The Shop Supervisor

Most of the time I consider the time in the shop to be my "me" time.

Time to my self, away from the hassles of the day, to dream and create anything that pops into my head.

On a really tough day, the thought that I will be able to have some of that precious shop time later that night always keeps me going.

For the vast majority of the time, I am alone, tinkering away on my vision. But every once in a while I do get my puttering interrupted by a bit of verbal feedback concerning the progress of my projects from the shop floor.

The shop supervisor has arrived.

Now I usually can just appease him with some well-placed scratches under the chin, and maybe a few cat treats and then he goes on his way, but sometimes he really wants to closely inspect the work in progress to ensure that I'm not up to no good.

That's where it can get a bit tricky. There have been a few occasions where a paw has accidentally stepped into an open paint can, which sometimes requires a bit of a chase around the house in order to get him cleaned up - at least one good thing it's easy to find him since I just need to follow the trail of paw prints through the house.

Thankfully this is a fairly rare occasion, most of the time the supervisor is there to provide a welcome break and to give a friendly hello.

Then, of course, there's the yard supervisor.

While it seems that his main task to keep the job site free of bugs and any rogue leaves, he always wants to be near the action and the occupational hazards seem to be the same as the shop supervisor - why is freshly painted items so attractive to them?

His greatest value comes when I need to wrangle a measuring tape. he is quite vigilant to make sure that the end of my tape measure does not escape when I am trying to retract the tape back into its case.

Needless to say, no harm is done and everyone gets to go home happy.

So in retrospect, perhaps the shop time is not really my "me" time after all. In reality, is it is where I can spend some time with good friends doing what we love.