2 Weeks Down

I started my first week at Intelligencer Printing Company in the customer service department. Customer service is comprised of several sections, including estimating, sales service, production planning, sales and scheduling. My cubicle is located with Team 2 of production planning-Don, Hilton, Susan and Rick-but I've done work in most of the sections of CS, but not scheduling (I get to do that later), and sales (because the sales reps don't work at the plant).

Intell is working hard to ensure that we (the interns) get to see and understand every aspect of their company. The company president Mike likes to include us in meetings and likes to check up on us from time to time. Thursday morning is the "Thursday Morning Breakfast Club" at the Eden hotel next door to the plant. Don't let the name fool you, this breakfast club is nowhere as fun as the movie. A group of managers meets for breakfast at the hotel and discusses the jobs the plant loses money on and tries to figure out patterns in order to figure out why they're losing money.  We had to go to that last week because our CS boss wanted us to be able to look at a job from a numbers perspective and find out what went wrong. On Friday, we were included in another meeting with all of the managers. They meet every 6 weeks or so and talk about problems within the company. Last week, they talked about what they are going to do about those problems. Each manager has a team of people from all around the plant that they've chosen to come up with solutions to problems. 

This week was spent in pre-press (or prep or desktop, depending on who you talk to). A majority of the time was spent with Greg, who is the color trouble shooter. He is, according to Mike, the best at what he does. He looks at press sheets and compares them to proofs, then figures out what to do to make the press sheets look like the proofs. It's pretty interesting watching him work. We also were allowed to do jobs and prep them for printing, which was pretty cool. We have one more week in prep and then we head to the press room.

For Labor Day, we're heading over to Hilton's house for a cookout.

Have a good long weekend (for those of you who work)!

This is all for G-ma.

So she better read it. 

I'm here in Lancaster, PA. I suppose I should start at the beginning of our trip.

On Thursday morning, mom and I got going at around 9 am and headed north. We drove through NC and VA on Thursday.  We stopped in Harrisonburg, home of James Madison University and Eastern Mennonite University, on Thursday night. JMU is beautiful and has a sprawling campus with a really cool quad type of area with all of the old admin buildings and amazing grass. Really amazing grass. 

On the way up on Thursday, Intell's president called me and basically told me to get to Lancaster by 11 am the next day. So on Friday, we got up early and headed to PA. The road up through there (I-81?) is funny because you go through WV for about half an hour and then MD for not much longer. It's very quick after spending so long in VA. Anyhow, we drove through PA and had dueling directions: AAA vs. GPS (sorry, GPA would NOT have been able to help us, though he would have tried). We chose to stick with AAA directions, which took us through every small town and traffic jam possible, but we got there right on time. The first thing we did was force the president of the company to walk to my apartment because he couldn't fit in my car. Fortunately, he's a good sport about just about everything (except being late), and insisted that he could carry some of my stuff inside. After that, we took a plant tour and then went to lunch at the company's restaurant. 

Mom stayed the weekend and on Saturday we went to the downtown market. They have food and flowers and amish quilts and crafts and all sorts of things. Also, we went to the quilt museum. All of the quilts in the gift shop are hand quilted by local Amish women.  After that we went driving toward Intercourse, where there was a community auction. One side of the road had parking for cars, while the other side had buggy parking. Honestly, you think people make up the Amish way of life, but it's the truth. That evening we went to the local farm team's game, the Lancaster "Barnstormers," who took the first inning 10-0. We didn't stay long after that. 

On Sunday, mom went home.

Monday was the first day of work. We (Kirsten and I) had to go get drug screens, then we had lunch with the company's president again. That afternoon, we went to the Mailing and Fulfillment center, which is a very interesting place to see, but I got sick. I don't know what was wrong with me, and they took me home. I took a 2 hour nap, and then I slept 12 hours that night, which was excellent. 

mmkay?

Here are some pictures:

My apartment

This is the Barnstormer's stadium:

And the train station: