Heaters

So three of the six heaters in my unit aren't working. I mentioned in my previous post that the heater in my room wasn't working, but it turns out the heater in my roommates room isn't working, and the main heater in the living room is also not working. The currently operational heaters are the bathroom heater, the front hallway heater, and a secondary heater in the living room.

We had someone drop in, but when he saw my roommate's heater, he said it was electric, and he only does gas heaters. I showed him the main living room heater, which apparently is gas, and he went to work. He managed to make it start up, and after he left, I noticed that the switch on our control panel had one turned off. So I flipped the switch, and me and my roommates heaters started working again.

All six heaters were working. What a wonderful world.

But then I noticed that the control panel switch for me and my roommate's heaters switched off. Tried again and it did so again. The problem wasn't the heaters, it was the control switch. So I put a nail in the wall next to the control panel, and I wrapped a rubber band around it and the switch to force the switch in place (you may remember I used a similar technique to make my cell phone charge when it was having charge port troubles).

Unfortunately, even though the switch remained in place, the heaters would stop working after about fifteen minutes. To get them started again, you had to flip the switch off, then on again. Now obviously, it's pretty well impossible to do that when you're asleep.

Overnight, the gas heater stopped working again. So we were back to our original dilemma.

I decided to buy an electric heater for my room. I don't know anything about the heater scene, I see that prices range from about $30 to $100 and are indicated as to what size room they are most suited for. I got the $70 Mainstay Infrared Tower for medium-large rooms. Turned it on and it created this abysmal groaning sound. I can handle humming, buzzing, clicking, gurgling, and whirring, but this is a terrible grinding noise. So awful, I wonder which is worse, the cold or the noise. When applying for temp work, I was asked to indicate which environments were preferable compared to others. I answered that a cold environment was preferable to a noisy one.

I don't know if this is standard, but I know none of my other heaters groaned up this racket. So I get another one, same day. The Sunbeam 17 Inch Ceramic Tower. This baby purrs like a kitten, it has six settings instead of two, and it has an option to use a built-in thermometer to turn on and off to maintain your desired temperature. It's also more compact, and claims to be 10% more efficient with electricity usage than regular electric heaters. So if any of my readers are looking into getting a heater, Sunbeam smashes Mainstay in this respect.

Let me tell you about the work I've done over the past week.

I've acted as a warehouse worker, helping load stuff onto trucks because the warehouse we were in was going to be rented to someone else in a few days. After we got everything out of there, I was tasked by the same company to organize things and disassemble stuff so that they may be more easily transported out of a new warehouse, which now belonged to them but was full of the previous owners things.

I'm loving the Kitchener industrial scene so far. I think I already mentioned that my previous gig at the lubricant packaging factory was manned by like, two guys and went at an extremely relaxed pace. This gig was also two people, and we were only moving things when the truck appeared, and there was only one truck, so when he was delivering, we were left to our own devices.

I mean, this job has me lugging heavy objects on the regular, but realtalk, I would rather have a job that required me to be strong than required me to be fast.

Some of the guys from the warehouse I just unpacked were telling stories of what their work was like before relocating. They were talking about how they had no work, so they hooked up a TV, built a bed, and watched nine seasons of Supernatural over time.

They said they would send emails to their superiors saying "We're watching TV and taking naps" and the response was that they needed them to be available in case they needed something.

They are next to a high-end grocery and were talking about how they would go to their stirfry station every lunch. They pay very competitively. They pay me more than any other temp job has offered.

It sucks because this warehouse was in my neighbourhood. If I had stepped onto the scene a bit earlier, it could be me watching TV on my work bed, with my steel-toed shoes, eating stir-fry and making bank all the same.