Overtime

7/13/03

While we were qwerty-ing at the Ranger Station a woman came into the office and asked if we were working. I responded, ‘no’ and then she asked if we wanted to work. ‘On what?’ I asked. She needed someone to drive to a campground to deliver a message to the fire crew. She said there was 2 hours of overtime in it, followed by a ‘ching.’ I told here that we didn’t care about the money but that if she needed someone to do the job, we would. The phone rang and she left for a minute.

Seconds later our bunkhouse-mate and another FS employee walked in. I asked them if they wanted 2 hours of overtime–they did and wondered if that was the reason we were here too. Somehow they got wind of the overtime possibility and pounced on it. I told them she just asked us to do it, but we’d happily have them do it.

I’m still confused why anyone would want to work overtime. I’m more interested in a part time job that pays a proportionate amount of money to full time. (40 hours = 100% pay, so 30 hours = 75% pay, but it rarely works that way since 30 isn’t the magical and arbitrary “full time.”). People have their reasons, I suppose.

Later we found out the woman who asked us about the job was the District Ranger.