Alarming Matador

I am the bull. The very angry, frustated bull.

Let me explain... So at work, they put in a new light system on the line I am STUCK forever (at least for the time being) working on. It was put in to let us know that there is a jam. Well, if we are doing our jobs right, the light is rather superfluous in the first place. To further the superfluosity (new word, if it currently isn't one) they (being the money minded higher powers of Poland Spring Bottling factory) also decided that the lights should have an alarm, or the Banshee Bell as I have quickly resigned to calling it. The Banshee Bell, as you can imagine, produces such a sound as to make you want to boil babies (morbid illiteration, clearly winning). Here's the thing, as soon as the FLASHING RED LIGHTS go off (more often than not right as, or even before you can, reach) alerting you of the God forsaken bottle jam, the RIDICULOUS alarm goes off as well. Also, there are jams that take more the just sticking your handy dandy stick (so technilogically advanced, I know) to the jam. You have to get out the ladder, grab some rubber gloves so as to not get shocked, and climb your happy little butt up said ladder to get a crushed bottle from the line. All this while you have an incesant screaming (that persists long after your shift has ended) in your ear. Or perhaps there is a jam above another line; that, too, takes more than a few seconds to unclog. To add insult to injury, the Banshee Bell isn't satisfied with a simple un-jamming of the line. Oh no, she doesn't stop until the bottles have caught up with the ones ahead.
Who in the world thought that putting a damn alarm on this line was a good idea? I'll tell you who. NO ONE. The powers that be clearly were not thinking about the workers that they would be making insane. More than once or twice I've almost taken my stick to the lights and the bell. I don't quite know what stopped me really. Perhaps it's the fact that I am a good, honest, dedicated worker who rarely complains of her lowly lot in factory proceedings. I am being driven to the point of complete apathy with the line though. Much more, and my give-a-crap will be entirely busted. Here's a thought, maybe instead of purchasing some alarm to let us know that the line is jammed, you spend some money on a line that doesn't jam nearly as much in the first place!!! Alas, that would be putting your employee ahead of your profit, and we just can't have that now can we?

Can you see the picture I have painted for you? The red lights being the cape of the matador, I being the bull charging to stop the flashing of the cape... permanently.

To top off an already sour night... I freaking got yelled at by the stupid line 2 filler. Ugh.
The past week or so, all my coworkers have been telling me that I need to ask the superviser to be trained on a line. They know how much stick (what the cool kids call NTS Operation) really bites. Honestly, I do want to train on one of the machines. My neck may become stuck from looking up so much with too many more nights of this crap. So, I asked him on my first night in this week. I was told that it's a possibilty, but can't happen for some time until everyone else (that's new. Uhm, what happened to the seniority the company preaches??? Hmmm??? Where is it in this case?) finishes up their training. I accepted that. My spirits had sunk a little bit, but I could deal with waiting a little bit longer.
Then tonight, as my superviser walked by me while I was waiting for the filler room to get their stuff together so my bottles could run and I could actually do my job, he told me that when I'm just standing around waiting for the line to work, I should start learning some stuff about the machines around me. Okay, I would is what I told him. I proceeded to do so every single time that freaking line would be down for 15 minutes. I learned a lot tonight. That actually did quite a bit to make my night better. Then... 40 minutes before the end of shift it freaking happened. The troll came out of his cave to chastise me.
The line was running crappy again. It was just stopped down at the filler, for like the 150th time. I went back and checked the sidel to see if we were getting any bottles from it. Nope, we weren't, the nice man who works back in that room had the machine open and was working to fix it. We were getting bottles from the silo however. It wasn't just me over on the line either, for there are almost always two of us on stick for line 2. So, the line was CLEARLY down. The man working on line 1, and giving me informal training for it, called me over to let me do a wrap change. Now, you can't particularly pay attention to anything else while you are doing one, because you are down on your hands and knees right next to a noisy machine. I sucessfully completed my first wrap change, fyi! As I am getting back up to my feet, here comes the filler stomping towards me with a stick. Something along the lines of, "I've been waiting 8 minutes for you to unjam that line... Your job is stick not this... Pay better f***ing attention... blah blah blah," was said to me. I responded with a "I'm really sorry. I should have been paying better attention... The line was down again when I started this... I'm sorry you had to wait though..." He then proceeds to stomp over to the other guy, who in the meantime proceeded to sweep directly under the jam the entire time. All that guy gets is that even though stick is pretty boring, it is still important to keep the bottles running and you've gotta pay attention to them. SERIOUSLY?????????????????!!!!!!!!!!! Oh, and why hadn't the guy who got let off the hook heard the Banshee sounding her alert? Because his service in the military physically rendered his ability to hear things in that pitch.... lucky. freaking. jerk.
So honestly, I am done trying to do more than just my job, even though I am dying to get off of stick. 13 dollars an hour is totally not losing my mind over, and I don't intend to. Guess my give-a-crap just got busted.