3/27/20 Little Rule To Use For My Advantage?

    I always like to think myself the underdog who gets screwed in every deal, but last night our big boss put out a corona virus memo that had a few new rules we were probably going to learn to live by.  I liked the one that said we can go home if there is no work in our department.  Usually, when we don't have work, and that only happens about once a month or so, usually after the big holidays our customers are just slow to get into their routines.  Lately, though, it feels like we might be getting the best of the workload.  It has become unusual to have a lot of work every night of the week.  Maybe on Monday and Tuesday we have to dig ourselves out of a handful of jobs that get submitted at the end of the week and over the weekend, but usually by Wednesday and Thursday, it is down to enough work to stay busy through our shift.
    Last night I walked into three jobs that had already been prepped, I only had to run them on the analysis tool, which the eight samples took like two and a half hours.  I don't usually read my email at the start of the shift, and when I have a little bit of work, I end up messing around watching YouTube videos or running over and getting coffee, making calls, or sometimes just even hanging out and conversing with the cleaning crew.  I was actually hoping to see about this need for a note from our managers to travel to and from work, according to Facebook, the cops might stop you going back and forth on the road, to see if you have business out and about.  This sure sounds like being under martial law or some police state nightmare, but I get it.  Too many stupid people are still running around trying to live life as normal and this is not the time for that.
    I did not find anything mentioning the note, but the note about being able to go home shined "like a diamond" as that stupid song says (I know diamonds don't shine, they reflect).  At once, I quit screwing around and started on my work, it was Boy's birthday and I would have liked to stay home and celebrate and eat turkey and the trimmings with them, specially since we aren't getting together with family on the weekend, like we usually do.  I didn't want to ask our manager directly, but I didn't have many options so I sent her a text before 10:00pm.  I was already halfway done with my work, so time was running out.  She responded thirty minutes later and said yes, we can go home and get paid, but that is doubtful to happen, there is always work.  I told her not in our section.  There was a job I would have done listed on our workload, but it wasn't physically there.  There were also two other jobs, but I haven't learned how to prep them, so they don't fall on me.
    After a little back and forth, she said fine, go home, just leave a passdown.  I couldn't believe it was that easy.  I only hope we can do this more than once.  Shoot, I'll run both tools in the room if it means I can leave early.  Now that I have the rules figured out, I won't be asking every time.  Sometimes all we can do is find our silver linings.