Work... (sigh)

Single-pole frames.




Week of 15-19: Not much work for my area appearing on the dispatch, so I spent 35 hours working in other areas.

Last Friday (19th): was told that the guy assigning the work screwed up: lots of work piled up. And could I come in on Saturday? I did.

Monday: noted a few jobs now on the dispatch. Worked 8 hours, as no one asked for more. Figured it was enough.

Tuesday: Came in to find a note from boss #1 saying, "Must have four-poles. Hot Job!" Sigh, as I had just been doing four-poles on Fri, then had switched over to one-poles. It takes four hours of teardown and reassembly to switch machines back. I do that, then run four-poles for 90 minutes. Boss #2 comes over and bitches me out for running them. Turns out, boss #1 told me to run the wrong parts; I was supposed to run two-poles. Get treated like it's my fault. I tell him it'll take four hours to change over to those, and I'll need overtime. (By this time, I'd been there seven hours.) He simply walks away, without approving or disapproving it. Boss #3 tells me to stay late that night, then I'm to come in at noon for awhile: they're going to have someone run my area in the morning, and I'll work noon-10:30, to get caught-up. I work 12 hours that day to get the job set-up for the guy in the morning. It turns out we're way behind.

Wednesday: get called at 6:38 am. They couldn't get the guy to run them in the morning, so I had to come in. Arrive by 8am, find someone else running my machines. This guy hadn't run them in 15 years, and was having a hard time, so he was glad I'd been called. I didn't have the heart to tell him he'd run mostly scrap. Run out two-poles, get halfway through set-up for one-poles. Ten hour day.

Thursday: Come in to find out that my two-poles hadn't been sent to the plating company on time. Apparently, there had been a "blow-out" over this. Though no one blames me for it, it's a sign of the chaos surrounding this place. I complete changover to one-poles, and run a bunch of them. Twelve hour day.

Friday: Notice orders on dispatch are running out, despite supposed need for 28,000 frames this week. I can't send parts out without orders. It's been a full week since any new orders have come in, and it's been three days since I pointed out the discrepancy. Still, no new orders. Decide to quit after 8 hours, and get bitched out by boss #3 for not continuing to make parts. White board in department says "Follow Your Dispatch." Boss #3 says, "It doesn't matter what the dispatch says. When they tell you to make 28,000 frames, you make them." Boss #3 goes to check on exactly how many parts are necessary. When he's gone doing that, I leave.

From now on, I'm following only the dispatch. These people are morons. Boss #1 is nice enough, but couldn't be bothered to get clarification on which parts I was to run. Boss #2 is a guy in his twenties, and part of corporates "Leadership Training Program." They send college grads to different factories, where they learn how to treat everyone below them as dispensable pieces of garbage. (Which is how he treated me.) Boss #3 is the boss of 2nd shift, which is why he came in so late to the story on Friday, literally ten minutes before quitting time. I used to be on that shift, so he had been my boss back then. Now that I'm not on that shift, he still thinks he's my boss. (Rumor has it that he is on his way out the door. We used to have 25 people on that shift. Now we have five. No wonder he's still trying to be my boss. Do you really need a supervisor--and a line leader--for five people?)


We recently had 15 people retire. Another 25 were laid-off. Out of those 40 people, not one of them was a supervisor, line-lead, planner, or coordinator. They were all workers, like me.

No wonder they can't get anything done.