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Diaryland |
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2005-03-11 - 5:30pm So, yesterday morning I stayed over an hour to talk with my boss. .......Not getting a day job. A day job i've been waiting for since November. Flat out. A roller coaster ride of time in which: I was encouraged and motivated to succeed by many of my co-workers, had meetings on 3 separate occasions with the HR manager and my manager specifically about the position, and the actual "coming-so-close" moment of them posting my current position on the internet and them flat out telling me it was going to come around soon soon..... Sat in a holding pattern since November on this. I felt like I was being groomed and being treated special despite the long amount of time where nothing was spoke to me. My manager apoligized "on behalf of the company" to how the whole situation was handled. What separated me from this position was a decision of a new operations manager and the fact they didn't want to "train" me and wished for someone with a degree related in the field since they expected this position to be the contigency plan of the plant to fall back on in case situations occur when a manager leaves the company. So the position was going to groom me to be a manager....... I started working there in January of '04, working on a thing called a "Palletizer" in which plastic containers would be send up from production rooms to a conveyor to be swept onto bulk production pallets.......simple job, "FIRST THE SHEET, THEN YOU SWEEP...." pretty self explanatory. You get 10 layers, put a splintered up wooden frame on top, send it out to get strapped and wrapped. 12 hour shifts, standing doing this all night. Needless to say, I did alot of self-introspection in the zombie-IQ-level work. Feet would hurt in the morning, hands chapped and splinters in it if you forgot your gloves, and the always chapped lips, hot unconditioned climate of a Maryland summer, working mainly alone for 12 hours a shift. They put me on 2 "new" palletizers, new meaning "old palletizers that we refurbished." Lines 23 & 27. They had a hell of a time with those 2 lines.....they had so many problems with those palletizers. Electrical problems, mechanical, problems with the strappers, etc. When I started on it, they had no extras on it. Now, they've got an air conditioner up there, cameras, new motors, AND an extra person (when I went to QA, they deemed 23 & 27 was a "Two-person" job....and people to this day are still puzzled in how I did the work of "two people" like that for so long like it was nothing). I was noticed because why every other crew had massive amounts of downtime on those palletizers, I ran those things just fine.......they were pesky bitches, but for me they purred.....I learned how to live with it like a beat-up TV with a coat hanger antenna covered in tin foil. I remember some nights I ran up and down those damn stairs over 50 times a night to clear jams in the conveyors, or unjam pallets. Hard ass job. I once worked 12 hours, stayed up all day afterwards to be in a movie, came back and worked another 12 hours on more then a couple occasions. If anyone was to go crazy, I would believe those palletizers were right up your alley. I slayed those things though. Those palletizers should be named after me. Some nights I made double the production of other shifts and set records on those bitches both. The only time I had down time was for the strappers which I had no control over. Every crew wanted me. I got pissed after awhile, because I wanted to learn about other aspects of the factory, I was dying to get off those lines because I was bored, I started bringing up books and reading classics like "The Prince" and I even think I read some of the "Bahavagita" up there. THAT'S how bored I was, but I ran those lines so good and they weren't gonna move me for shit. It was funny, I would come up during a shift change and it's mass hysteria and terror incarnated in a machine to these poor old ladies that alternated on "the nightmares" as they called them. I would leave my shift leaving "The nightmares" immaculate, I even swept up there, and wished them the best of luck with a finished book in my back pocket. I came up with ideas on "the nightmares." I thought about the blue collar culture. I thought about all my women studies in action before my eyes. I saw people as characters in there. I focused saving money up to buy a decent camera for the BHP and other savings goals. I fought my own madness up there. Being by yourself for 12 hours at a time in the wee hours of the night, standing on top of "nightmares", with nothing but muffled white noise in your ears interspersed with hillbillies shouting over an intercom, no sunlight and a view that would make a prisoner's cell window view look spectacular........yeah, you could get an impression that it was hell. I used to get angry at bottles for brief periods of time and throw them off into the distance and it was this feeling that I can best describe as: When you're a lil kid and you're hyped up on something in your own world and you start to march up and down for no reason and make pointless rhythmic sounds like "RAZZA RAAZA RAZZZA RAAAAAAZZZZZAAAAARRRRRRR!!!!!!!" It's just something that takes all your sanity aside and you just become this pure emotion of angry or hatred and nothing else. So I did that for about 6 months straight....manadatory overtimes and all. Then the Quality tech job came rolling around..... They didn't have this contigency plan when I started in the department. Shortly after I got trained in a turbo fashion of (10 days), the manager of the department left 2 weeks after my training, sighting to me that "The company mistreats its' employees and he didn't wish to see it anymore.....and oh yeah, he commented on how he hated the East Coast." On that good note, I was set off with no training, working nights....when no one that could help me would be around and technically, only one person could of helped me and that was our lead person. She had to shoulder the load of the vacant manager position and her own job and within about a month, she had a deadly stress-related intestinal problem that almost killed her. So my only help was gone soon after. I had 10 days of training to oversee the quality aspects of an entire plant's production. No one openly communicated to me other then the shift crew I oversaw along with the crew supervisor, all of them had no idea what I was doing and I was in charge of telling them what was going on when things went wrong. Defect training.......none........calibration checking and tests.........none.......no explanation of the terminology of the SPC programs put in place.......no explanation on how the equipment worked.......no idea how to handle defective raw material or readily identify it.....basically started out knowing how to do the required tests we're supposed to do and how to write a hold ticket.......that's it. No management in any other departments didn't seem to notice....their explanation......."everything was spread out so thin at the time".......yet, here I am, in the position and the power to put raw materials and product on hold and halt production and not even knowing why or how I'm supposed to do it. I learned on my own. I learned by speaking with my crew, communicating with everyone, from shipping to production, to the floor and even supervisors. I joined committees to learn more about how and why everything worked. I hung out with maintenance guys to figure out the ins & outs of production equipment. I studied old, outdated manuals in the lab library. I studied SOP books. I studied all the wacky acronyms. I sat in the smoke shack, not to just have my clothes reek of USA GOLDs smoke, but to listen to the "Culture" of my crew and the stories, concerns, and gripes of the people I worked with. I did outstanding. People started to take notice.......but no one from management did.......we set production records.....no response other then pizza and sodas for the crew.........we had a few signifigant quality blunders........now they're up in arms but still didn't realize our situation........our company preaches SAFETY FIRST.......QUALITY SECOND....... We didn't have a manager in the department until November, our lead came back for maybe a month in mid-December only to go back to surgery again and is still on medical leave. I did all the lead calibration checks.....I left notes for the new quality manager, since I never hardly saw him, working nights and he not coming in until 30 minutes after my shift. I left him notes asking him when my new day job was going to happen.....he never responded to me on any of the notes, only on one occasion and that was to tell me that "nothing's happened yet" basically. I even accidently put in a very detailed note (AKA 1 and a half pages of concerns) in the regional QA manager's mailbox, which caused a bit of a curious stir and allowed me to sit in on a practice audit with my manager, the regional QA, and our SPC person. Damn right I felt special. It didn't add up to nothing though. You know, for the last year I've worked with: -Bob: The compulsive liar that likes to spread rumours and is deadly afraid of personal advancement. Knows alot about cars, but works in a factory bitching constantly. Gets made of fun of because on the intercom once, he said SHEEP instead of SHEETS & FRAMES.....and yeah, he's been affectionately labeled a "sheep fucker" ever since. I wrote about him in the past, about his greatest life story ever told in which he got to carry 50,000 dollars. once for a guy in paper bags. -Irene: A woman that talks to herself constantly, looks like a crackhead olive oyl, that hates men and constantly complains and never repeats things twice on the intercom. -Stan: The "cool" uncle guy that is into motorcycles and having a pony tail and saying "YOUR MOM" 10 times a night. "Stan, have you got those bundles back yet?" "YOUR MOM got those bundles back." Affectionately, 20 years ago, they called him the (factory's) ROMEO and he ended up married the custodian. -Joe: The shift supervisor, Mexican. English is his second language in training. Cool guy, bettering himself everyday. No one likes him apparently, but me. He thinks I'm "dangerouse" with computers since I know how to use EXCEL. I help him with his english from time to time. -Theo: New forklift guy on the shift. Wife's terminally ill. Worked before in a rehab house and had a very good job. Got phased out of that job and now is driving a forklift. Studying Theology. Tried converting me once to some wacky reactionary-style church by offering me "literature" (if that's what we want to call it) to read. Probably the smartest guy working a shit job I know, but he's a tad wacky, but he's got alot hanging over his head and a crazy religion he's following. *think DI-TECH commercial....LOST ANOTHER ONE TO CRAZY JESUS!!!!!* -John A.: Probably the most bumbling, sad man I've ever seen working the day shift opposite of me in the department. Obsessive compulsive and I would imagine that he's like my father but 80% retarded.......40 years old, single, lives in his mom's basement and goes through a roll and a half of paper towels a day. Sometimes he cleans his hands so much, his fingers bleed. He even "sanitizes" them with rubbing alcohol. Sad, sad man, I've wrote about him before too. -James: An old black uncle that gets in trouble at the family reunion. He can't see 6 feet in front of his face. Probably gets half his checks because the rest goes to child support. He's worked everywhere in the factory and has ended up where he could fuck up the things the least. He's always sleepy. I'd like to see him with a fifth of "Knotty Head" in his system, that'd be good times. -James W: Around my age, dad works here, he works here. Looks like a version of a taller hobbit. -Steve: Maintenance guy. Two goals in life: A 30 pack.....and finding another job, a couple of months now and counting. -Danny: The AA guy. Every conversation rolls right into his past and his bad choices. No wonder he's so messed up because it's seemingly the only thing he can talk about. I wrote about him before too. Tried to convince him Alcoholism ISN'T a disease....big mistake..... -Byron: The smartest dumb person I've ever seen. Immensely geniune, just a doddering old fool with a largely vivid, misused vocabulary. -Mary: Byron's wife. Another "do-gooder" with no brain. The two together are like the most jagged jigsaw puzzle pieces fitting perfectly together to make some non-visually beautiful part of the puzzle, like "the middle of the lake." -Dolores: The grandma that is sweet one second and saying �Fuck� the next. Bad circulation and looks like a muppet. -Carmen: The nuyorican that told the doctor to not only tie her tubes, but to BURN THEM SHITS. -Donald: The 42 year old looking 25 years old. Wanting to change his life at 42, and please pardon me for saying, but is like a modern day version of a "field negro." Gets called "Donald Duck" alot by Bob to counteract his own "SHEEP FUCKER" distinction. -Troy: The guy that can run his machine in his sleep. Currently schooling him in music. -John W: The company historian. Been there for almost 3 decades. Maintenance, quit buying cigarettes, but didn't quit smoking them, bumming them off of everyone. -Norma: John W's wife. Been there almost as long. Someone I don't have to worry about. Can run her machine passed out. -Harold: Ex-car salesman, ex-chemical operator. Wears maintenance gloves for the "bad ass factor" because he needs touches the machine. Like a black James Woods with half the charm. -Rich: he's half crazy. I don't know what else to say about him. Has a girlfriend on day shift. Wears an army jacket.....probably got beat up in school back in the 60s. -Kareem: Big semi-effeminate black man. Nuff said. .....and I might be missing one, but let's just skip it, this entry is too long, but I love all these folks. I'm gonna miss them when I find me another job and leave this god forsaken place......
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