Last Weekend and Some End of Season Thoughts

Location: Louisville, KY (High 54 , Low 49)

We are sitting here this morning enjoying a cup of coffee and happy to be having our last weekend of this Amazon peak season. We are going to start getting our stuff packed up and ready to pull out on Sunday morning. From the weather report, it also looks like we may get to “enjoy” a little last minute snow on Saturday before we start on our journey south. (Really, Mother Nature, you didn’t have to give us a going away present!)

I was thinking yesterday about what a different season it’s been this year. Coming to Jeffersonville in the middle of peak was definitely an unexpected turn of events. The two facilities are very different, but it’s hard to make a straight comparison since we were not working in the same department in each one.

When we started in Receiving back in September, there was basically no transition time needed. We were doing the same job that we were last year, and we fell back into the swing of things like we had never been gone. The work was hard and physically demanding, but we were not quite as sore as we had been last year. We loved staying at Heartland Campground right across the street. It was so nice to just walk out in the morning and walk right over to work. We also discovered that we really enjoyed eating at the local college in town and ate there at least twice a week most of the season.

Then came the move to Jeffersonville on November 22nd. We are parked in the Expo Center which really wasn’t a huge transition from Heartland. haha  (We went from gravel to concrete.)

 

The facility move was a transition though. It was like moving from a small country high school to a big urban college.  If we had started at Jeffersonville (SDF8) without ever having been to Campbellsville (SDF1), we probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Everything at SDF1 is so small and personal. The managers know who you are and make small talk, etc. Training is done differently, assignments are done by name. It’s just smaller. At SDF8, it is so huge and there are so many people, that we are just one of many. We don’t even know what our manager looks like, and as far as we know, we haven’t talked to him.

Is it horrible? No. It is just more impersonal than we are used to. Are we sorry we came? No. It has been good to see how things are done in another facility, and of course the extra money doesn’t hurt either. Would we come back? (It has been said that they are going to have a camperforce program here in the future.) Well, with that ol’ caveat “never say never”…no, at this time, we would not want to come back here to work for a season. Although some people do like it here and have stated that they would come back. Some people like the urban setting. Some like that the facility is newer and cleaner. Some like that the product lines of clothing and jewelry make the work less physically taxing. We like all of those things, but the bottom line for us is that we like the smaller rural area/atmosphere of Campbellsville better.

For those who are interested, I will do another post in a few weeks with all of the financial/numbers “stuff”. Our last paycheck won’t be until January so it will be after that.

Six days until departure day!!!