19 Boring Hours

So it turns out that nineteen hours at work is not the most inspirational situation ever, in terms of interesting thoughts. But here they are anyway;

12:00 Noon
Started shift, work queues look good, enough of my preferred types that it should be able to hit 16 hours without switching queues. At the gas station on the way here the guy said "Have a good day." Somehow that strikes me as highly unlikely.

12:59 PM
2 hours of work done, putting me 4 emails ahead of the schedule to hit 16 hours by midnight. This is good, since the cutoff for the contest might be 10:30. So far not so bad, but what do you expect after only an hour? The daytime sunday overtimers are still here, so I'm not totally isolated yet. There should be a lonely time later this afternoon, though.

2:01 pm
I've been here two hours and I have over four hours of work proccessed. It's remarkable how much harder you can work when they actually provide a decent incentive to get work done. Of course, at this speed I hope I don't get quality-checked on many of these messages. Been sitting here too long, need to walk around a bit. Fortunately I'm enough ahead of schedule to do that.

3:30 pm
I've sent 50 emails now, about 7 hours worth. If I don't do anything more the rest of the overtime portion I'll still get a bonus payout of $21.00. ($3 per hour of work done) I need to do 62 more emails to get to the good tier of payouts, which would be $7 per hour of work (not the time I'm here, hours of work processed). That comes to $112 payout minimum, more if I manage to keep going as fast as I am now. This is in addition to the regular overtime pay, which for these hours will be fairly significant. It's these thoughts of money that keep me working, though I think right at this moment it's time for a break and some food.

5:32 pm
Ten and a half hours done, which is pretty impressive but I can tell I'm slowing down now. I wonder why I'm trying so hard to get extra cash from work when I'm not really in need of money that badly. It warrents pondering, I think this retardedly long shift may be more for the attention of my coworkers than the actual money. My back is stiff and I've grown tired of wearing clothes. This is weird because I haven't been here longer than I would for a normal shift yet, just at a different time. Maybe I'm sitting weird or something. It's hard to type fast leaning back all comfortably. I need to take a walk or something for a bit before getting back to work.

Addendum: As I'm copying these e-mails into one page, I notice almost all of them end with me taking a break from working. That's because I usually wrote them when I was sick of doing actual work. Consider this your lame director's commentary for this post.

6:12 pm
This place needs a new contest: #1 producer per team gets a free massage, damnit. I could totally go for one of those oriental massages where a chick walks on your spine right now. In other news, Scott and Nicki are here now, they came in 5 hours earlier than our normal shift. So now I have entertaining company, but that also means more distractions. Better work some more.

8:40 pm
I've now been here longer than I would be for a regular shift. I'm also only five emails away from hitting the best payout level, but they've been dragging out slower and slower as I go. Every two or three messages I get up to talk to somebody else, trying to stave off the boredom. My knuckles are also sore from typing. Yet I'm typing this, even though I don't really have to. The sad thing is, even though I can goof off for the rest of the overtime once I hit my own personal goal, my actual regular shift comes after this, and they may expect me to work during that. I hope they're accustomed to dissappointment.

9:52 pm
So I hit my goal of over 16 hours processed about a half hour ago. After some celebratory goofing off I declared it dinnertime, only to find out that the janitorial staff had cleaned out the breakroom fridge and thrown away my emergency rations. I had to run to HyVee for replacement food.
How do you say "You owe me a Lunchable, pigfucker!" in Spanish? That's not just a racial stereotype, either, only one of the cleaners here has ever been heard to speak a word of English. And also it is of course a well documented fact that anyone who inconveniences me in the slightest fucks pigs.

10:13 pm
Why does my TV dinner say "Heat another 2 and a half to 6 and a half minutes or until 160 degrees fahrenheit"? Do they really think that if I were the kind of person who owned a meat thermometer I'd be microwaving TV dinners?

1:55 am
We're now well into my normal nightly shift, and I've been hear almost 14 hours. I'm definately getting tired at this point. I'm trying to alternate my drinking between caffeine and Sobe's herbal supplement drinks. I like the "Wisdom" flavor best of all the ones I've tried, so that's what I brought tonight.
My productivity has slowed to a languid crawl, but this part of the night doesn't count toward the overtime payout. So I worked hard when it mattered. (To my wallet.)
A little while ago a fell asleep for just a split second, and woke up with a start as my head was falling sideways. I think I screamed, but nobody else responded, so that may have just been in my head. I heard the scream but normally something like that would elicit comments and ridicule from this crowd. They must not of heard it. There's also a high pitched ringing that I can't decide if is in my left ear or just coming from one of the lights on my left side.
At some point tonight I need to put the finishing touches on my application for a Quality Monitoring position. I should probably do that before I get too loopy.

5:30 am
Only an hour and a half to go. Sort of a dissappointing sleep deprivation experiment. Except for the hour or so when I was easily startled by everything there hasn't been much dementia or craziness. I'm not even really that tired, just really really bored of being here. I still haven't found out if my vacation request for tomorrow was approved or not. I should have last thursday, but there you go. I was kinda depressed for a while there, but it was the uninteresting cylclical thought style depression, which I've done before. It's the season for it, you know, what with Valentine's Day coming up. Blah.

6:50 am
why am I typing this? I can finally go HOME! (if I remember where it is.)