Earlier today, an email landed in my inbox.
"Congratulations - you have WON!", it said.
"Score," I thought, "How much? A million? Two million?"
No.. A measly 1050, which is admittedly a good sum of money, since I pay 395 a month.
You might think "Oh it's a scam! Don't fall for that", to which I say "Nu-uh, not so fast!".. This lottery is legit. It's one of those National lotteries that anyone in Denmark can participate in.
The amount I have written is in Danish kroner. In US freedom money, it would be $152,38 for the winning, and $57,33 a month to participate. What will I do with the money? I have always said to myself, that if my winnings is below 5000 Danish kroner ($725,64), I put them in my savings account. That's how I have always done it. The maximum you can win is 2 million ($290.257), but I never expect to win that amount. Would I like to win it? Sure. I think everybody would love to win the big one.
Talking about money, I made a choice a few months ago: Any money left over from my salary at the end of the month goes straight into my savings. It doesn't matter if it's 5 kroner or 5000 kroner. Whatever amount I have left is going straight to my savings account. It's a great way of saving up some money, and before you know it, your savings is pretty huge.
So yeah - you can now call me a multiple time lottery winner!
A few blogs ago, I talked about changing locations for work. Now, my plan is slowly taking shape.
As promised, my warehouse- and logistics manager pulled me aside today to have our conversation. I told him what my plans were.
January is when I will start. That is the most logical thing to do, instead of starting mid-November. The next thing I need to do, is figure out which department I want to work in. At the moment, I am an all-round employee, but I will not be that once I move. I will be assigned a specific area, and work there. I need to make up my mind where I want to work. We will meet up again after the summer holidays to talk further about where I want to be. These next few months will be spent going through each department, to find out where I am most comfortable. I might just ask my warehouse manager if I can have a few hours at OE, which is the original equipment. It's where any body part of a car gets checked for any sort of damage.
In any case, I'm gonna have a think and decide after the summer holidays. In any case, I WILL be moving
Ah yes, it is that time again! Time for an update to my preparations for my trip to the USA.
In this episode: A new place to visit, and what vaccine requirements I need to travel to the US.
Let's start with the vaccine requirements. My cousin advised me to look up the requirements for vaccines, when traveling to the USA. I have gotten three shots of the Pfizer. Two doses of the vaccine, as well as a booster shot, so I consider myself fully vaccinated. But how exactly does the CDC define "fully vaccinated"?
According to the CDC, fully vaccinated is "when you have completed a COVID-19 vaccine primary series and got the most recent booster dose recommended for you by CDC. If you have completed your primary series—but are not yet eligible for a booster—you are also considered up to date."
Seeing as I have two doses as well as the booster, I am fully up to date on my vaccine. I am still going to print out my vaccine documents, just in case they want to see my proof of vaccination.
Now that that is out of the way, I can turn my attention to what really matters: Places to visit.
I already have the basic touristy stuff planned: The White House, the Washington Monument and the Capitol building, but I have also been advised to go to what my cousin describes as the "best place on Earth to eat" - Cracker Barrel.
Now I know nothing - absolutely nothing - about Cracker Barrel, so I looked it up. The menu looks fantastic, and it seems like it's a reasonably priced place to get some food. I was also given VERY strict orders to bring home a Cracker Barrel branded mug for my cousin, since she's obsessed with the place. Her and her fiancée went to the US on their honeymoon, and they visited a Cracker Barrel. I only know Wendy's, Little Ceasars, Taco Bell, Del Taco and Popeyes, so I am always looking for new places to visit. If you live in or around the Alexandria, VA area, let me know what to try when I visit.
For now, however, time to save up some more money for the trip!
I can't wait!
As I wrote yesterday, I am set to move across the country at the end of this year. That involves a LOT of planning. Like.. A LOT!
Buying boxes, renting a car to haul said boxes AND furniture across the country and finding a place to live. I might have found the perfect place for me - an 18 square meter basement room, 30 minutes away from work. It's bigger AND cheaper than where I live now.
Before I move, I need to buy a few things. A chest of drawers, a TV stand and a bed. Luckily, IKEA has those things. I will add all those things into a shopping cart, and once I can afford it, I'm gonna buy it. People tell me to wait buying those things until I am situated in the new place, but it's unfurnished - and I need a bed to sleep in.
In any case, I'm looking forward to my move! It's gonna be good!
I pulled him aside today and said I would like to talk to him, about my exit from where I am working now. We are gonna sit down at the end of the month, and form a plan for how it's going to unfold.
Long story short - my time at my current place of work is slowly coming to an end. By the time it ends, I will have been there for just over a year. One year and three months, to be exact.
"But Philipsen, what will you do now?", I hear you ask.. You might also ask "Did you get fired?".. I did not get fired. It's my own desire to end working there. What I will do when my time is ending where I am now, is move to another department, in the same company.
I am not quitting my job, don't worry. I am just changing locations. My future place of employment will be at the headquarters, which is friggin' huge! 24500 square meters. For any of you people who use square feet, it's 263715 square feet. 14 massive buildings. Dude, it's massive! I went there for the company Christmas party, and it was pretty intimidating.
Anyway, the conversation that I am having with my logistics- and warehouse manager is just to iron out the small details - when I am moving, what I will do and what my assignments will be. I would love to continue to do the same as I do now, but it all depends on what he has in mind. Where he thinks I will fit in. He said something about evening shifts, which is from noon to 10 pm. It's a 10 hour shift, which means I will have Fridays off. That suits me well, so I am thinking that's what I want to aim for. It all looks very bright for me at the company. I love what I do, and I love coming to work every day.
Be honest.. You thought this blog was about something completely different, right?
Yesterday, my work day effectively ended at 3.30 pm. That's when I couldn't do any form of work, except close some cardboard boxes and put them on a truck to be distributed across Denmark. Naturally, my first thought this morning was "Is it working today? Or will this be a VERY long day?"
Every morning, before I enter the building where i work, I walk by a big garage door, where I can see if people work, or if they are standing still. I am not a religious man, but a part of me prayed that we would be up and running. As I looked through the window in the garage door, I saw one of my coworkers bring empty boxes back to the autostore - which could only mean one thing: We were back to normal.
Sure enough, as I entered the building, I saw the new hire working. The next thing I looked for was how the order screen looked.
Surprisingly, it looked like it usually does on Fridays: Half empty. I then asked one of the supervisors if it was chaos when they came in at 6 am. "No, everything was fine".
Today was therefore, back to normal. It was slow, as usual on a Friday. It was a completely different system today. Everything worked faster. I am curious to know what caused the outage.
I suspect a server got fried. I will ask on Monday
You know the type of days. Where things start off bad, gets better during the day only to implode at the end. One of those days you just want to forget.
This morning, my scanner-login didn't work, so my supervisor phoned IT to hear what the issue was. The issue was resolved quickly - my password had expired. I got a new password, which was my previous password, and then I went on my way.
The day got better from there.. Well, up until 3.30 pm, where the entire system decided to just stop working. Nothing worked, and it still didn't work when I went home at 5 pm. We couldn't process new orders, because the system crash was so bad, it affected the order screen. Luckily it didn't affect the drivers - they left at 2:50 pm.
Now I'm curious to see if it works tomorrow, or if the breakdown is so severe, that it requires days of fixing and troubleshooting.
A few weeks ago, I got a new coworker. A young woman, who is in her early twenties. She has previous experience, because she worked for the competition before coming to us.
At this point, she's been there for about a month, and she's managed to be late 80% of the days. Today, she was an hour and a half late, and she took a longer lunch break as well. I admit, my lunch breaks are not always 30 minutes. Sometimes they are 35 minutes. But 45 minutes? No.. Just.. No.. So managing to be late, as well as taking a longer lunch break, is not good, no matter how you cut it.
Now include being slow with getting the items over to the drivers and taking too many small breaks, and you have a recipe for a dismissal, at worst. A write-up, at best. I have tried to give her some tips regarding being quicker with getting the items over to the drivers, but I'm not sure she listens to me.
Time will tell if she's going to stay there. I hope she does, because she's a nice girl, who I have some good conversations with. But, sadly, nice isn't always the way forward. Sometimes you need to show that you really WANT to work.
So far, I haven't seen that..
Good morning! It's currently 9:32 am as I am typing this. I hope everyone has had a safe and good New Years eve, with no missing limbs, fingers or eyes.
For me, it was a quiet night in. I made some food, watched some movies and played some video games. I also nailed down another thing I want to see while I am in the USA. More on that later on.
I have so many plans this year. Learning how to bake, moving across the country, making new friends, possibly also meeting someone special. This is also the year where I want to save up more money, so I can afford certain things.
But one thing IS for sure: we are in 2023. It's the beginning of a brand new year. What you do with it, is up to you.
Happy New Year!
First of all, Merry Christmas! It's hard to imagine that 2023 is 8 days away.. Anyway..
This week started off bad, but ended up rather boring. Let me explain why it started bad.
Monday evening, after I came home from work, I felt something in my back pocket of my work trousers. I reached back to find out what it was - only to feel the key for the sliding door into the customer section of the warehouse, as well as the roller shutters.. "Oh you have GOT to be kidding me", was my first thought. I then decided to phone my supervisor, to let him know what I had done. Taking the key home with me is as bad as it gets. Without the key, no customers can come into the warehouse, and the drivers can't go on their deliveries.
I told my supervisor what I had done, and I expected him to get angry with me, but he didn't. "If you can get to work tomorrow morning at about 8 am, I think we can salvage the situation". I hung up the phone, and immediately went to an online journey planner, to see how early I was able to be there - 7 am, it said. So, I came in at 7 am, to a literal hazing - led by the regional manager for the company. It was all in good fun, though. Nothing mean spirited. Apart from that, the week has slowly been slowing down. The new girl at work is getting better and better, with my guidance and tutoring. The aim is for her to be fully comfortable with the AutoStore in 6 months. So far, with less than a month of experience, she's really getting the hang of it. Now she just needs to improve her speed, and she'll be absolutely crushing it!
She's super friendly, and very down to earth. And before you start, she is dating someone, and has been for three years. It's as permanent as it gets.
Now, the rest of the week went by with not much drama or that many mistakes. Today ended up being VERY slow. So slow that we ran out of things to do, so I was sent home about 30 minutes before my shift ended, because we had that little to do. I'm now sitting at home, relaxing and recharging my batteries for tomorrow, where I have to spend time with the family for Christmas Eve. It's gonna be fun and full of good food! I can't wait for that!
I have had the most expensive month ever - and we're only 5 days into the month.
Last week, I went to the company Christmas party. We took a taxi from work to the local train station. That was DKK 232. We arrived at Copenhagen Central Station, and I bought a pizza slice and a coke. That was DKK 59.50. So far, we're at DKK 291.50, and it's not even 1 pm.
We arrived at our destination a few hours later, and we checked into the hotel. It should be noted, that the trip and the hotel was paid by the employer.
Anyway.. The trip home the following was train to a place called Skanderborg, a replacement bus service from Skanderborg to Fredericia, and then the train from Fredericia to Copenhagen. To which a coworker and I said "Nah, screw that. We'll take the bus home!"
I bought two tickets, but got refunded one of them by my coworker. That ticket was DKK 279 each, which included the ferry. We are now at DKK 570.50. On the way to the bus, I went and bought something to drink. That was DKK 16.5 I then needed something to eat on the ferry. The burger menu I had was DKK 139. New total: DKK 726.
A few hours later, I was home. I had to do some food shopping, which was DKK 284.50. New total: DKK 1010.50.
We're now heading into Sunday. Time for Christmas Present shopping.
The first item was a pair of dolls for my youngest niece. DKK 498 for that. I then had to buy something for my brother, which was DKK 699. Next up was two books for my other niece, which was DKK 340. Finally, I spent DKK 500 on a gift certificate for my sister. The final expense on the Sunday was DKK 97 on some food, bringing my total spend to a mammoth DKK 3144.50, which is $443/£364/€422..
By FAR my most expensive weekend ever, and it really shows just how expensive Christmas can be...
I REALLY hope they like all their gifts..
Plain and simple - awful.
Traffic was awful. The bus was awful, because it was late. The autostore at work was awful, because for some reason it flat out refused to pick the orders that was needed. At 9 am, I had four orders for 9.20 am, yet the autostore refused to pick those. Instead, it picked orders for 10.30 and 11.30 am..
The only good thing was lunch. Today's just been plain awful.
Hopefully tomorrow's gonna be better. It's Thursday, so almost the weekend!
It cannot come soon enough..
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