Non-Perm in Retro

I needed to get out of the mailroom.  I needed a break.  I saw an opportunity online for a non-perm position up on the 2nd floor for a business area called Retrospective Rating.  I had no idea what it was or what they did but I wanted to know...so I applied for it.  I really wasn't sure how many people applied or what they were looking for in an applicant but it didn't hurt to try right?  I didn't have anything to lose.

I worked on my resume to make sure it was up to date and filled out the application as best as I could.  I sure hoped my work experiences pushed me forward to at least an interview.  About a week later I heard back and wanted me to come in for an interview.  I battled with myself a little bit about it.  If I get the job should I take it and leave everyone in the mailroom behind?  I feel like I needed to just to get away from all the drama.  On the other hand, we've all, the OA3's, have been working great together.  The communication was awesome, everyone was up to speed with CARS, I finally caught up by being trained and efficient in all of the jobs (except driving) and we were getting the mail done almost everyday.  A part of me kinda felt bad because I've been with these people over a year now and it went from being new and hopeless to I am sorta better than most of you at this point.  I was starting to get to know some of the people better and it was flowing.

The interview on Friday came and I had to dress up nice.  I came in and most of the people in the mailroom noticed because I didn't normally dress like that.  Mike, said I looked like a completely different person, Trina really loves my hair down and Britney laughed at my comments about not wanting to be in nice clothes.  If I didn't do well in the interview and wasn't chosen, I decided that it was good practice for when I have another one.  It was nice going into an interview and not being stressed out about trying to keep a job and trying to stay at L&I because I wasn't permanent.  I was so glad I became permanent in October of last year.  That made jobs also easier to obtain.

I walked up to the second floor and was escorted into the room where we did the interviews.  I met Tim, the manager, Connie one of the enrollment coordinators, Rachelle the lead and Stephanie one of our customers.  I greeted them all and sat down in the hot seat.  They all asked me a series of questions.  I answered them the best I could.  A lot of them pertained to teamwork and my experienced with a team.  I asked them if they wanted a work team or a sport team example and they said if you have both go for it!  I stuck to experiences about L&I since they were fresh in my mind.  I was asked to elaborate on my other jobs too.  I added some of those stories as well.  This wasn't a typical interview.  I really didn't feel on the spot or awkward like most of my past interviews.  They were very welcoming...which was weird for me.  I did go into the interview without worrying about being picked because it is what it is.  They will pick the person who was best fit for what they were looking for.  I thanked them for interviewing me and went onto the next part...the assessment with Julie.

Julie was also very welcoming.  I think when it was time to get onto Liniis, a program we use at work, I actually said this reminded me of the old Oregon Trail game and I may or may not have said, you have died of dysentery!  There were a few parts to it and I managed to get through them all with ease.  We filled out a excel spreadsheet with some information and saved it.  I thanked her and headed back downstairs to finish my work.  Now we play the waiting game.

I heard back the following Thursday when Tim came down to the mailroom while I was doing Express.  He asked if I had a few minutes to go upstairs and talk.  I said sure.  We walked up to the training room and I sat down with a group of folks and Tim explained why I was there.  He explained I had a great interview, my references said awesome things about me and my work.  He then said that the program chose me and I had some time to think about it before I made my decision.  I told them I didn't need some time and said yes.  They were pretty happy I said yes and told me to keep the news to myself for a while.  So I did.

My first day was so different from my first day in the mailroom.  It was a huge culture shock compared to what I was used to downstairs.  The entire day I always felt like I needed to be doing something at certain times.  It was so engrained into me downstairs that every hour had some sort of daily deadline.  Here in Retro, it was more relaxed and we had more time to get our work done.  We had more meetings and we had windows!  Windows!

I am very thankful I got this opportunity to learn another business area and to get more skills on some of the programs we use and to find out what Retro actually does.  I am slowly learning and hope to be up to speed by the time my year is over.  Who knows where I will end up next. 

Next Adventure:  Hosting Mother's Day

A Microburst Away from a Tornado

That morning I woke up at 6 and started getting ready for work.  The night before we were told that it was going to be our first humid muggy day around 80.  Later on that day we were suppose to have a thunderstorm roll in about the time everyone was heading home from work.  I hoped that it waited until we got home so we could watch it.  I wore capris and flip flops.  Since it was my second to last day in the mailroom, Britney and I decided we wanted ice cream sundaes.  So we all brought the goods in.  I brought sprinkles. 

Since it was a Thursday, we also had one of our bi-monthy staff meetings scheduled for the day.  Those began at 9.  That was our first work interruption and we all always welcomed it.  We talked about a few things and the first topic was about me leaving to go upstairs to Retro.  Trina said that it was great having me work down there since I was one of her first hires as the manager down there.  She said I transitioned quickly and that she would miss me.  I added to that.  I told everyone I would miss being in the mailroom, it was fun getting to know everyone and that I was looking forward to the opportunity in Retro.  They all knew it was a non-perm which meant the possibility of returning to the mailroom granted I didn't find another opportunity elsewhere before my time was up next May.  I also mentioned that I would not be a stranger.  I was hoping they would still invite me to stuff over the course of the year but that would be up to them.  We wrapped it up with Trina telling them that they weren't going to hire a non-perm for my position until it was absolutely necessary.  The next few weeks to months were going to be hard for them especially on the mail heavy days.

Most of the mail was done by the time I got back from lunch so I went from lunch to my one-on-one with Trina so I wasn't worried if it went beyond a half hour which I expected it to.  All of my one-on-ones have gone over a half hour.  However, this one was kind of a "close out" one-on-one.  We went outside because it was a nice day and sat at one of the picnic tables on the west side of the building.  It started with my stats, which were the best in the mailroom at that point.  I really got offended when I heard that people were saying I was slow back in January.  They failed to realize I had not done Front Counter before so of course I was going to be slow with something I had not done before.  I wanted to be better than any of them and so I proved it.  Trina was actually proud to say that I was the fastest in the mailroom and my other stats were either 100% or within the 30 minute time limit.  She actually gave me a high five.  We talked about the Allison scenario and about my permanent spot after my non-perm stint.  She really believes that I will not be back in the mailroom after Retro.  Finally we talked about suggestions and improvements she could make in the mailroom when hiring and training a new person since I was the newest hire.

Just before we were done you could see the storm clouds moving in.  We still had a few hours before they actually reached us.  We both walked back into the mailroom and had an ice cream sundae before my mail run.  We noticed we were also sunburned and we weren't out there that long.

For the rest of the afternoon, we finished Express, the warrant run and just hang out.  I started packing up my desk so it wasn't over whelming the next day.  I can't believe I had that much stuff in my cubicle. 

At 4, we left.  I started reflecting on all that I've gone through in the mailroom and that I only had to do this (hopefully) one more time.  It was changing really fast and at that point I didn't really know what to think of it yet.  We got in the Escape because it was my turn to drive that week and noticed that it cooled significantly since my one-on-one that afternoon.  More clouds rolled in and you could tell rain was on its way.  We stopped at the light near Rich Road and noticed the clouds in the distance...I've never seen teal clouds before.  I had Suzanne roll down the window so I could take a picture of them.  I said that they were about a half hour away.

We got home around 4:30 and got into more comfortable clothes.  I tend to get home and get into sweats or shorts as soon as I could.  Ben was home working on homework and Suzanne was getting ready to head into Roy to take care of a few things.  As soon as she left, Ben and I headed outside to watch the thunderstorm because we thought it was going to be a normal thunderstorm...you know the thunder and lightening.  Nope!  It was much more than that.  I took a ten minute video of something no one in Thurston County has seen before, ever.

The video starts off pretty calm and you could see some lightening strikes and some thunder off in the distance...pretty typical.  Then the wind started to pick up and the clouds were a more sickly green teal color looking to the west.  I mentioned that if we were in the Midwest right now we would be seeking shelter in our tornado cellar.  To the south of us, which was over the roof of our house into the back yard, the clouds were a grayish white and they were coming in very low and fast.  I have never seen clouds do that before.  I was getting a little scared because I didn't know what they were going to do.  I have seen a lot of tornado and hurricane documentaries and this was looking like what happens when a tornado hits.  However, there wasn't enough rotation to make it a tornado but you could hear the swirl in the wind as this thing in the sky was approaching.  The wind came hard, fast and quick.  Then the rain came down as hard as a waterfall.  The trees whipped through the air very hard almost to the point where they could snap.  I worried about the Douglas Fir tree in our side yard because if it gave up it would end up in our kitchen.  The giant Birch tree in our front yard was being pushed as far as it could go without falling into the street.  I secretly rooted for the wind to destroy that tree because I hated it.  The lightening got closer and at one point scared us into the house.  We found out our power had gone off which was probably the same time the neighbors smaller red trees in their front yard fell over into our driveway.  We didn't notice until the storm had passed.  The wind kept blowing for another five minutes or so very hard.  The rain kept coming down.  Between the wind and the rain the street looked like Hurricane Katrina ripping through.  At about the 10 minute mark I shut it off because it looked like a normal rain storm.

Microburst Home Video

I yelled out, "I think we just had a tornado!"

We went back inside and tried to remember what all was on before the power went off.  I go back outside and call mom and noticed our neighbors small trees had fallen over. 

They all heard what happened in Lacey and she asked if we were okay.  I told her my story then she told me that dad was stuck on Yelm Highway because the trees and power poles came down.  I was like what!?  I texted dad to take pictures of where he was. I got this:

I was horrified!  What in the world happened on Yelm Highway?  Dad told me his story a few days later.  He said he turned off of Wiggins onto Yelm Highway and he said it got really windy and rainy and all he could see outside of his car was a white swirl of wind, rain and debris.  He could not see anything in front of him until the car in front of him stopped to avoid the power poles that came crashing down.  He said any sooner or later and he would have been hit by one.  He was pretty freaked out.  They all were instructed to stay in their vehicles until it was safe to do so.  He sat there a long time.  King 5 was on the scene and showed a clip of dad's car just sitting there with 10 other cars waiting. 

He also told us he had to pee really bad.  I called mom for updates and he got home around 9 p.m. He had to drive through Tumwater.  I heard Rich road got hit hard as well as the Indian Summer Golf Course and a small part of Yelm Highway.  They were closed until further notice.

Then I started watching the news and people's Facebook posts.  The whole situation was bizarre.  No one here as ever seen anything like this before.  I mean, we've had wind storms and no power for a few days to a week, trees fall and whatnot but what ever happened along this stretch of a few miles seemed like a tornado.  I waited to hear what the verdict was.  In the meantime, I saw some really weird pictures like this family who lived off of Rich Road.  Their wooden fence was torn out of the ground whole and thrown into a tree still intact.  I was in awe when I saw that.  I also heard that the top speed of the wind that we got was around 85 m.p.h. and what made it really destructive was the constant wind at that speed into highly treed areas.  We've had so much rain the past few months that the ground was saturated with water making the water table really high.  Therefore making the trees an easy push over. 

After dinner, Suzanne brought us KFC because our power was out, we thought we would get in the Escape and drive out towards the destruction zone.  We were curious on how many trees fell down, how many cars and houses got crushed.  Plus, I wanted my phone charged more than 40% before I went to bed since it also my alarm clock.  We saw lots of trees down and not just the little ones.  Massive Douglas Fir trees were snapped in half, some looked like they exploded and others fell down with their roots showing.  It looked like a tree massacre.  There were a few areas of deep standing water, branches, signs and pieces of random debris everywhere.  The City of Lacey will have a lot to clean up in the next few days.  Our power came back on around 2:30 a.m.  It was out for about 9 hours.

I made it a mission to find out what the heck it was that hit us so hard and fast.  I did find out that it was a microburst instead of a tornado.  I had never heard of a microburst before so of course I looked it up to find out more about it.  It is basically opposite of a tornado.  A tornado is an updraft or a closed low pressure circulation, leaving a path of destruction behind.  A microburst a sudden, powerful, localized air current, especially a downdraft that leaves about 2.5-3 miles of wind sheer destruction behind.

This was one epic storm.  Microbursts more often happen in the southwest and southeast and sometimes in the west.  As far as I know, this area has never seen one before. 

There were several thousand people without power and as the storm made its way north it lost its intensity.  A lot of people said that all they got was thunder, lightening, wind and rain.  No one saw anything like we did down here.  I secretly was hoping it was a tornado just because I wanted to be a storm chaser when I was 12 and thought tornadoes were fascinating.  I knew living here in the Pacific Northwest I would probably never see one but I've been close with the one in Battleground two years ago, the one in Frederickson about four years ago and the waterspout near the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge back in 2014.  One of these days I will probably be in the wrong place at the wrong time to see one...I just hope I have a safe place to hide!

Next Adventure:  Non-Perm in Retro

Blue Switch Day!

Earlier this week I read something about a new geocaching badge we could earn and I made sure there was a geocache nearby so I could go out and grab it after work.  It was Blue Switch Day.

On Blue Switch Day 2017:  Geocaching has evolved and so have geocachers.  On May 2, 2000, the United States government disabled selective availability--increasing the accuracy of civilian GPS devices.  On May 2, 2017, seventeen years later, geocaching has become a global phenomenon to get off the couch and get outside.

That day I went to work...it was my last week in the mailroom and I tried to make the most of it.  It was a little bittersweet but I was ready to move onto another area.  (More about that later.)  When we got home it was time to go get some groceries because we were basically out of food so we hit up Walmart in Hawks Prairie.  We were there for about an hour and since I drove I wanted to get my souvenir cache for the day to celebrate Blue Switch Day. 

I saw there was one (after I upgraded my caching subscription) at Long Lake Park near the lake.  It was part of that 9 Lives Series.  It seemed easy enough since it was part of a small series.  I haven't been to this park in years probably since the last time I grabbed a cache here which was probably in 2012.  We followed the road to the swimming area, got out and walked around.  I found the cache, Copy Cat Cache at Long Lake - 9 Lives Series (GC6W20R) immediately.  It was a bison tube stuck to the fence with a 9 sign in front of it.  I signed our names and took a picture with it.

We continued to walk around the swimming area for a little bit and onto the dock.  Then we were good and headed back to the Escape because it was drizzling.  I really didn't want to get soaked. 

We got home, put the groceries away and because of the time I made something quick.  We had French dip sandwiches and they were tasty.  We watched some TV and then got ready for bed since 6 a.m. comes awfully fast.  I was pretty nervous about starting my new job next week but kind of excited at the same time.  I had no idea what was ahead of me as far as my career.  I tend to doubt myself a lot but more and more I am realizing that I am capable and know more than I think I do.  Bring it on!

Next Adventure:  A Microburst Away from a Tornado