into the wee hours of the night, with the owls, crickets and bats (and other night creatures), trained myself to get by on less than the usual hours of sleep after shift, and not the least, learned to sleep during the day.  Adjusting to change, the needs of work, and the vagaries of migrant living is a must, as simple as that. But to do all the above, while running the whole show?  It’s something new for me, for the last few months at least. [ It’s also the reason why I’ve hardly been showing up here and sharing your company Precious Reader / kabayan, something which hopefully will be corrected by coming back here more often.] *****          ***** Positives first: there are obvious advantages to working at night.  You work under little supervision, actually none, work at a pace that is your own, and you take as many breaks as you want, within reason. The disadvantages?  If things turn to sh*t, as they sometimes do especially in old factories like the one where I work, you get no help from anyone except your assistant, you rely only on your training (very basic, in my case), your ingenuity and initiative (even less, in my case) and any help you solicit (from the production manager and/or plant engineer, usually quite tired and already asleep) will be viewed with a jaundiced eye and much annoyance, and which will almost surely affect future requests of assistance from you.  Malas mo lang. (Tough luck for you.) I previously didn’t care too much about running the factory when I was the assistant not too long ago, content to running my own machines and taking responsibility for my tasks and chores during my shift.  This didn’t always sit well with the shift supervisor, and now I understood why.  Not only is it the shift assistant’s priority to assist his supervisor the best way he can, it’s also ideal to show interest and initiative in running the factory with the ultimate goal of improving himself. I only learned this when I was already training to be the shift supervisor, and now unless I do it diplomatically and constructively, I can’t very well tell the assistant to show more initiative.  Mahirap sumaway ang pasaway. *****          ***** I’m responsible for all four storeys of the factory, including 11 roller machines on the ground floors, two giant sifters on the 2nd floor (each the size of a small bahay kubo or nipa hut), and a complicated network of spouts and negative pressure suction machines on separate floors.  As a single operator, I can’t monitor them all constantly, so I go between floors and inspect most of them every hour on the hour, throughout the shift.  Hard, but someone has to do it. I also need to do tests on the product at least every two hours, more often when the production is special, or a bit on the high-end side.  Spot-checking, trouble-shooting and measuring of the silos are all also part of the job, each taking a few minutes a time, but taken together comprise a huge slice of my eight-hour shift. *****          ***** I’ve had good shifts, I’ve had bad shifts.  The only difference with my previous position is that the buck stops with me, I’m the one and only gatekeeper between smooth production and chaos.  And also, it’s usually in the dead of night, when I’m torn between trying to (1) find out the source of the problem, (2), decide if I can fix the problem on my own (unlikely) or ask for help from the production manager (usually the latter), and (3) gather myself and tell the irritated person on the other side of the line the nature of my problem. Oh, it’s happened.  More than once, I’ve let a little teeny-weeny bit of a problem evolve into a giant mountain of poo-poo (literally), all because I wasn’t on the ball.  Legally, I can take a break every two hours, and because there’s only one other person on site, no one really cares if I read Tolstoy’s War and Peace during my break, but believe me, if I leave my machines unmonitored for more than 10 minutes, let’s just say I’m asking for trouble. *****           ***** There.  Just my way of telling you I’ve bitten the bullet and accepted a new role at our worksite, more hours, more grief, but I get to be a bigger member of the production team.  Quite a turnaround, because in stature I’m the smallest person around. Joke lang po.  It’s always nice to assume more responsibility, if you’re not afraid of hard work.  In my case, I’m more afraid of being less needed, which as you know is not a good thing when you’re a skilled migrant worker.  Wish me luck in my work journey, thanks. Mabuhay and thanks for reading!