The office: Chatter about your job

We had a meeting today at work regarding the possible US government shutdown. Most of our department, myself included, have been deemed "essential". This means that not only will we be expected to work (without pay) during the shutdown if it happens, our vacation time will be canceled. Even if that time is use-or-lose like the two days I'm supposed to have off next week. This totally sucks.

Well, that answers one of the questions I had...I was supposed to be off through the 2nd, which means if this lasts into next week I'm going to have to reschedule a visit to the dentist.

Edited by Willbyr on Dec 24th 2018 at 2:06:41 PM

Well, it has finally come to pass. The place I have literally bled, sweat, and cried for has become such an intolerable shit hole from my personal position I am punching out ASAP. The client point of contact also my site boss has been letting his personal power go to his head. He has been increasingly dickish and condescending to me and other guards that have shown up it isn't worth it. He has been the epitome of hostile and uncooperative client the office is likely willing to cut the account loose.

They are not a high-value account, not attached to a big national account, not a rider or affiliated business on another account. They are a penny ante-post, and a dime a dozen. Part of the value of a site for contacts is based on the total number of guards, training, tasks, and hours worked. The client has been trying to hide what I do by not letting my company see the SOP, won't have the contractual monthly meetings, hasn't gotten any updated training for me, and in general just being a pushy asshole.

So when I brought my complaints of ill-treatment to my field supervisor on Saturday and it was passed to our account manager. Said account manager already has them high on his personal shit list so they have effectively already greenlit me transferring out. The chance of them pulling out is pretty high because the account has become so toxic. The poor cleaning crew and even their own directly hired staff are affected by their abuse as well. Basically, the cheap fucks refuse to fork over some cash to reinvest in their contractor and personnel cutting corners in tools, programs, and contractors. They have been so bad even VP's are starting to bail.

Keep in mind I have been at this site for 11 years and singlehandedly kept up the fight for six years. They have basically told me there will never be any more guards or chances for pay raises for me when my last raise was over 6 years ago. No more guards mean I can't get better pay by being promoted, I have no chance to split the load, and basically, they expect to eat everything shoveled my way and I should be grateful.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Jan 2nd 2019 at 12:55:57 PM

So, I finally say farewell to my foodservice job. I feel like I got lucky with this new one. Manufacturing is a bit different but I settle in pretty quickly. Following steps to make food is surprisingly similar to following steps to make APC parts.

Of 500 applicants they chose 10, myself included! Pay isn't much of an improvement but they offer full time, overtime, medical, and retirement, which puts them in the top 1% for my tiny community where you're lucky to find a minimum wage job offering more than 20hrs a week.

The place is kind of a culture shock for me. I'm finding myself getting bored. In my last job I was on my feet 10 hrs a day and this one is like "Eh, just do what you want as long as the stuff gets delivered by the due date".

The only issue I'm having is most of the employees are in their 50's, and I look young for my age so I get blown off as the "damn millennial" every time I raise a question or concern to something.

Carbon: Sounds like a good job switch. While you may not have gotten a pay bump the other stuff is nice. So many jobs these days lack those extras.

Been doing a lot of days where I close the store (working until between 7:15 and 7:30) and then having to spend the evening working on freelance stuff or at least frittering away the night thinking about how I need to stop and get on with the gig. Today I opened the store (in at 8:15) and left at 3:30, and the current gig doesn't have more material right now, so I actually got to enjoy most of my night.

I mean, except for the part where right after work I had to go dump a paycheck on car repairs and then spent an hour and a half trying to self-diagnose a turn signal that wasn't working and wasn't the bulb. But I got home at 6 and found that my Girl Scout cookies had arrived.

Well, shit.

My exit from my current location has been delayed by a chain of events. The first is the original plan was derailed by guards from three other sites quitting. The temp guard who was supposed to come in for training had to help cover. Then they decided to hire someone directly. After the yahoo passed their background check, decided that, but nah they weren't going to work the site. So now I am waiting on a 3rd to pass the background AND accept the post.

On top of that soggy shit sandwich, a guy previously reported for highly unusual behaviour a few weeks ago was terminated. Apparently, he lost it in the process of being let go and made some threats. This isn't just some guy getting mad this is someone with a track record of highly unusual behaviours. So now for the next couple of weeks, I get to grow more grey hairs watching for this guy.

Carbon - welcome to the biz!

I have finished my training, and as of last Monday am officially working on testing 737 aircraft so that they can go out to the field and do test flights and all that important stuff. The job is interesting ... however, the team I'm on consists of: me; the other guy who just went through training with me; a guy who hired on two months before me; an old guy who has been with Boeing forever but only just transferred into this position; and our team lead. Yesterday, our team lead called out sick^** I think because of the Seattle Snowmageddon; four inches of snow is enough to bring traffic to a crushing slowdown, and I don't think he wanted to have his commute time tripled (or worse), so the rest of us spent an hour and a half finding a job that we 1) were qualified for, 2) knew what we were doing, and 3) finding the equipment for said job. I'm hoping (but kinda doubting) our team lead will be in today, because us three new guys are a little annoyed that all the training we went through didn't actually get us qualified to do half of the tests that are in our area of responsibility, and we don't know all the training we need to do the other jobs.

That sounds like some serious oversight to not have you guys trained to do the tests in the first place.

It's not that we're not trained, per se ... the test we got done tonight, none of us had done it before, and it didn't require any other certifications; we just weren't very fast at it because, well, none of us had ever done this test, so it took a bit for us to find a few things on the aircraft.

But when the company is trying to get us to build 60 aircraft per month (yes you read that number right) it feels like there's a disconnect by building a team of pretty smart noobs and giving us a single point failure in our team lead being the only person with any experience we can turn to.

Ok, gotcha.

I walked into work yesterday and the first thing my manager said was "you're going to be alone for an hour today." The schedule had been set for him and I to work together and then a third clerk would arrive at 1, so there would have been three of us from 1 until my manager went home probably between 3 and 5.

However, he'd been surprised by a four hour managers' meeting being called, and so he was going to have to leave by 11:30. So actually, it was an hour and a half. And he needed to go to the bank so we wouldn't have to leave it until Tuesday, so he went out for half an hour to do that, then came back for ten minutes, and then left for the meeting.

So I was alone for two hours, during the rush of people getting their shipping done on their lunch breaks.

I've just submitted an application for a full time (meaning 40 hours a week) acting position which not only pays, but it pays more than my current job and has benefits and everything. And this is all you'll hear about it for a while because the audition is March 19th and I'll hear back from them around July.

The monologue is fine. I've got one picked out and everything. However, I also said I could speak basic Tagalog so I'm hurriedly taking an online course to shore up my child-level grammar and vocabulary. If I don't finish it before the class, I'm going to be honest and say I understand it fluently and will be able to memorize and pronounce scripted lines without help, but holding a non-scripted conversation with anyone above 10 will be embarrassingly slow.

Congrats Leradny.

I got my trainee today for my 12 hour shift. He will be done training before the end of the week. My last day will be Thursday and then my new location training starts on Friday. This means I will have a 12 day work week before my next day off but it is all for the benefit of it.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Feb 16th 2019 at 8:02:00 AM

I worked today, and work tomorrow, because of how much we're behind thanks to Snowmageddon. However, our manager said that someone above him was expecting us to finish 3500 jobs this weekend^note For an example, testing the air conditioning system is one job; installing the coffee maker is one job; you get the idea. First shift completed ... 24 jobs today. In total. Across the whole factory.

To be fair, a great deal of this is lack of parts; you can't exactly put an engine on a plane when you don't have a freaking engine. But it makes my job harder, since I can't exactly do a full test when half of the plane isn't put together like it's supposed to be.

My throat has been swollen and red for the past four days, much worse than the sore throat I shrugged off with a day's rest last week. I finally scheduled a doctor's appointment. I'm certain the relapse is because my bosses had everyone go to a 30+ minute meeting in an unheated storage space in winter without at least letting people grab their coats first. So I wrote an email to them. Considering 1) we have an actual indoor conference room and 2) the meeting was about safety, being professional was... difficult.

Is it just me or do higher-ups lack common sense?

It's the altitude. <nods>

Totally. I work at a hospital, so they’re better about common sense regarding sickness, injury, and death when it comes to what their employees need when dealing with each, but holy crap do they make up for it in other areas.

Like understanding you can’t distribute ALL the profits because we kinda need operating cash to run the place. Yes, I understand you’ve got that third house, but we have BILLS.

Edited by Bur on Feb 19th 2019 at 12:47:57 PM

bur: LMFAO!!!! That's exactly the situation with my job. I work at a deli and said managers are scrupulous about FOOD-borne illnesses and hygiene. Nothing wrong with prolongued unheated storage space meetings but if there's even a HINT of mold on fresh pasta we're throwing the whole thing out.

The upper echelons can be amazingly clueless. I have had the displeasure of watching the stupid melt the brain of someone who used to be more professional.

Speaking of which. No one has told him yet that the trainee he just met on Monday is not a temp guard but my permanent replacement. I was told that the office is responsible for handling those notifications to the client. I am wondering if our Branch Manager is delaying it to piss in his cheerios because has been a dick to work with.

So my new guard and I are just riding out the possible tumult.

Well, I am swimming in the deep end now. Not even a week along and I have a trainee at a site I am still learning and one of my guys quit today meaning I have a 12 shift 4am to 4pm Thursday.

Edit: Wednesday 27.

So the guy who was going to quit chose today instead of the end of the week, one of our regular guards broke his foot bad enough to need specialist care, my last trainee apparently didn't pay attention to a key aspect of his training on the last day I was there so Saturday I have to go over it by phone with him, and I still have a trainee for two half shifts at my new site instead of one or two whole shifts.

Ok, who tipped over the shrine to Murphy?

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Feb 27th 2019 at 9:15:07 AM

So, I have a new job.

I'm about halfway through the initial training and it's a blast. At the start I just wanted to keep my head down, get it done and get home. Now I don't want it to end because I've made some great friends and I'll be genuinely heartbroken when we all split up to go to our postings.

Grats on the new gig. It's usually a good sign if you are getting on with folks in training.

Yup.

The biggest danger sign I've ever had during training was all the instructors getting us to commit fraud by lying about the hours, then having us bum around for an hour in silent boredom before letting us go.

Needless to say, that was one job I bailed on with no regrets whatsoever (not least because trying to do anything with bugger all training was not very appealing, let alone it involving selling finance packages).

Edited by Euodiachloris on Mar 3rd 2019 at 7:11:28 PM

Yowch, that doesn't sound fun at all.

I'm really excited about this new gig. I'm not really even supposed to say what it is, what with current security situation, but it involves doing loads of cool stuff I've seen in films.

Films with Samuel L Jackson, LL Cool J and Colin Farrel in them, for example.

Still keeping up the firefighting on the side, so I haven't had a real day off in months, but I'm having a whale of a time.