MOT, VOT & VTO

Like every other business, Amazon has its share of acronyms....whether these are unique to Amazon I do not know.  The insurance industry, where I spent 41 years, is rife with them.  At Amazon MOT stands for Mandatory OverTime......meaning you have no choice.....no one asks you.....you are told you will work the overtime day.  Unless there is some excusable reason why you cannot work the 5th day, you must be there, or earn demerits. 

VOT stands for Voluntary OverTime.  This acronym is used for hours exceeding 50 in a 7 day period, and can be volunteered for.  Here's the catch.  Here at Amazon you are asked way back when you are still working your 4 five hour shifts if you are willing to take VOT  if it is offered.  Of course, you don't know then if your body will be able to handle 40 hours a week yet, let alone 60, but the gambler in you says go for it, so you reply to the e-mail saying "yes".  Once you volunteer, weeks in advance, you are on the hook, unless you retract the "yes" prior to the VOT  being posted.  Once you are on the VOT  list, and there has been no intervening reversal of the "yes" you are on the hook for the 6th 10 hour day in the week.

VTO stands for Voluntary Time Off.  VTO  is time off without pay, of course.  Occasionally work slows down and you will either receive a message on your scanner saying VTO is available, or called to the Pick Desk and asked if you, individually, want to take VTO.  You are not required to accept VTO.....you cannot be made to go home.  So far we have declined all VTO  offers, except once for the last hour of a four/ten shift.  We have noticed many fulltime workers do take VTO virtually every time it is offered.  On the otherhand, we are here for a limited amount of time for the express purpose of earning a specific amount of money, so accepting VTO defeats that purpose.

Our 40 hour work schedule was changed to Wednesday through Saturday a couple of weeks ago.  Our MOT day this week was to be Tuesday, however, yesterday TLE's phone and mine began to ring at precisely the same time.  It was a robo call advising everyone on "D" shift that our MOT day was being cancelled this week, meaning we don't go back to "that building" until Wednesday this week.  Personally, it did not break my heart, or TLE's for that matter, but it amounts to $300 we will not earn this week.  Fortunately, when I figured out how much money we might earn way before we arrived here, I figured it at 40 hours per week, and figured anything over that would be bonus, so while it's disappointing to lose $300, my body and mind are giving thanks for a reprieve this week......lol!

We went to bed around 2am Monday morning.....hard to break old/new habits, and did not get up until near Noon.  We needed to make a liquor store run, so we headed out around 2pm, and on the way back stopped in at the Goodwill store where I got a couple extra used t-shirts to wear at Amazon....no point in wearing out my $20 t-shirts at Amazon.  Who ever would have thought 30 years ago that we would pay $20, or more for new t-shirts?

We also stopped in at Lowe's and bought some more LED Xmas lights to spruce up our outdoor lighting, as well as a very small artificial Xmas tree for inside our Newell.

TLE made a wonderful chicken goulash over white rice sort of entree for dinner that we shared at our candlelight dinner, and then around 6pm we adjourned outside to the balmy evening air for a fire that ended up lasting 4 hours......our friends, Rick, Pat, Jim and Sharon returned from their day trip to Shaker Village and joined us for the last 3 hours.  Of course, we laughed ourselves silly.  Finally, as the last log was reduced to red glowing embers, and the chill of the night descended upon our shoulders we called it a night.....outside that is.

Sunset around 5:15pm

I watched the end of the MNF game, and then TLE and I watched Bones......since we still have west coast feed on our DirecTV our prime time starts at 11pm.  We headed for slumberland around midnight.

Thanks for stopping by!