Contrasts

Saturday was the beginning of our 'longish' weekend.....we don't go back to work until Monday night, so it feels kind of like a 3 day weekend.  I know I have been tending to repeatedly compare our Fernley Amazon experience with our Campbellsville Amazon experience.  Frankly, the contrasts between the two are so dramatic and my feelings of elation over our current experience compel me to talk about them.  

Don't get me wrong.....overall we enjoyed our prior Amazon experience.  First of all, the Camperforce staff in Campbellsville was wonderful from beginning to end.  We would see Kelly and Jen (the HR Camperforce folk) walking the floor making contact with us during our night shift, even though their normal work hours did not encompass the night shift hours.....that impressed me.  They were very encouraging, and concerned about how we were doing, and that support, and concern helped us get through the first few weeks.  Here we have not seen our main contact, Joni, since our daytime training shift back on November 4th.  However, overall, I would say the Fernley Camperforce Scouts (Bruce and Art) have been wonderful at keeping up with us and checking on us several times a week during our night shift. Bruce and Art are Camperforce folk like us, and do relate to our experience much more directly.

In Campbellsville we were dealing with a 1 million square foot building with four story pick mods.....here in Fernley we are dealing with a 750,000 square foot warehouse with 3 story pic mods.  It has been easier to get familiar with a smaller facility more quickly.....in Campbellsville I felt 'lost' the first 3+ weeks, and had to keep asking directions.  Here in Fernley that 'lost' feeling was gone after our first few days..

Of course, the biggest difference I see every night is our actual jobs......we were 'pickers' in Campbellsville, and here in Fernley we are 'stowers'.  I don't think one job is necessarily harder than the other....both involve a lot of walking....picking a little more.  I think 'stowing' is a better fit for the way my brain works, and, therefore, I feel much more comfortable and less bored than I did as a 'picker'.  For me 'picking' was like looking for the proverbial 'needle in a haystack' a thousand times a night......here I am just looking for a space to 'stow' the item(s) in my hand.  On most nights those spaces are not as difficult to find as a 'needle in a haystack'.....I repeat.....most nights.  For what ever reason I do not get bored 'stowing', and was bored out of my freakin' mind 'picking'.   Still, I would not want to do either of those jobs on a full time, year round basis, but on a short term basis at Amazon I'll choose 'stowing' every time.

Obviously, there are many other jobs a Amazon, and picking and stowing are just two of them.  The other jobs available to Camperforce folk are 'packing' (boxing up purchased items for shipping) and ICQA......packing has no appeal to me whatsoever as you basically stand in one spot all night long doing what must be a boring, repetitive task.  In ICQA you are doing inventory control......taking items out of a bin, counting them, recording that result in your scanner, and then repacking the bin.....again, for me anyway, that seems like the ultimate boring job.

Of course, just like in Campbellsville, TLE is way better at this than I.  She has already won a gift card, and routinely appears on the 'All Star' list a few times a week.  I, however, have won 2 'perfect attendance' awards (as has TLE....after all, we ride together....lol).

Even though we do commute 60 miles round trip every night in contrast to our 5 minute walk to work in Campbellsville, we are happy with our choice to stay in Sparks for all the previously iterated reasons I have written about.  The biggest reason though, for me, is the lack of dirt, gravel, dust, pine needles, leaves, and sprinklers here.  The inside of the car and coach stay much cleaner now.

All that being said, I still look forward to our days off work, and Saturday was the first of what will feel like 3 days off, even though we do go back to work Monday at 6 pm.  As is my 'want' on Saturdays I watched a few NCAA football games......my USC Trojans played well thumping Notre Dame 49-14.....it wasn't really that close.  There was one upset seeing Ole Miss defeat Mississippi State which will most assuredly knock them out of the number 4 spot in the rankings.

Saturday felt like a 'let's got out to dinner' night so around 4 we headed out to Great Basin Brewing Company.....this time we went to the one just a few blocks from where we are living.  We actually liked this one better as it had more of a 'homey' feel, and was way less noisy than the South Reno one.  

Based on the beer flights we had sampled the prior time we both ordered the 'Outlaw Milk Stout'.....we added an appetizer of 'Willy Dillys'.....essentially deep fried dill pickles.......YUMMY!

'Willy Dillys'

For our main courses I ordered the Bacon, Beef and Barley Stew.....a perfect entree for a cold, blustery evening.  TLE ordered the 'Brueben'.....yes that is the correct spelling with a side of their turkey/rice soup.

We stayed up kind of late watching a couple of movies I had recorded.....'Ronin' (1998 with Robert De Niro, IMDB rating, 7.3 stars), and 'White House Down' (2013 with Jamie Foxx & Channing Tatum, IMDB rating 6.4 stars).......they were both interesting, but we were both glad we had not paid money to see them on the big screen.

We were in bed by 2 am........thanks for stopping by!