The Overtime Fairy got me. Litigious!Coworker and Big!Bear (not mentioned here before) are both on long-term sick leave until October. Litigious!Coworker is "sick" because someone dared to criticize how she was working: she threw a fit, stormed out, and lo and behold the next day she had a note from her doctor. Big!Bear, who is one of my favourite people, has been feeling increasingly poorly over the summer. His asthma has been really bad, and last week he was having major coughing fits all day. Finally his doctor gave him time off, after Super!Boss told him he should ask.
I'll be working several double shifts next week, and several more twelve-hour shifts over the next few weeks. I've had two extra weekends added to my workload as well, and then I'll be going to Québec city for seven-ish days, where I'll be working twelve-hour shifts all week for the Sommet de la Francophonie.
I'm not going to Moncton after all, because of the aforementioned overtime: if I leave, they'll be three people short (actually, four people short, since I'll be covering for two people during that time), and it'll be a nightmare.
Work this week has been absolutely insane. Everyone's back from vacation, and the phones are ringing off the hook starting at about 07:00 and ending at 20:00. Between 20:00 and 07:00 it goes back down to a manageable level.
The "contract provinces" tend to scoff at our measly call rate. It's true that they get about 6 million calls a year (I'm not exaggerating the number), and we only get about 3 to 400,000. I agree that we get far fewer calls. However, we're also only about 14 full-time operators, compared to their 75 to 150 per province. We have *one* call centre, whereas they have between two and six. At the end of the day, three or four operators to field over 100 calls per day is not that much. If all those calls were actual emergencies, we'd be sunk: as it is, most of them are quick, information-only calls, for which we are grateful. Unlike the other OCCs, we also have a ton of administrative work to do too: we handle arrest warrants, keep track of all the secure communications for the province (the other provinces have a dedicated staff for that for the most part, except for P.E.I., but they're so tiny that they get fewer than 25 calls a day), and a crapload of whatever else people think we ought to be doing in our copious amounts of spare time.
Okay, that sort of turned into a rant. Sorry. :)
My chocolate mousse looks like it's turning out really well. It tasted great, anyway. I'm waiting for it to set, now, which will be the ultimate test. I keep having to resist the urge to open the fridge and poke at it. ;)
I'm making Jan's scallop and mushroom linguini, too, although I was disappointed not to find the Catelli Bistro Lemon & Pepper linguini she recommended. I ended up going with plain linguini for now, and I may add a squeeze of lemon juice and some black pepper to the pasta to try and mimic the taste, depending on how much time I have left over.
On the plus side, I have fresh basil from the garden to use in my entrée of tomatoes and feta cheese. Win!
I have a great deal of tidying to do, and I don't feel like doing any of it. After ten days of not being at work, I forgot how much it takes out of me. I'm going to "cheat" for the next little while and hire a nice lady to come and help me with the cleaning. Working 40 to 80 hour weeks leaves me very little time to do anything other than sleep and work, and if I can afford the help, then I may as well cut myself some slack. Shithead keeps telling me that I should be able to do it on my own, but at this point I'm willing to concede defeat if it means my home will stay clean.
Okay, this place isn't going to clean itself, and BorderCrossing is going to be here in three hours. To work!
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