Yeah. To be clear, completely losing track of a delivery like that is absolute failure mode for me, and it's only ever happened once before (around the same time, and under similar conditions, last winter). At least on the routes I'm doing, I'm the one making my own sorts so I mostly know what's in them, and know if something's dropped or fallen into the bags. Yesterday was just hell, thanks to the terrible weather and the late hour. I still have no idea if I just imagined that card, or if I actually lost it.
The problem, for me, is that long days like this pretty much invariably trigger a train crash of prioritisation problems. The indoor work recipe we use implicitly prioritises the completion of car routes over bike routes, meaning that my first instinct is to finish putting together everything that isn't mine before I can leave, and because I have such a hard time transitioning from one activity to another, that easily turns into an unmanageable amount of overtime. Over the fall, I actually did refuse to do overtime (I actually gave our new manager an ultimatum at the time -- give me over 20 hours a week or don't bother, and if you want me doing long days, actually put it in the schedule instead of counting me doing 9hrs on a 6hr day) but that only made me feel like I was doing a bad job, and wasn't worth the hit to my satisfaction over my own performance.
So, no, I wouldn't personally be penalised if I just let the backlog accumulate, but I also don't really think about it in terms of how I perform, but rather how our entire department performs. Me doing 30 minutes of overtime putting together one of the car routes might mean the difference between that route being delivered that day or not, especially while we're so short-staffed. And everything I don't deliver today will just make putting the route together tomorrow slower. But this is b/c my managers, like, actually like me lol, and know that my performance is good -- my zero-hour contract means that whether I even get invited in depends entirely on need and "pärstäkertoin".
Honestly, previously when we were fully staffed, I worked like hell to put myself at the top of the "list of people we make full-time if someone quits", but right before a bunch of people did quit, the call came in that there would be no more putting people on mandatory-minimum contracts, and everyone new would be on a zero-hour agreement like the one I was on. The biggest reason I was so comfortable giving such precise demands this fall was b/c I knew they wouldn't be able to replace me if I did decide I was being condescended to.
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The problem, for me, is that long days like this pretty much invariably trigger a train crash of prioritisation problems. The indoor work recipe we use implicitly prioritises the completion of car routes over bike routes, meaning that my first instinct is to finish putting together everything that isn't mine before I can leave, and because I have such a hard time transitioning from one activity to another, that easily turns into an unmanageable amount of overtime. Over the fall, I actually did refuse to do overtime (I actually gave our new manager an ultimatum at the time -- give me over 20 hours a week or don't bother, and if you want me doing long days, actually put it in the schedule instead of counting me doing 9hrs on a 6hr day) but that only made me feel like I was doing a bad job, and wasn't worth the hit to my satisfaction over my own performance.
So, no, I wouldn't personally be penalised if I just let the backlog accumulate, but I also don't really think about it in terms of how I perform, but rather how our entire department performs. Me doing 30 minutes of overtime putting together one of the car routes might mean the difference between that route being delivered that day or not, especially while we're so short-staffed. And everything I don't deliver today will just make putting the route together tomorrow slower. But this is b/c my managers, like, actually like me lol, and know that my performance is good -- my zero-hour contract means that whether I even get invited in depends entirely on need and "pärstäkertoin".
Honestly, previously when we were fully staffed, I worked like hell to put myself at the top of the "list of people we make full-time if someone quits", but right before a bunch of people did quit, the call came in that there would be no more putting people on mandatory-minimum contracts, and everyone new would be on a zero-hour agreement like the one I was on. The biggest reason I was so comfortable giving such precise demands this fall was b/c I knew they wouldn't be able to replace me if I did decide I was being condescended to.