Here's how the weekend of October 25-27 went. Normally, if I had to work on a Friday, I would stay home and do laundry on Thursday, and go out and hang out with the girlfriend on Saturday. But with last Thursday seeming to be the only "nice" day of the two, I decided to go out. My gf managed to get off work early, and we actually got to hang out. I did laundry on Saturday, and started it right after I got out of bed so I could possibly go out, with or without the gf, but was too exhausted to go anywhere due to sleeping like shit early on Friday followed by working most of that night. I spent the rest of my Saturday watching horror movies, trying to get into the Halloween spirit.
One thing that's struck me about my place of work these past couple of years is how little I actually see the upper management. It's like the more the place has grown, the more they try to seclude themselves from the proletariat. I wouldn't know the upper-upper guy who has forced us to work overtime for the past month if I walked by him. I've been on my shift for three months now, and had never heard the name of my manager's manager until two or three weeks ago. I finally did see him a couple of days ago when he came to our start-up meeting to make an announcement. He didn't even bother to tell us who he was, he just stopped by and made the announcement, and I couldn't help but think, "Who the fuck are you, and why should I listen to you?" I suspected that he was this mythical creature I had heard about, and found out later that it was him. I should note that the main thing that bugged me about him is how he comes off, like he's angry all the time. Despite my initial impressions, I heard rumors that people actually liked him, or never really had a problem with him, so I tried to give him a benefit of a doubt. That changed when I came in to work overtime tonight, and everybody on my shift was told to go to another department per this guy's orders. Things in my department have gotten even slower this week, but overtime is still on. If I didn't hate this guy before, I sure do now. I think I'll refer to him from now on as Little Big Brother. I almost wish I had asked for Halloween night off so I could not only have Halloween off, but avoid the overtime as well. (Basically, if I ask for a Wednesday or Sunday off, I can get out of OT that weekend.) I got to thinking, beginning with the upper-upper guy who is forcing the overtime on us, and continuing with my manager's manager, that this is only one guy, and there are hundreds of us, so what's stopping us from dragging this guy out into the streets by his testicles and demanding we have the weekend off? Then I think about history, and how the company could probably get the National Guard, or worse, some privately owned army, to keep us in line. They could also fire us all and replace us with ease.
While I'm on the subject of upper management, I should note that most of the upper management who had been with Main ex-Employer before the buy-out have jumped ship in the past couple of years, and now I see why.
While I'm not the biggest fan of holidays, I wonder if any holiday, besides Christmas Day, is sacred to them? With all the overtime from early October through Christmas, it's like, "We'll let you have Christmas Day off, but you can have no life in the three months leading up to it, bwahahahaha!" People who regularly work on Thursdays will have to work on Thanksgiving, and since Thursday is my overtime night for November, there is the possibility that I'll have to work on Thanksgiving as well. I worked there on Thanksgiving night in 2009, and it was really depressing. I wouldn't be surprised if they just had all the OT'ers work on Black Friday instead. Not that I want anything to do with Black Friday from a shopping or working perspective, but I think I'd rather work that night than on Thanksgiving night.
This part was written tonight.
Overtime this week was cancelled for all shifts but mine. Little Big Brother decided to have a good chunk of the people from my shift cross training in Putaway. Now the work load is back up, and my team will have to work OT this weekend. I don't have to work it since I have Sunday off, but I'm still pissed at the management for making us work OT the last weeekend or two when we weren't needed, gutting our shift this week, and then making them work OT this weekend.
Speaking of Little Big Brother, we were about a half hour away from the end of the shift on Sunday night when we got a message on our RF guns from one of our lead people, saying that LBB was watching to make sure we didn't quit picking early, so try to pick until the very end of the shift. I usually don't stop working until five minutes before the end of shift, which is about how long it takes to go return my RF gun and get to the time clock by the end of the shift. But anyway, this was only one night, and the rest of the week was pretty much back to normal, but this pissed me off for the same reason that the "10 minute breaks disguised as 15 minute breaks" ordeal I mentioned a few posts ago does. If I have to work until the very end of the long ass shift, then I won't get to clock out until five minutes after the end end of the shift, and as far as I'm concerned, even though we're not technically clocked out at the end-of-shift time, any time after that is OUR time, not theirs, so they're intruding on our time when they make us stay any later than is absolutely needed.
On Tuesday night, we had a meeting about some policy changes. The one I found most ridiculous was that you'll lose your job if you lose your temper. I understand that there should be some consequences for severe degrees of temper-losing, like actively threatening somebody, but I think it's ridiculous to get fired for more minor forms of venting. If they expect me to go to the breakroom or something every time I need to chill, I'll get nothing done.
I am so glad that this election is over! I was going to do another "Freaking out about the future" post involving the elections, but didn't have time. I'm relieved that Obama was reelected and that the Democrats still have the Senate majority, but not happy that the Republicans still have the majority in the House Of Representatives. I see at least two more years of Tea Party obstruction, but who knows, maybe we'll get something accomplished despite it?
I may elaborate some more on these last two points some other time.
This part was written tonight.
Overtime this week was cancelled for all shifts but mine. Little Big Brother decided to have a good chunk of the people from my shift cross training in Putaway. Now the work load is back up, and my team will have to work OT this weekend. I don't have to work it since I have Sunday off, but I'm still pissed at the management for making us work OT the last weeekend or two when we weren't needed, gutting our shift this week, and then making them work OT this weekend.
Speaking of Little Big Brother, we were about a half hour away from the end of the shift on Sunday night when we got a message on our RF guns from one of our lead people, saying that LBB was watching to make sure we didn't quit picking early, so try to pick until the very end of the shift. I usually don't stop working until five minutes before the end of shift, which is about how long it takes to go return my RF gun and get to the time clock by the end of the shift. But anyway, this was only one night, and the rest of the week was pretty much back to normal, but this pissed me off for the same reason that the "10 minute breaks disguised as 15 minute breaks" ordeal I mentioned a few posts ago does. If I have to work until the very end of the long ass shift, then I won't get to clock out until five minutes after the end end of the shift, and as far as I'm concerned, even though we're not technically clocked out at the end-of-shift time, any time after that is OUR time, not theirs, so they're intruding on our time when they make us stay any later than is absolutely needed.
On Tuesday night, we had a meeting about some policy changes. The one I found most ridiculous was that you'll lose your job if you lose your temper. I understand that there should be some consequences for severe degrees of temper-losing, like actively threatening somebody, but I think it's ridiculous to get fired for more minor forms of venting. If they expect me to go to the breakroom or something every time I need to chill, I'll get nothing done.
I am so glad that this election is over! I was going to do another "Freaking out about the future" post involving the elections, but didn't have time. I'm relieved that Obama was reelected and that the Democrats still have the Senate majority, but not happy that the Republicans still have the majority in the House Of Representatives. I see at least two more years of Tea Party obstruction, but who knows, maybe we'll get something accomplished despite it?
I may elaborate some more on these last two points some other time.
No comments:
Post a Comment