I'm Walking Here!

Mike is back from China after four weeks on the road!  Yahoo!  While I missed him as my brother, I missed him even more as my boss.

Until today that is.  Today is day two of him being back and we are back to business as usual.

I get to work first in the morning.  I have everything up and running and I am working away in my office.  I hear Mike coming in the front door and what is the first thing out of his mouth?  Not hello, not good morning but "do you REALLY have the heat on today???" And I yelled back "YES!  It's 43 freakin' degrees outside so I have the heat on!"

Aaah, I've missed him and his aversion to having the furnace on at work!

Then, one small part of my job is laminating some labels.  I print the labels, put them in the plastic holders and then run them through the laminating machine.  There is no way to speed up this last step in the process.  When I have the laminating machine on, I try to get everything that needs laminating so I usually have eight to ten sheets to do at a time.

The old me used to just stand there while the sheet ran through the laminating machine.  It's a slow process, but the machine is melting that plastic to seal it so I guess you don't want to rush it.  I came up with a new trick while Mike was gone.  I put the sheet in the laminator, turn and walk to the closet (7 steps), turn and walk to the end of the hall (25 steps) turn and walk back to the closet (25 steps) and from the closet back to the laminating machine (7 steps) for a total of 64 steps per sheet to laminate.  I figured I could get some activity points in while getting paid at work instead of just STANDING there watching the sheet go through the machine.  I know exactly how fast I have to walk these 64 steps so that as I end up back at the machine, the sheet is just finishing.  I do this for eight to ten sheets for a total of 512 to 640 steps.  C'mon people, I thought this was GENIUS!

I told Mike about my little thing I do now when I'm laminating. I told him I get some steps in while doing laps in the hallway as I wait for the sheets to go through the machine.  I thought he was jiggy with it.  Did I mention that his office happens to be IN the hallway I use to do these laps?

I was busy laminating today.  I had two sheets to go when Mike finally said something about me walking to and fro in front of his office!  Hey, I'm walking here!  I'm getting steps in here!  This is one time it was good to have a brother as a boss.  I may have irritated him but he let me finish my walking, I mean my laminating!

No sense in wasting time just standing there doing nothing just like why throw out my apple core in the wastebasket under my desk when I can walk that core all the way out back to the dumpster?  Steps, baby!  They all add up, even if it's on company time!

So, Mike is back two days now and he's irritated with me already.  Man, no wonder he spends four weeks at a time in China!