A Day in the Life
July 21, 2015 1:04 pm Leave your thoughts
Nothing too eventful has happened as of late, so I figured it’d be a good time to walk you all through a regular ole day for me at the mill.
My shifts usually consist of 8:00-4:30, Monday to Friday, but can be a little more depending on my work load. My mornings are typically a little more rushed than I’d care for, as I’m not too keen on waking up even a minute earlier than necessary. So I race through my hectic morning routine and frequently choose extra sleep over breakfast. Thankfully, my vehicle happens to be a super sport motorcycle and I can usually shave a bit of time off my morning commute. Not so thankfully, this is my only vehicle and a rainy morning makes for a bad start to the day.
Arriving at work, I park my bike in the designated motorcycle parking which is host to a surprising amount of bikes. Although on those rainy days I usually have the whole place to myself. Swiping my access card gets me past the security doors and then its two flights of stairs up to the third floor of our administration building. A large sign in board is the first thing one sees when reaching the floor and is my first stop of the day. After I’m signed in, I head over to my office, turn everything on and grab a cup of coffee. Included in the things to be turned on is a space heater, as I’m fairly certain my office is kept at just above freezing temperature (possibly on purpose as a joke on the intern or something).
It should be right around 8:00 a.m. now and I typically start off each day by writing a to-do list. Since each day is different and the work I can complete changes day-to-day, a list is almost critical to reminding myself what to do. I could be updating drawings, going out in the field and taking measurements, meeting with contractors, supervising my projects, getting parts fabricated in our weld or machine shop, or a plethora of other things. Having this ever changing work day definitely helps keep things fresh and exciting. I’ve grown to really appreciate the freedom of being able to (for the most part) choose what I will be doing that day. The only real schedule I have to keep is attending our weekly engineering meetings on Thursday and my 1:1 meetings with the engineering department manager on Wednesdays. These meetings are usually to go over project progress and be assigned new work; however they are also a great time to go over any difficulties or question I have.
I keep myself busy right up until 4:30 p.m. then I cross my fingers it’s not raining and head outside to ride home. The rest of my days are spent hanging out with friends, visiting with family, longboarding or group rides with a couple friends who have bikes too.
It feels like the end of all this is approaching quickly and I know I’m going to miss it!
Until next time,
Tanner Linssen