After our experience at Savage, I’m sure some of you were questioning our sanity for agreeing to do the same things somewhere else.  All I know is that before we heard from Steve yesterday that we could come to this new site, I was praying that if we got the job God would let there be nice people to work with there and that I’d have the strength to do it.  I think God answered my prayer.

Mark and I arrived at the scale house and there were two very pleasant women there.  They gave us what gear they had, which wasn’t everything we had before but it was sufficient.  We punched in and then drove down to the pilers.  A man named Rob came over to greet us and he looked at me and said, “You look familiar.  Have you worked at Amazon?”

I said, “Yes, in Nevada.”

He said, “Hmm, that wouldn’t be it then because we worked in Kansas.  Have you been to Alaska?”

I said, “Yes, we spent this last summer working at Tok RV Village in Tok, Alaska.”

“That’s it!” he said.  My wife and I stayed there on our way into Alaska and on our way out this last summer!”  Then he saw Mark and he said, “You’re the one I asked where I could get propane from.”

He took us over to introduce us to his wife, Cindy, and before he said a word she said,”Oh my gosh, I know you!” and she gave me a big hug.

So much for that part of my prayer.  Thank you, Lord!

Pleasant View has two pilers.  We told them that Mark knows how to run a piler, but at first piler one was down for repairs, so I hung out for a while at piler two with Cindy and the other Cindy.  Both of them sound discouraged.  We are here to replace a couple who quit after the first week.  Pleasant View has no greasers to do the after hours cleanup.  Before that couple quit they were expected to arrive at 6:30am, trucks were allowed in till 7:00pm, but that meant they could be lined up and take till 7:30 to get through dropping off their sugar beets, and then the crew still had to do their own cleaning of the piler.  The couple that quit couldn’t take the long hours, so a day or so ago Express Employment Professionals convinced Todd, the boss, to stop trucks coming in at 6:00pm.  Both Cindys are still really worn down.

Piler one was finally up and running and Mark and I went over there.  They already had a couple piler operators so Mark became a tare helper with me.  I gave him some training and then I tried to do all the things I used to do at Savage, but the regulars said to save cleaning the piler for tonight, and other than taking tickets from the farmers, most of them didn’t want me to help them get positioned for the dirt dump.  I was a little bewildered.  For a while I felt like a fifth wheel; like I wasn’t really much needed.  I did a lot more sitting today, although I did try to keep a clear path for Mark to come around from his side when he brought his tickets over.

I noticed some other differences between the two sites.  Pleasant View has a sense of being the ugly stepchild.  They aren’t as well equipped and when they ask for things to be repaired, they aren’t.  Funny thing is, at Savage if a repair needed to be made and they didn’t have the right stuff to repair it, they improvised.  Here they just let it be broken as long as the machine can function in any respect.  Also, they’re short-staffed so husbands and wives can’t take breaks and lunches with each other.  This is the first Workamping job we’ve ever had where that was true.

At lunchtime when the other piler operators wanted to go to lunch, Mark covered for them.  That was the only time he had to work on the piler and I think he preferred it that way.  Being the piler operator is more stressful than being a tare helper.

So again, thank you Lord for letting this be less strenuous and less stressful for us!

The difficult part was after the last truck went through.  Granted I wasn’t as tired as I usually was at the end of the day at Savage, but cleaning the machine at the end of a long day is hard.  Still, I didn’t feel too bad by the time we left.

The best part of the day was being able to come home and take a shower in our own place.  When we had to go to a shower house for a shower in Sidney, I usually didn’t feel up to all that trouble.  This is so much better!