Saturday, 9:47 am.

At Work.

I thought I had left behind this “working on the weekend” stuff when I left my last retail job – I worked at Pitchfork Records from ’92 to ’94. Anyone remember Pitchfork Records?

At any rate. . .

Occasionally, my job requires me to work off hours for various reasons. Today, I have to run a test on an ink that a customer complained about. This requires me to purge all of the ink out of our lab machine and put the “problem ink” into the machine so I can print test it. This process takes a few hours. Since this particular lab machine gets heavy use by my team of print specialists, I wasn’t able to do this during the week. Hence, I am here on a weekend when nobody is around.

A close-up of the printhead being purged

Since I’m on salary, I don’t get any overtime for, so I usually take some comp time for myself (its good to be the boss!). So, I exchanged a Friday afternoon for a Saturday morning.

It isn’t so bad. Most of the time is waiting for the machine to finish purging, so I am able to catch up on some emails and other minor things, and I even have some time to screw around on the ‘Net – like i’m doing now.

Overview of the print machine

Its not so bad. Just need a cup of coffee, sneak out for an occasional pipe, and I’m good to go. Its almost 10:30 now, and this is taking a bit longer than I anticipated. I hope I can get out of here by 2. grrr. . .

UPDATE: Okay, 5 pm and I’m back. I left for awhile while I was waiting for the machine to purge the second time. Its such a time-consuming process. I’m probably back here for another hour while I finish the ink changeover, make my sample prints, and get everything together for Monday. Blah, a whole Saturday shot.