kadyellebee

The summers are always rough for Locatis Leather because we are so much busier, which is good, but means that we either need to expand our staff or everyone is further strung out. Usually this is helped out by a sibling getting off of school and helping. Lisa is the age that she gets to spend her summers with us. She has whispered thoughts of wanting to work elsewhere, but I don’t think they are gonna let her this summer. Megan didn’t get to work elsewhere until the summer after she graduated from HS, so Lisa’s got at least 2 more summers until that point.

But here’s where it gets tricky. During the summer, Annette (my secretary who does all Acct. Receivable and phone answering and the small Acct. Payable and Inventory jobs), doesn’t like to leave her kids alone for too many hours. They are 10 1/2 and 13, but she’s still pretty protective, and there’s no one she knows that can babysit. AND her husband works shiftwork, which means that he’s able to watch the kids easily for one week, not so easily for the next, and not at all for the third... and repeat. Sooooo, she is moving down to a 4hr schedule instead of 6.5hr.

Annette’s 6.5 hours a day has enabled me to work my reduced schedule since March - 16 hours a week, which is split up between all the days but Wednesday. There’s no way my morning schedule will work with her change in schedule. At all. I have no choice but change, but if I work from 1 on, I have to wait for sporadic Mr. Eric to come and get me, who works until he gets his jobs done - somewhere between 5 and 7. Which makes it hard for me to sleep in the afternoons as I’ve been having to do.

So mom and me talked it over. If we can get Annette to work mornings, Lisa to work mornings in the shop pulling orders and clipping threads, and then Lisa comes and gets me after lunch, we work in the office together in the afternoon, and Lisa takes me home at 4, it might work. I still don’t know about wednesdays, but maybe I’ll be feeling better. Its just that June is getting oh-so-close!

Mom’s schedule this summer will be much more hectic because between June 24 and July 25, she has 3.5 hours of school a day (5 credit hours for summer session), AND a book she’s studying for the lactation consultant test on July 29. AND then she’ll be starting classes in the fall again after that. So that means someone else needs to do the jobs that she’s spending 5 or so hours a day doing.

With every hope I have, I want to get better. But I’m too much of a realist to not plan for how I feel now. If I had my way, I’d just stop working for them all together, and depending on how I feel after June.