Avarto project - The unexpected ending
The jellyfish is back! Posting about some very random thoughts on a recent job at Avarto~ For memory sake? =P
=====
Woodlands Sector Avarto, a company which I have definitely heard before and even know where is it, since my father had made deliveries there before, but definitely not expecting that I would work over there, in a warehouse. Truth to be told, er... that's not the job which I'm enthusiastic to work in, but since it's not really possible to find an admin job which would have slots for you and your friends, a warehouse job would be in a better position to meet this requirement~ =/ So, yep, worked with JM and War for the last few weeks, which I can say, a rather anyhow experience. :)
Contract period: 22 March - 21 April
Period which I've worked: 22 March (M) - 8 April (E)
Period which War and JM worked: 22 March (M) - 3 April (M)
Working hours: 2130 - 0700
Yep, I think the original reason why Avarto needed so many people to work to the extent of night shift is due to a large shipment order, but somehow lost the order (?) a week after everybody started to work. So yea, since they don't need night shift operations anymore, they transferred everybody to working day, and thus received a lot of objections/protests/ bla bla bla.
That's about the outline~!
----------
Training Day! (0830 - 1800)
The supposedly 2 days of training is being cut to 1 as there were too many orders in the 1st week, thus the shifts have to be started on Monday. That day passed extremely slowly! It's kinda boring, to be doing some carton preparation, forever not getting the hang of the processing line, and perhaps the most interesting but tiring activity should be picking of CDs and USBs (very light).
That is the day we met Rebecca (on a Friday somemore), who decided to follow us for lunch even though we had no idea of where is the nearest food outlet. XD
The afternoon (5h 15mins) is seriously much worse, the time crawled like snail, and everybody is just counting down to 6pm. When that day is over, all the temps are like, weekend lo~! ^^
----------
Night shift! (2130 - 0700)
(+ve)
- More money, $15 extra per shift
- More cooling to work?
- Less strict
- No compulsory Saturdays
(-ve)
- No place to buy food, aka bring own food
- Tired siol. o.o
- Morning / early afternoon of Saturday spent sleeping. o.o
The extra money should be the main factor in attracting JM to work night. I'm actually ok with anything, but since there's lesser people in the night, it's better to work night as the working place and atmosphere would be more relaxed, not many people watching over ya? =P
Working before the 1am break is definitely all right as it's mainly the night time. The highlight (other than going home), is of course the break! ^^ Since there's no outlet that sells outside food in the middle of the night, everybody brought their own food, and just microwave it if serving hot is a better option.
JM: Classic egg ham tuna sandwich
War: Atas bread from almost everywhere
Jeff: White bread and sausage, Lexus biscuits!
For the whole 45 mins, everybody sat in the cold pantry, munching food and drinking some hot drinks, while resting and grumbling about the long work hours after the break. The 20 cents milo is the best, it warms you up and it's not the kind of diluted drink you would get in a cheap vending machine. :) Usually the chinese guys would sit at a table, the malay guys would sit at another, and the last table would be for the instructors (aka Alex and Wayne). The whole company eating together, very heartwarming right? :)
Working after 5am is a completely different story as I felt the kind of tiredness as a medic, 'I don't feel like doing anything' but can't sleep kind of tiredness is definitely scary. The good thing is working with friends, at least everybody can joke around about anything random just to try to endure until 7am, and when people are tired, any kind of rubbish is also funny. XD At around 6.30am, this is when we look at the sky colour and describe the different shades of blue, and also counting down to 7am. Ah, the feeling of working through the night, awesome!
----------
The bad news!
A lot of night people were not enthusiastic to switch to day, mainly due to the money and the people. We even planned to see if we can actually avoid that situation if we can. At the end of the day, it was announced that everybody had to change, and so we are like oh well. =/
*In the end, we realised that if they had to change the people, it wouldn't kena me, JM and War.*
I still remembered that 'last night', the Chinese guys were discussing who would work, weighing advantages vs disadvantages all the way until 7am, and nobody wanted to work all the way to the last day, which is true. That marked the end of working together as a night shift. A very abrupt ending, a sad one too.
----------
The 3 Day shift! (0830 - 1800)
---
3 Perfect days by Before You Exit! Enjoy the song while reading the paragraph below. =D
-----
The 3 days, inserting letters into envelopes, pasting the pouches on the cartons, in a small area of the warehouse which apparently only has 2 regulars + Melvin in it. They seemed to be a very funny trio, on one side you would have thought that they are working very seriously, with no jokes and talking allowed, on the other hand, you can actually see a real penknife flying a few meters~ Another Alex, Aunty Sandy aka Super Aunty, Melvin. So that is where I'm transferred to for the last 3 days, which I thought that it's only for regulars as all temps should be in the autodesk department. Misconception cleared!
The 3 day shift brings back the snail shift of the training day, when everyday passed extremely slowly and since there's nothing to do except to prepare cartons, looking at the watch is a very frequent activity, but the yield results isn't very pleasant... Imagine, after you think that 15 mins has passed from all the boring cartons, you look at the watch and oh, it's only 5 minutes? Compared to the night, it's never tiring in the day time. Well less physical activity, and the slackness of pasting pouches, whoever said that it's physically exhausting deserve a whack, but mentally exhausting is a totally different story. o.o Me and David joked about a girl who quit after 4 days straight of carton preparation, and the scene that she should be given a medal for the best carton machine, and would do things in that rhythmic motion (such as peeling off the chicken skin, pulling off the blanket, etc.). Yeah it's lame!
The good thing about day shift is lunch! A wide variety of food to choose from, even though the queue is long, it's really worth it as it's not too expensive and the food is usually fresh from the wok. :D So the 1st day I had mixed veg rice, which tasted awesome. The 3rd day I had nasi lemak with fish cutlet, baked beans sausage, luncheon meat (pri sch memory) and egg. =D
A similar thing is that our 45 mins break is also in the pantry, so instead of lunch boxes at night, I had a proper meal during the day, but I will still buy the hot 20 cents milo <3. Memory of the night shift. :) Rebecca asked about how we had warm meals at night, and she seemed to be like: "oh so you know how to operate the microwave oven, that's cool!" o.o I have no idea how to reply to that statement, but yeah, it's gives a feeling that I have actually appeared to another universe / dimension. =P
----------
The people :)
Regulars
One of the most sian reason of working Day would be the large number of regulars and bosses staring at you. Actually it's not really a lot of bosses, it's 3, but they seem to be busy walking around the warehouse, checking stock, asking the heads for random info, etc. The Big Alex seemed to be as what Melvin described, he don't want to see you doing nothing, so it's kind of sian as it's not really a OTOT pace, even though there's nothing important to do... The night with only Wayne and Alex, is much better. The 2 guys trusted the whole night shift to do things well as they had to handle the whole warehouse by themselves, which thankfully everybody did the job well. Wayne is the senior logistics executive (aka directly below the 3 bosses), and he's much nicer than almost any regular in the whole warehouse. Alex is a super nice guy too, never scolds, super patient, and willing to do stuff so as not to the workload of temps. Ideal regulars, yep! Even though they are nice and kinda relax, the speed they work should never be underestimated! An account by War and JM~
When working with...
Alex: Normal procedure, top speed from War and JM, struggling but still kept up with the pace
Wayne: Wayne did more than the normal procedure, top speed from War and JM isn't fast enough.
Ahaha lol! XD
--
Day Shift - Rebecca's gang
Melvin is an awesome guy, although he studied in a JC, he's not like a typical student. He meets people from different walks of life, journalists, people with arts background, goes to pub and clubs to socialise, gambles with strategies, and apparently travels to places and explores new things. You want to find that kind of person in a JC student family? Highly unlikely. His language is awesome! :)
Rebecca! If she had not even join me, war and JM for lunch, I wouldn't even have anybody to talk to / know in the day shift. Apparently she's a SC in JJ, which was rather unexpected judging by her cheerful, happy-go-lucky, always kena disturbed character. The 2nd day, I had extra breakfast food, and so I finished them during lunch, including a peanut-chocolate doughnut. (Rebecca: I want I want!) Haha cute sia. =)
Smurf (I dunno his name) is another busy guy in a non-Autodesk section. Well, I cannot say his personality is one of the best, but anything which is logical would be accepted by him. =P David, a China guy who is from Hwa Chong! Well, he doesn't look like a guy who really chiongs his study (wrong guess), but hey, at least he laughs at my lame/funny jokes (apart from WL). Still remember on the last day, when we were really really bored, we drew graphs on the unwanted cartons that show different graphical representation of workers. Mood vs time, hunger vs time, relative time vs actual time... Someone should give us a prize for that! :)
One very funny memory I had with David was that when we were talking about the regulars in different shifts, I talked about Wayne supervising the night and David was very surprised and said that he had been seeing him in the day time too! So for about an hour or so, I thought that Wayne had to be working 24 hours for the whole week, and he's super incredible.
The result: David was talking about Wint (another regular), but he pronounced it as Wayne. Aiyo mystery solved, back to the reality of pasting pouches on cartons. =D
That sort of summaries the lunch gang I had been with for the 3 days. These guys are awesome, different personalities -> different stories, and it's seriously much easier to start to talk to them compared to talking to people in the RT department. =P
--
Night Shift
My line personnel: Jit Boon and Yi Teck. 2 very fast people, so that's why my last gate is always jammed. -_-!!! Jit Boon seems to be a bit of PH's personality. =P Still got who ah, oh Teck Sian. Dunno much about him, the thing I remember about him is when we have about 1 hour left to going home, he will be shouting that it's time to go home~
Best personnel, Shuai Ge! I don't think I know his name, so somehow everybody addressed him as Shuai Ge. Ok la, not that he really got the best looks, but if you wanna compare, he could be really like WL, very similiar! He is thin like WL, his hairstyle also sorta like WL, he talks like WL, and most importantly, 'sibei handsome siol!' like WL. XD He helped me a lot with the last gate work, which is great! :D
One of the reasons why I will miss the night shift people is really due to the 1am break. The whole group of Chinese would sit at a table, chill out, complain about work, makan biscuits. Even when we're working, we sort of help one another out. The last night duty, the distribution of work was really extremely biased as JM and War had like about 700+ orders to complete, whereas the other lines all had like about a 100. So everybody decided to ease their loads by clearing the other orders (except for the largest 180). XD Heartwarming right? =P
=========================
With that, concludes a memory about working in Avarto. Not the perfect job, not the perfect scenario, but yeah, it leaves some pleasant memories anyway. :D
=====
Woodlands Sector Avarto, a company which I have definitely heard before and even know where is it, since my father had made deliveries there before, but definitely not expecting that I would work over there, in a warehouse. Truth to be told, er... that's not the job which I'm enthusiastic to work in, but since it's not really possible to find an admin job which would have slots for you and your friends, a warehouse job would be in a better position to meet this requirement~ =/ So, yep, worked with JM and War for the last few weeks, which I can say, a rather anyhow experience. :)
Contract period: 22 March - 21 April
Period which I've worked: 22 March (M) - 8 April (E)
Period which War and JM worked: 22 March (M) - 3 April (M)
Working hours: 2130 - 0700
Yep, I think the original reason why Avarto needed so many people to work to the extent of night shift is due to a large shipment order, but somehow lost the order (?) a week after everybody started to work. So yea, since they don't need night shift operations anymore, they transferred everybody to working day, and thus received a lot of objections/protests/ bla bla bla.
That's about the outline~!
----------
Training Day! (0830 - 1800)
The supposedly 2 days of training is being cut to 1 as there were too many orders in the 1st week, thus the shifts have to be started on Monday. That day passed extremely slowly! It's kinda boring, to be doing some carton preparation, forever not getting the hang of the processing line, and perhaps the most interesting but tiring activity should be picking of CDs and USBs (very light).
That is the day we met Rebecca (on a Friday somemore), who decided to follow us for lunch even though we had no idea of where is the nearest food outlet. XD
The afternoon (5h 15mins) is seriously much worse, the time crawled like snail, and everybody is just counting down to 6pm. When that day is over, all the temps are like, weekend lo~! ^^
----------
Night shift! (2130 - 0700)
(+ve)
- More money, $15 extra per shift
- More cooling to work?
- Less strict
- No compulsory Saturdays
(-ve)
- No place to buy food, aka bring own food
- Tired siol. o.o
- Morning / early afternoon of Saturday spent sleeping. o.o
The extra money should be the main factor in attracting JM to work night. I'm actually ok with anything, but since there's lesser people in the night, it's better to work night as the working place and atmosphere would be more relaxed, not many people watching over ya? =P
Working before the 1am break is definitely all right as it's mainly the night time. The highlight (other than going home), is of course the break! ^^ Since there's no outlet that sells outside food in the middle of the night, everybody brought their own food, and just microwave it if serving hot is a better option.
JM: Classic egg ham tuna sandwich
War: Atas bread from almost everywhere
Jeff: White bread and sausage, Lexus biscuits!
For the whole 45 mins, everybody sat in the cold pantry, munching food and drinking some hot drinks, while resting and grumbling about the long work hours after the break. The 20 cents milo is the best, it warms you up and it's not the kind of diluted drink you would get in a cheap vending machine. :) Usually the chinese guys would sit at a table, the malay guys would sit at another, and the last table would be for the instructors (aka Alex and Wayne). The whole company eating together, very heartwarming right? :)
Working after 5am is a completely different story as I felt the kind of tiredness as a medic, 'I don't feel like doing anything' but can't sleep kind of tiredness is definitely scary. The good thing is working with friends, at least everybody can joke around about anything random just to try to endure until 7am, and when people are tired, any kind of rubbish is also funny. XD At around 6.30am, this is when we look at the sky colour and describe the different shades of blue, and also counting down to 7am. Ah, the feeling of working through the night, awesome!
----------
The bad news!
A lot of night people were not enthusiastic to switch to day, mainly due to the money and the people. We even planned to see if we can actually avoid that situation if we can. At the end of the day, it was announced that everybody had to change, and so we are like oh well. =/
*In the end, we realised that if they had to change the people, it wouldn't kena me, JM and War.*
I still remembered that 'last night', the Chinese guys were discussing who would work, weighing advantages vs disadvantages all the way until 7am, and nobody wanted to work all the way to the last day, which is true. That marked the end of working together as a night shift. A very abrupt ending, a sad one too.
----------
The 3 Day shift! (0830 - 1800)
---
3 Perfect days by Before You Exit! Enjoy the song while reading the paragraph below. =D
-----
The 3 days, inserting letters into envelopes, pasting the pouches on the cartons, in a small area of the warehouse which apparently only has 2 regulars + Melvin in it. They seemed to be a very funny trio, on one side you would have thought that they are working very seriously, with no jokes and talking allowed, on the other hand, you can actually see a real penknife flying a few meters~ Another Alex, Aunty Sandy aka Super Aunty, Melvin. So that is where I'm transferred to for the last 3 days, which I thought that it's only for regulars as all temps should be in the autodesk department. Misconception cleared!
The 3 day shift brings back the snail shift of the training day, when everyday passed extremely slowly and since there's nothing to do except to prepare cartons, looking at the watch is a very frequent activity, but the yield results isn't very pleasant... Imagine, after you think that 15 mins has passed from all the boring cartons, you look at the watch and oh, it's only 5 minutes? Compared to the night, it's never tiring in the day time. Well less physical activity, and the slackness of pasting pouches, whoever said that it's physically exhausting deserve a whack, but mentally exhausting is a totally different story. o.o Me and David joked about a girl who quit after 4 days straight of carton preparation, and the scene that she should be given a medal for the best carton machine, and would do things in that rhythmic motion (such as peeling off the chicken skin, pulling off the blanket, etc.). Yeah it's lame!
The good thing about day shift is lunch! A wide variety of food to choose from, even though the queue is long, it's really worth it as it's not too expensive and the food is usually fresh from the wok. :D So the 1st day I had mixed veg rice, which tasted awesome. The 3rd day I had nasi lemak with fish cutlet, baked beans sausage, luncheon meat (pri sch memory) and egg. =D
A similar thing is that our 45 mins break is also in the pantry, so instead of lunch boxes at night, I had a proper meal during the day, but I will still buy the hot 20 cents milo <3. Memory of the night shift. :) Rebecca asked about how we had warm meals at night, and she seemed to be like: "oh so you know how to operate the microwave oven, that's cool!" o.o I have no idea how to reply to that statement, but yeah, it's gives a feeling that I have actually appeared to another universe / dimension. =P
----------
The people :)
Regulars
One of the most sian reason of working Day would be the large number of regulars and bosses staring at you. Actually it's not really a lot of bosses, it's 3, but they seem to be busy walking around the warehouse, checking stock, asking the heads for random info, etc. The Big Alex seemed to be as what Melvin described, he don't want to see you doing nothing, so it's kind of sian as it's not really a OTOT pace, even though there's nothing important to do... The night with only Wayne and Alex, is much better. The 2 guys trusted the whole night shift to do things well as they had to handle the whole warehouse by themselves, which thankfully everybody did the job well. Wayne is the senior logistics executive (aka directly below the 3 bosses), and he's much nicer than almost any regular in the whole warehouse. Alex is a super nice guy too, never scolds, super patient, and willing to do stuff so as not to the workload of temps. Ideal regulars, yep! Even though they are nice and kinda relax, the speed they work should never be underestimated! An account by War and JM~
When working with...
Alex: Normal procedure, top speed from War and JM, struggling but still kept up with the pace
Wayne: Wayne did more than the normal procedure, top speed from War and JM isn't fast enough.
Ahaha lol! XD
--
Day Shift - Rebecca's gang
Melvin is an awesome guy, although he studied in a JC, he's not like a typical student. He meets people from different walks of life, journalists, people with arts background, goes to pub and clubs to socialise, gambles with strategies, and apparently travels to places and explores new things. You want to find that kind of person in a JC student family? Highly unlikely. His language is awesome! :)
Rebecca! If she had not even join me, war and JM for lunch, I wouldn't even have anybody to talk to / know in the day shift. Apparently she's a SC in JJ, which was rather unexpected judging by her cheerful, happy-go-lucky, always kena disturbed character. The 2nd day, I had extra breakfast food, and so I finished them during lunch, including a peanut-chocolate doughnut. (Rebecca: I want I want!) Haha cute sia. =)
Smurf (I dunno his name) is another busy guy in a non-Autodesk section. Well, I cannot say his personality is one of the best, but anything which is logical would be accepted by him. =P David, a China guy who is from Hwa Chong! Well, he doesn't look like a guy who really chiongs his study (wrong guess), but hey, at least he laughs at my lame/funny jokes (apart from WL). Still remember on the last day, when we were really really bored, we drew graphs on the unwanted cartons that show different graphical representation of workers. Mood vs time, hunger vs time, relative time vs actual time... Someone should give us a prize for that! :)
One very funny memory I had with David was that when we were talking about the regulars in different shifts, I talked about Wayne supervising the night and David was very surprised and said that he had been seeing him in the day time too! So for about an hour or so, I thought that Wayne had to be working 24 hours for the whole week, and he's super incredible.
The result: David was talking about Wint (another regular), but he pronounced it as Wayne. Aiyo mystery solved, back to the reality of pasting pouches on cartons. =D
That sort of summaries the lunch gang I had been with for the 3 days. These guys are awesome, different personalities -> different stories, and it's seriously much easier to start to talk to them compared to talking to people in the RT department. =P
--
Night Shift
My line personnel: Jit Boon and Yi Teck. 2 very fast people, so that's why my last gate is always jammed. -_-!!! Jit Boon seems to be a bit of PH's personality. =P Still got who ah, oh Teck Sian. Dunno much about him, the thing I remember about him is when we have about 1 hour left to going home, he will be shouting that it's time to go home~
Best personnel, Shuai Ge! I don't think I know his name, so somehow everybody addressed him as Shuai Ge. Ok la, not that he really got the best looks, but if you wanna compare, he could be really like WL, very similiar! He is thin like WL, his hairstyle also sorta like WL, he talks like WL, and most importantly, 'sibei handsome siol!' like WL. XD He helped me a lot with the last gate work, which is great! :D
One of the reasons why I will miss the night shift people is really due to the 1am break. The whole group of Chinese would sit at a table, chill out, complain about work, makan biscuits. Even when we're working, we sort of help one another out. The last night duty, the distribution of work was really extremely biased as JM and War had like about 700+ orders to complete, whereas the other lines all had like about a 100. So everybody decided to ease their loads by clearing the other orders (except for the largest 180). XD Heartwarming right? =P
=========================
With that, concludes a memory about working in Avarto. Not the perfect job, not the perfect scenario, but yeah, it leaves some pleasant memories anyway. :D
Comments