Little Do They Know...

So, this hearkens back to my posts at the beginning of last semester. Ya'll remember, where I was complaining about how hard college was.

One of the requirements in the horse-oriented programs is Feed Crew. Ya'll have seen me complain about it. It's a pain in the butt when no one does anything during the day to help out the feed crew, and everyone wants to complain about how much their horse was watered, or fed.

Well, this week I'm a supervisor. I should say the supervisor, because my so-called partner does precisely squat on the supervisory side of things. It isn't helped by the fact that I have the only set of keys for feed crew that wasn't carted off to the rodeo this weekend, because instead of leaving them in the office like she was supposed to one of the last supervisors gave them to one of the crew to give to the other supervisor and he didn't get it done before he went off to the rodeo.

So, I get there fifteen to thirty minutes early, unlock the gates and the office, make sure the sign in sheet is on the right page, sign in myself, set up the coffee maker for the instructors, and start feeding. Usually all before anyone else gets there.

I've got one girl that likes to finish what she's doing and then leave if no one is watching. I suppose I should be glad she bothers to finish what she's doing. So, last night, she told me "I have to sign in and then I have to go feed a rodeo horse."

"No, you can feed the rodeo horse after we're done here."

"But I'll forget!"

"I'll remind you, because you're going to be here when everything is done tonight, right?"

I was checking the pens in back when she finished up watering, drained the hose and left it piled.

"Ok, I'm done!"

"No, you still have to coil the hose."

"But it's fine."

"Um. No, it's not. It doesn't have to be perfect but it does have to be neat."

"But it's not tangled!"

"It's my ass that will get chewed if JJ or Jason comes back and checks up on us and things are a mess."

"But-"

"The longer you argue with me the longer you'll be here."

So that pissed her off. Of course, she (and most of the others) don't treat this like a job, which is what it's supposed to be. Feed crew has a dual purpose... making sure that the horses get fed and watered, obviously, and job training. See, everyone gets to be a supervisor at some point, so they get the responsibility square on their shoulders, and everyone else gets to get experience under different supervisors with different management styles.

I, unlike most, if not all, of the other students, have actually had responsibility for what other people have done in a real life job setting. As a result, I'm a bit anal about everything getting done, and done right, every time.

If that pisses people off, well, welcome to the real world. I'm being a long shot nicer about things than I would be if it were a real job situation. I've been known to give real ass-chewings for the kinds of things that I've seen done on feed crews. But, I'm taking into account that some of these kids have never had to collect a paycheck to keep their car, or or their cell phone, or eat dinner that night. They don't have the experience. So, I'm trying to ease them into it gently.

And it's starting to give me a headache. At least this weekend I have a few people that I can trust to do the job without me having to watch them.

Oh, and I'm likely to be hailed as a bitch after this morning. One of the geldings in the block barn likes to kick the sides out of his stall, and this morning he had managed to get into the stall next door with a little mare, because no one bothered to put the boards back. So, I pulled him out of her stall and put him back in his, and used his halter to tie the grating so that he couldn't push it up and get back through. Then I left a note.

One of my crew asked me if I wanted to use twine to tie it.

"Nope, if we leave the halter in there they'll have to fix it. I don't want to be pulling him out of that stall every morning because they can't find the time to put the boards back, or the brains to move him either to a stall where he doesn't have neighbors or a pen outside."

I left a note in the office about it. We'll see if I get my butt chewed or not.