Red Lights

Red lights are generally not good things. They stop us in traffic. They alert us to trouble. They generally foul up our days.

At work, the Red Light watches over us on the wall, letting us know when the Great Crane is unhappy. When the Great Crane is unhappy, we're unhappy. Without the Great Crane, totes full of library material cannot be unloaded from the rack into the lanes, so they cannot then be emptied and sorted on the belt into other totes, which cannot then return into the depths of the rack via the same Great Crane to be regurgitated for shipping later. Usually, when the Red Light flashes, it goes away in a few minutes; just long enough for me to get a bit of a lead on my lane. When I actually empty my lane before it recovers, there tends to be bigger trouble in the works.

I emptied my lane twice today. And that was just in the first half of the shift.

This week, the Red Light has been unusually active. Because of it, we started on Wednesday with what was essentially a holiday load - the sort of load we expect to see when there's been a holiday and a subsequent backup of books to flood us. To put it in perspective, a "normal" day starts with 700-/800-odd totes in the rack. On Wednesday, we started with over 1200. Today being Thursday, we were marginally further ahead - high 1100's - but still behind in terms of where we usually are. Red Lights don't help this situation much, especially not long Red Lights.

In any event, we knew we didn't have a snowball's chance in heck to finish before Friday (or before Saturday, for that matter), but we gamely trudged back after the break to give it the ol' library try. After all, every tote thrown was one less to throw tomorrow.

Not one hour later, the belt stopped. The chute doors slammed open. An ominous silence filled the air which had, but a moment before, been filled with the cacophony of dropping books and clattering totes and squeaking conveyor wheels. And the Red Light laughed at us from on high, laughed at our pitiful efforts to outwork it and outwit it.

Evidently, a transformer had blown somewhere, a transformer that - somehow - just took out the part of our building that houses the important stuff. Who blew it? Danged if we knew, but the guys next door poked their heads in to ask if we were down, too.

So, anyway, we lost the rest of the day waiting (in vain) for power to be restored. Tomorrow, we once again return to do battle with the ever-mounting backlog and the dreaded Red Light of Doom.

I dread the numbers that face us tomorrow...

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Red Lights... things that stop us, that hold us up. I seem to be hitting nothing but red lights in my quest to replace the Mighty Taurus.

By the time I had time (i.e., didn't have a work schedule screwed up by mandatory lame meetings and subsequent overtime to make up for work lost to said lame meetings, had no Family Projects that ate my day, and didn't have to drive family anywhere) to call about the golden Chevy Classic, it had vanished, never to return again... at least, not with a For Sale sign.

After three days of trying, I finally got the credit union online loan pre-approval function to work. It was supposed to give me a yea or nay within four hours. That was on Tuesday afternoon; I just checked an hour ago and it's still "Pending."

I might - might - be able to get away this Saturday to finally do some test driving, but I'd like to know what price range I can realistically look at, which can't happen until the credit union's peculiar definition of "four hours" elapses. I also have a sneaking suspicion that another Family Project is going to spring up that requires my attendance (which is what happened to last Saturday.)

All in all, I'm getting mighty sick of Red Lights in my life.

FRIDAY UPDATE - The Red Light theme continues... The Great Crane and associated equipment continued to be temperamental today, resulting in us carrying over nearly a full day's worth of totes (somewhere in the 6/700 range.) I felt remarkably unproductive and useless, especially since I'm too close to the page hour limit to work the extra shift on Saturday that the boss had to throw together in an attempt to tackle the backlog.

And, after finally breaking down and calling the credit union, I found they'd turned me down on the grounds that I have no credit history. This, from the only financial institution with which I have a credit history - and with which I have the amount of money for which I was asking, so it's not like it was a risk to them even if I defaulted. (I mostly wanted the loan so I wouldn't wipe out my savings in one go, but could drain it gradually as my paycheck replaced it.) Why they couldn't have told me this online, I don't know. I'm thinking about trying again with Dad as a co-signer, but their website isn't really full-service except during banking hours, so I wouldn't hear back until Monday anyway.

At this point, it's looking more financially viable to pay 8/900 to get the Taurus tranny dealt with, watch the antifreeze for its random dips, and just keep my fingers crossed that it limits its starting issues to parking lots rather than stoplights. Kind of like I'm doing now, except for also watching the transmission fluid and killing the AC at stoplights "just in case."

On the plus side, this frees up Saturday to go get glasses instead of looking for a vehicle, but the way this week's been going I'm leery of setting foot outside my door.

SATURDAY UPDATE - The kicker of the week... I went to get my eye exam for a pair of new glasses, and was told that the doctor wasn't in. In fact, according to the lady out front at Pearle Vision, there's an optometrist convention, so almost every eye doctor in the area's away.

Universe, I think you know what you can do with your sense of humor at this point... Really, it's getting just a wee bit old, don't you think?