- Joined
- Feb 9, 2017
- Messages
- 5,289
This is so like my experience, in that nothing could get done. And the bottom line was we were forced to do garbage work. Trying to make sows ears into silk purses and being blamed when it took too long or didn’t work. The majority of the guys I worked with had the attitude “they don’t pay me enough to care” or just too stupid to care. For me being set up to fail is soul crushing. They didn’t pay enough for that to have anything but embarrassment for selling my labor so cheap. But when I got to work directly with certain engineers and we solved problems (one that had been ongoing for 16yrs) it was deeply satisfying. Put up with the insanity for 5yrs till when they cut our benefits and out of 230 outraged whiners I was the only one who walked. Punched out at lunch and took my tools never to darken their doorway again. It felt like that poster that was big in the 60’s and 70’s of the mouse giving the eagle the bird as it bears down on him. Luckily it worked out and I’m way better off.LOL, I'm right? Drink.
What I experienced at my last job was "design by committee". Building armored vehicles. In one building they were designing the cab's armor; another group off-site designed the doors. Nothing lined up. Nothing fit. The guys in assembly had been told to meet a deadline. Through a major effort (or threats) they got the "engineers" down on the shop floor. I thought there was going to be a fist fight. The purchasing department even got in on it. They had ordered metric bolts, the "committee" had specified U.S threads. The "committee" accused the assemblers of cross-threading the fasteners on what few holes looked like they lined up. Within a month they stuck the fork in and blew the contract.
Solution?
They closed the Cincinnati site and moved their operation to Texas. Layed off everyone...except the "committees". They took them to Texas with them.
American manufacturing drove me to retire after that.
It really galls me when I hear this that there is a labor shortage and people are just lazy like on the major networks and on supposed pro worker shows and podcasts by stars. Even though he might have played a guy who did that job, he has no clue what it’s like to have to work that job because you have a family, bills, mortgage etc and have to stay there. Getting ground up by all the different aspects of life. But I’ve been out of punching a clock for over 20yrs now so what do I know?