You didn't really lose any money. You just paid your taxes with it. But I see the point. You could have been home that day and made the $200 on UI.
These are the little things we do because we are hired to do them. Yeah, working part of a week almost never gets you ahead of unemployment, but the bottom line is that you got hired to work a job. You worked the job. That $180 actually counted as $200 in wages toward your next unemployment claim, so it wasn't totally for nothing that you put in those 8 hours.
Let's step back a little and see the Big Picture for a moment.
Unc has a long distinguished career as a first-string tech. For all I know, so does everyone here. But the days are gone when you can work two or three outages a year and still wish you had more time off. The plan of working a small circuit of plants - where you go every time and are remembered - doesn't work anymore. Now, the reality sets in that, although you have worked at a particular plant for 12 straight outages, you may not have actually been all that important to their success, and all the whining and demanding you do on the phone will not change that. There has to be more coming from you than what you want.
If you want to go to a SC, go ahead, but do it BEFORE the staffing process is done. Let him know that you would really appreciate a word from him when the time comes to fill the slots at the next outage. But if you have already been told by the office that the outage is staffed, you waited too long and you are now in the mode of being the pushy, selfish, all-for-me kind of tech that nobody wants to help out.
Yes, a lot of the recruiters are new. They don't know Jim-Bob from Bo Diddley. That does not meant that you should circumvent them. If a SC knows more about what the staffing needs at a site are than the recruiter does, YOU are NOT the first person he needs to tell. When a SC knows what a recruiter does not know, it is his job to tell the recruiter.
I really don't know of any other profession where the networking opportunities are any better than this. If you can't work this out with the tools you have - like NukeWorker, or just the tightness of the community you are in - you ought to try learning how. Just consider for a short moment the fact that many of us have been given certain considerations that we are totally NOT entitled to for so long that we start to feel that we are. A prime example is the statement "there were four in my party". Although it is not unique just to RP's for coworkers to travel in pairs, it is rather unique the way it is accommodated. In the trades, it is common for craftsmen to have a work partner. The travel together, split the costs of lodging, carpool, and take their layoff at the same time. But they are almost always paired at the same level of competency. A Journeyman Pipefitter won't have an apprentice Boilermaker for a partner. When fathers and sons or brothers work the same job, they normally split and have someone else as a work partner. We, on the other hand, work as a Senior RP tech and get the company to hire our wives, nephews, daughters, girlfriends, and worthless sons-in-law as deconners or firewatches. Then we expect them to schedule the whole clan as a block at the same outage, on the same shift, and with the same hire-in and layoff dates. And they DO it!!! Pretty nice of them to work around the bulk of our various relationships, but they are under no obligation to do it. Many is the time I heard my old foreman groan while going through the resume stack, "I'd like to have her back, but then we'd have to take him along with her."
That one consideration, which does not apply to everyone, is great big proof that the companies have been willing to adjust their priorities to meet our personal needs for years. None of us has ever had the right to double dip by "dragging along" someone else to every job, but it has become the norm. And just listen to how we repay the kindness.
The point?
Give them a reason to help you out.
Make them want you to get what you want.
Be the person who makes the person on the other end of the phone smile instead of groan when you name is on their caller id.
If asking for consideration, such as being paired with someone else, make sure that you offer equal consideration in return, such as being as valuable to the job as your girlfriend is instead of letting her work carry both of you.
Have something more to offer than a list of your demands.
Accept that sometimes things will not work out the way you were planning, and accept that it might actually work out better for you if they don't.
Respect? You want respect? Why not? But I have NEVER experienced the desire to respect anyone based solely on his demanding it. Have you? Usually, it works the other way. Most of the time, I find that I respect those who show it to me. That is all I'm asking. Show some respect and you will be pleased at the result.
