Saturday, November 3, 2007

Saving money VS stupid

Stuff like this is why the place I work for drives me nuts. The Q A night shift had one its guys take a day shift job (Why anyone works days is beyond me,sun light-it burns, it burns!). Now, in the interest of saving money, the company has decided that replacing the guy who left is not in the budget, taking the QA night shift from a 5 person crew that struggled to get the job done (it used to be a 7 person crew-gotta save that money) to a 4 person crew that has no fucking hope of getting the job done.

QA-the department that fixes all the mistakes, catches all the errors, that sort of thing-is now woefully understaffed. And in the corporation's extensive wisdom, all technical people like QA, Traffic, IT and loss prevention, now have to do 5 hours a week in operations. That means all the folks with the cushy office jobs now have to slug boxes. Great idea in theory, if your theory is to piss off as many people as possible with as little effort as you can put in! Why do they think these people took the cushy office jobs? Here's a hint-because they didn't want to slug boxes! If they wanted to be shippers or receivers, they would have signed up as shippers or receivers.

Great, so they've increased the inexperienced and pissed off people on the floor while decreasing the people that catch the mistakes. That will save money, I'm sure. I'm sure for the extra few boxes they'll get out the extra mistakes will totally be worth it. But what do I know? I've just worked on the floor for 11 years. Management makes me giggle. They could solve so many of these problems by walking up to one of the old guys like me and very quietly, so no one else can hear, asking me one simple question-"Is this stupid?".

"Why yes, Mr. Manager, sir, it certainly is!"

In my 11 years with the company, I have have 57 Team Leaders and probably 14 or 15 managers. I've seen 2 managers retire, I've seen 4 TLs become managers. Guess what happened to the rest of them? Fired or quit. A few were moved to other departments. I can't wait to see what the future has in store.

We have a new TL, young guy, I'm guessing late 20's at best. When talking to a team member (that's any of us uneducated folks on the floor, y'all) he tends to have a look on his face like he's staring at a particularly unpleasant pile of something. And he seems to have this idea that since he worked at a brake plant as a manager previously, he knows absolutely everything about warehousing. For example, the RSR night shift has a very important job and sometimes it's crazy busy. On those occasions, we need 3 droppers, 3 transporters (that's what I do) and 3 loaders. His last great idea was to take one of our best droppers and assign him as a transporter. Dumb. His really dumb idea before that; put a guy who had his reach licence for 2 days (that's what we drop with) on the drop, on an insanely busy night. Dumb. I can't help thinking when he looks at me with that "What did I just step in?" look-"Yeah, smart guy, next year while you're looking for another job, I'll still be here doing the job at 150% of target. Ya schmuck!"

Too bad I lack the mental acuity for management.

3 comments:

Skryker said...

But then you'd have to do something about the stand around and talkers. And they wouldn't like it.

Besides, if they promoted you, they'd have to hire 3 people to do what you do. Not cost effective. ;)

prin said...

Managers. Tsk. Like Skryker says, they're the type to fail upwards. lol I like that expression. It's my new fave. I hope it was Skryks who said it. lol

Optimus Prime said...

He's even more testy now that Captain Big Heart has been temporarily replaced by Queen Dragon Lady!