Shakes breaks his legs jumping out of a burning building · 3:34pm May 26th
Standing in a 3rd-story window, the flames at your back; The choice is jump or burn.
Grab yourself a drink and take a comfortable seat, because this blog post story has been over a year in the making.
In March of 2023, I took a job at a pharmaceuticals production plant. We'll call it Drug Co. Now you may be wondering what position I held, using any one of the myriad of degrees I've earned over the years. My Doctorate or Masters Degrees as a pharmaceutical engineer? Putting my Chemistry Bachelors to work in the QC lab? No. I took a job working in facilities. Think Scruffy from Futurama.
Why, you ask? Why not use my advanced degrees to make more money doing more challenging work?
Simply put: I know what I don't like.
Most people make an innocent mistake when they search for employment. They looks for a job they like. Or at least, a job they think they like. And while on the surface there is nothing necessarily wrong with that, I feel that it is a flawed approach, in that it is limiting in your scope. Rather than focusing on what you know you like, I find that it is much more useful to know what you don't like. This seems like the obvious opposite side of the same coin, but it's not. There is a lot of work that lies in the grey, indifferent zone that gets excluded by focusing only on what you like. And by simply focusing on only filtering out what you know you dislike, you open yourself up to a wider range of options to discover.
I like writing. I like video games. I like having sex. But the professions associated with each do not appeal to me. Some people are blessed to be able to blend their work with their passions without killing their passion for the work, as I did when I became a professional painter.
I have come to understand that it has been much more fruitful for me to focus on what I dislike.
I dislike people. Well, let me rephrase; I professionally dislike people. Especially in the modern world. I'd rather stick my dick in an anthill than go back to working retail. And working as customer service over the phone is no better. When I job hunt, if I even catch a whiff of either of those things, there is no dollar signs big enough to get me to apply. If I'm going to get fucked professionally, I would at least want to have the dignity to walk the streets like a real whore.
I also don't want a long commute. If I have to spend an hour driving to my job, and an hour back, that's two hours of my life gone, five times a week. Getting paid to commute is laughable. And it never counts towards your weekly hours total. But more importantly, I'm a fast driver. Not a bad driver. And yes, I distinguish between the two. I like to drive fast. But I don't tailgate, I don't weave through traffic, I don't cut people off, I let people merge and I use my signal. But it's much easier to point a radar gun at me and say "ticket" than to apply a brain to policing traffic. So a long commute is out, since that just worsens my odds. I hear you saying "remote work" but that usually involves phones and customers. (See above.)
So I took the job in facilities at Drug Co. And as I had to remind my co-workers, I was working there as a mechanic, not a janitor. (They had a contract for a cleaning company to come though after hours to empty the trash cans and clean the toilets.) Facilities was a job that I was grossly over-qualified for, but I didn't care. I like wearing a suit, but I don't like having to wear a suit. I like sitting at a desk, but I don't like having to sit at a desk.
I liked the work. Any day that I got to operate the forklift or turn a wrench or use power tools was a good day. It was work inside and outdoors. Not chained to a desk. Casual dress. I could listen to the radio. My direct supervisor is a fantastic human being. I made my own hours, coming and leaving whenever as long as I got my 40 by week's end. Took my lunch when I was hungry. The commute was a short 15 minute trip down the highway on the opposite side of rush hour traffic. Overtime wasn't required, but allowable when needed. And while it wasn't as much as I could have been making, the pay was good for someone like me who knows how to live within their means. I don't have an expensive lifestyle. I don't need to spend a lot to be happy. So it was good. At least for a while.
But it was not to be.
At Drug Co, there was the Operations team. Ops consisted of the technicians that operated the clean-room machinery that would manufacture the drugs. The capsule fillers, tablet presses, and extruders combining the active ingredient powders with the binding agent at precise concentrations. The Ops team gets all the glory "making the money" for the company. Meanwhile, as long as we were doing our job right, Facilities was invisible. But I knew that from the beginning and I didn't have a problem with it. I was still getting paid either way.
But about a month after I started, an Ops senior tech returned to work from medical leave. We'll call him Dan. Dan was of the mindset that every problem in the company was the fault of Facilities. Ops breaks a machine by misusing it? Must be facilities fault for not doing enough preventative maintenance. A single one of the forty lights burned out in the clean room? Ops can't work today until facilities fixes it. Better put our feet up until they fix the "unsafe conditions". You get the idea. You know this sort of person who would much rather point a finger rather than lift one. And because I was hired on the wrong side of his line in the sand, he didn't like me. I wasn't the only person that had a problem with Dan. There were plenty of people in other departments that saw him for the professional shit-stirrer that he was, sending site-wide passive aggressive e-mails and causing office drama. The kind of snake that is nice to your face just to stab you in the back when you turn around.
It's a hard fact of life that some people just aren't going to like you because you're you. Because of the color of your skin, your gender or sexuality, or just because of your face. And even something as petty as which department you got hired into. For no fault of your own, they don't like you. Whatever. Fuck him. Carrying a grudge is his problem not mine. But the problems only started there.
I was part of a group hire along with several fresh ops workers. And we were all good friends. But once Dan came back, he poisoned the group with his toxic "ops vs facilities" tribalism mentality. He had the monopoly of their time interacting with them. And soon the rest of the department was acting the same way. The friendships I had forged with the others eroded away with his constant propaganda. It sucked, but I didn't have to interact with Ops too much until they broke something and I had to swoop in to fix the machine and save the day. Again. But it didn't matter how many times I did that, I was still a piece of shit to Dan, and Ops would get the glory of completing the production contract. Whatever. Fuck em. I was still getting paid.
> deep breath of Copium
Drug Co. had recently been acquired by one of the Big Pharma companies that you have surely heard the name of. I didn't expect too much to change except who was signing my paychecks. And on paper, nothing really changed. Nothing important. Pay and benefits stayed. But Big Pharma Co wanted Drug Co to start making high-potency products. Think things like the Nuva Ring, with high concentrations of hormones diffused inside a long-lasting slowly-dissolvable medium.
For this, we would need to build a new clean-room suite. And right from the start, there were problems. Just looking at the blueprints drafted up from Lowest Bidder Construction Co, I could tell right away it was going to be a disaster. I warned the company president about the problems, and not being one to simply complain, I offered practical, realistic solutions to the problems I presented. In my time there, I had gained professional experience and certified training in electrical, plumbing, and HVAC work. And whoever had designed the suites had to be on fucking mushrooms because nothing about it made sense. There were rooms with no doors. There were sperate ventilation ducts that clipped through each other like a bad video game. There were rooms without lights, or electrical sockets. And the cleanrooms had goddamn drop ceilings! "Because they're cheaper."
I, and the rest of the facilities team, that being just my supervisor, we fought tooth and nail against all of these problems when it was just on paper and easy to fix. We explained the disaster it was going to become if left as is, not just to construct, but to try to get certified by the FDA. The construction firm had a very reasonable foreman. We'll call him Matt. Matt is an excellent human, a straight shooter, and he has no problem telling you a hard truth. He understood, just as I did, that any initial construction quote needs to be expected to double. Built in six months for four million dollars? Expect it to take a year and cost eight million.
This, I also tried to impress upon upper management. But like so much else, it fell on deaf ears. Our sales team made contract promises to prospective customers that we would be "ready and certified to make their products in six months". The accounting team spent money based on revenue projections (read: they gambled). They spent hundred of thousand of dollars based on the assumption we would be making millions less than a year from now.
Because nothing bad ever happens when you assume, right? 
The ongoing construction was one problem after another. Each one as predictable as the last, as I reported them to management during the weekly meetings, referring back to my old emails warning that these exact thing would happen if they didn't listen. Do you think they started listening to me then? Of course not, or else I wouldn't be writing this.
Construction dragged on as un-fucking one problem revealed two more like a mechanical bullshit hydra. Six months slogged by and the sales team had to eat crow as clients moved on, or the customers bought whatever new bullshit lie sales was feeding them to keep them hanging on "just a little longer". More money was spent on the project while revenue from it continued to be zippity-doo-da.
Our CFO stopped paying vendors to try to retain some liquid capital, and the poor accounts payable gal had to field a lot of collection calls. About which she was quite vocal when venting to me, a listening ear and staunch confidant to many there. (This story told in anonymity is no exception.) Therefor, I knew more than most that the ship was starting to sink. But fuck it. As long as I was still getting paid.
> Copium intensifies
Anyone with even tangential construction experience can tell you that things have to happen in a certain order. Even something as simple as foundation first, then floors, walls, ceiling, then roof. And if the walls get delayed, then the roof has to get rescheduled. That means the shingles and gutter and chimney gets delayed too. It happens early and it's always a domino effect. Especially in the current post-covid, post-Evergiven, hyper-inflation economy world. Of course this all means nothing to the sales team, and the upper-management they aim to please. Why do things in an orderly fashion when you can just try to do everything at once in a terrible, horrible orgy construction clusterfuck? Who cares what the building experts say about building buildings. There are projective sales contracts to be filled!
Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
Scream as I might for months that "The bridge is out!", on forward the train charged, the conductor only yelling "Faster!" The train wreck was just as terrible as it was predictable for those with the eyes to see it coming. The Ops team was becoming increasingly irritated because they were instructed by the Quality Assurance team to repeatedly clean the new "cleanroom" to impossible-to-attain cleanroom specification, since there was active construction going on in what was, upon closer inspection, an active construction site. Against my repeated warnings, they were trying to test the air filtration system while there was active sanding and painting! The (expensive) 6-month HEPA filters clogged in a day and the fan motors in the air handler units burned out. Plumbing that had never been tested leaked inside walls that were dry-walled and painted too soon. Rushed electrical work shorted out. Breakers popped and fuses blew. Light switched opened door maglocks. Motion sensors turned on wall outlets. Card readers failed and trapped people in airlocks. It was anarchy!
The second floor above the clean rooms was a mezzanine that was supposed to become office space. But due to tightening belts from a blown budget, it was repurposed to accommodate all the infrastructure that I told them was never going to fit in the "planned" mechanical space. The cement floor was poured before the drains were installed, so it was never pitched correctly. The air handlers never got leveled correctly because of course "Rush rush rush! Gotta get the rooms ready for the inspection that they already scheduled because they failed the last two inspections and sales made promises!"
"Only smart, wise, sophisticated people can see the fabric, Your Majesty," the con artist said to the insecure Emperor. "Surely you are no fool?"
"Of course I can see the fabric," the Emperor lied, not wanting to seem a fool.
"Try on your new clothes. Only smart, wise, sophisticated people can feel the fabric, Your Majesty," the con artist said to the Emperor.
"Of course I can feel the fabric," the Emperor lied, not wanting to seem a fool.
"Once you pay me, you can show off your new clothes to you smart, wise, sophisticated subjects. Surely your subjects are no fools."
"Of course they can see the fabric," the Emperor lied, not wanting to to be a ruler of fools.
And so the Emperor walked through the town in his "new clothes", until a child cried out.
"The Emperor has no clothes!"
The DEA and the FDA arrived on the same day, (which pro tip, don't do that. They both want 100% of your attention and they can tell when they're being dicked around.) And you really really don't want your inspector(s) to be in a foul mood even a little. Not that it mattered in the slightest. Because over the weekend, the air handler unit, clogged with paint dust, over-chilled and froze up. The rooms failed spectacularly for air-change rate and airborne particles. And oh yeah, one of the AHUs had so much condensation that it overfilled the not-leveled drain pan and leaked all over the second floor cement, which was not pitched towards the drains. And it was sealed before the concrete had time to cure. So the sealant was cracked and all the water went through the floor, and into the drop ceiling for three humid days, turning them into mush and flooding the "clean" rooms with about a centimeter of muddy water everywhere.
The inspection ended in record time. Our QA director was nearly in tears, "I wanna go home." Ops was livid, having to clean the clean rooms yet again while I gutted the ceiling looking for the (yet unknow) cause. As soon as the rooms were "clean", I was ordered by QA to replace the ceiling tiles for the redo inspection. I told them as politely as professionally possible that they were fucking idiots who continued to not listen to me and this is the resulting train wreck I had been waring them about for months. And since I didn't know what the root cause of the leak was, we were just setting ourselves up for another catastrophe. True to form, they did not listen and I begrudgingly did as I was commanded. I replaced the tiles and resealed them again with silicone, which had to be done to every one of the several-hundred drop ceiling tiles because how else can you environmentally seal a clean room with a goddamnmotherfuckingshitass drop ceiling!? We rushed to get everything ready for the redo inspection the following Monday.
Well, slap my ass and call me Sally, you will never fucking guess what fucking happened again that fucking weekend.
Monday morning and we escort the two inspection teams (which had to be paid thousands for each and every visit, mind you) into the suites and it was another scene from Revelations. They turned around and left even faster the second time. Even upper management finally had to admit that the suites would not be ready in the quoted time.
The Emperor had no clothes.
This time around I was able to catch the air handler actively shitting itself. I re-pitched the drain pan to an absurd degree to get it to finally behave, probably voiding the warranty. Fuck it. The manufacturer was probably going to repossess it soon anyway since accounting never paid for it. As long as I was still getting paid at least.
> mainlining Copium.
The ensuing department meeting was exactly the shit-storm you would expect. I didn't need to say "I told you so." There was already a mountain of evidence for that. The Ops team was rip-shit for having to clean the clean-rooms yet again. Dan rallied the rest of the ops team to blame facilities, even going so far as to accuse sabotage. Really Dan? How does that profit me to bite to corporate hand that feeds me? To make more nasty work for myself, spending the rest of that day up to my elbows in nasty glycol coolant. Going home smelling like a swamp and ruining my cars upholstery. What at all makes that sound like a good idea on my part? Things got heated. Nasty things were said by not me. After the meeting, I went home.
I don't bring my work home with me. I'm not the sort of person who has a bad day and then unloads all their insecurities onto their spouse or children. On a bad day when asked how my day was, "Work was work," and she understands. A cool drink later and it's off my mind. This day she could tell it was exceptionally bad. "Work was work."
"Tell me what happened."
I did.
"Take tomorrow off. Think about what you want to do. Because I'm tired of seeing you come home miserable."
That got me like a knife through the heart.
I took the next day off. I thought about the situation. I thought about the problems. As always, I thought about the solutions. Even the unrealistic ones. Nothing was off the table. I had plenty of evidence and witnesses to levy a Hostile Work Environment lawsuit against Dan. But even if I got him fired, the damage was done. To the rest of Ops, I would still be the bad guy who got Dan fired. And even if everyone he poisoned was replaced instantly with equally qualified and experienced techs, the rest of the problems with the new suites (and they numbered many) would still be there.
I went into work the next day. My supervisor was surprised I even came back after enduring my "public lynching" as he described it. I had a follow-up meeting with him, HR, and the Ops department head, from whom I was actually expecting an apology for the blatantly unprofessional behavior in that meeting room, and presumably, him begging me to not sue the place. But I guess I get to be the fool this time for assuming. He basically echoed the sentiment of the Ops team, but in a more verbally-professional way, in a ten-minute monologue before tossing out a token "but yeah, they could have phrased it better last Monday."
In my entire time there, I kept fooling myself that it would get better eventually. Old Dan would retire soon and those bridges with the others could be rebuilt. I thought I was stubborn enough to just outlast him. Or at least the company would get sold or shut down and we'd all get laid off with a severance package and unemployment benefits. Or at the very least, I could stick around long enough to train the next poor soul filling my shoes, a luxury I didn't have when I started there, self-taught learning in a trial-by-fire before being thrown to the wolves.
My leaving would screw over the one person who deserved it the least. My excellent supervisor would have to scramble to find another facilities person (if they even let him hire during the active hiring freeze due to the, you guessed it, blown budget). In the meantime the 62yo man would have to pick up my significant slack. The man was getting ready to retire and was training me to promote me to the department head. But these interpersonal problems with Dan and Ops were not new. I didn't keep them a secret either. I told my manager, the Ops managers, and HR. But it was clear that things were never going to change. Especially when management was essentially taking the side of and supporting the source of the toxic climate. I started working there to try to change things for the better, but I refused to let my job change me for the worse.
"I'm tired of seeing you come home miserable."
And so, to return to the metaphor of the click-bait blogpost title, the building was on fire, filling up with toxic smoke, and I needed to get out. Standing there in the third story office window, it was a long way down to the parking lot. I hadn't looked for another job in the 14 months since I started there. I hadn't even polished up my resume. Jumping now was a long way down, and it was going to hurt. But the flames were at my back.
So,
scary as it was,
I jumped.
"I quit."
Man, i feel for you my friend. I am so sorry to hear that you had to go through all of that BS Dan N Co put you through. You didn't deserve that. But good on you for sticking to your guns, and doing what you felt the best to do, regardless of the outcome. That said, i wish that you will find a new more fulfilling footing very very soon.
5782996
I always land on my feet.
This is why I like to describe myself as a properly lazy person. Am I lazy and generally unwilling to do something I don’t want to do? Yes, yes I am. But if I have to/can be bothered to shift myself to do something I’ll be damned if I don’t do it right (or to the best of my abilities at the very least) the first time so I don’t have to come back and fix it.
And I absolutely abhor having to clean someone else’s fuck ups. Is it really so wrong to just expect people to be decent and just doing something the way they ought??? The world could be such a better place if we could reliably be trusted to do so.
5782998
There's never enough time or money to do it right, but somehow there's always enough to do it twice.
Shakes, man, what a fucksickle, man. But yeah, when the heat's at your tail, you better learn to fly real quick!
Everyone today just expects everything to Just Work™ and have absolutely no idea how things actually work, or how they're maintained. I've been a marine propulsion engineer for 20 years, now, and let me tell you ... I've seen this kind of shit over and over and over again. Enough to know that there's no way in Hell I'd feel comfortable trusting the U.S. Navy to even maintain—nevermind operate—a medium-speed diesel engine to any semblance of operational consistency. I eventually went to the Dark Side (commercial), which pays less money than government work, but by God, the operators are leagues more competent and caring about their equipment and its upkeep (amazing what happens when it's your money on the line, and not "the government's").
Anyway, good on you for getting out of the shittastic environment. At some point, when the ship is burning down, and you're the last guy on the mast, you gotta jump and say, "Good luck, you stupid sunnavabitches, I'm out!"
Pony on, manno. Pony on.
Oh, this bullshit. I was on the other side of that line at Electric Co. Our people in the Office (really Management, Sales and Engineering, and man fuck most of those assholes) sell and design the kit, Production builds it, then some of Office and some of Production go out and install it together.
So of course the new Management decides that Production are retarded monkeys and we should stay in the office in pretty suits and ignore them.
I was hired on for Engineering just before Management changed hands, and back when I was still in school had a summer job with the company working in the sub-office supporting Production. Those guys know their shit. One spent time taking me around and showing me "smart" Engineering ideas that don't fucking work so I wouldn't make the same mistake later.
Long story short, Sales kept selling the physically impossible, Management blamed Production, then got rid of all the Engineers who actually worked with Production instead of against them. On hearing we were sent packing, the guy who showed me the avoidable mistakes assured me none of Production would ever attempt to work with the Office on anything again. Malicious Compliance plus Work-to-Rule from now on.
5783010
A tale as old as time.
A couple jobs back I was building and testing industrial laser modules, and we knew what we were doing. We could do our own troubleshooting and repairs on the fly to hit KPI numbers every month. But a hot-shot engineer insisted we do things his way. And if anything ever went wrong with his "perfect" design, then we needed to put it aside and email him.
Our department head tried to push back but got no traction. I explained the concept malicious compliance to him, and so we did as we were told from Hotshot to the letter. We filled four massive shelving units with a couple hundred modules with a massive sign that read "WAITING FOR [Hotshot]".
Management walked through and went full WTF on the situation. We presented the instructions we were given. Engineer's excuse? He's not always at his desk so now we needed to call him when we email him. His voicemail filled up in less than a day. We filled two more shelving units. Management is flipping out about the shelves filling with broken junk. Now Hotshot's directions are "The module doesn't leave your desk until it gets fixed by me."
Production ground to a complete halt in less than an hour. We were literally all just sitting around twiddling our thumbs with a "broken" (though easily fixable) module on our workbench. Management has had enough. HotShot's boss's boss comes through: "Ignore Hotshot. Whatever you were doing before, it worked. Just please get these shipped!"
We rallied behind our department head who offered us all the pizza we could eat if we put in overtime that weekend (Since the following Tuesday was end of quarter.) We fucken made magic happen and our Dept head leveraged the success to keep engineering out of our way. Later we got and email saying Hotshot was "transfered to another location," which we all knew was code for getting fired.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
But then Covid happened and we got laid off anyway.
I've been working retail since I was 17, which is to say, I've been working retail for longer than I haven't. The pay isn't great but the benefits are nice. There's no threat of being fired because everyone else is lazier than you are. I kind of love it, actually. I get it, though. If you're one of those go-getter types who want to leave your mark on the world, retail will grind your soul to dust.
I drive about 45 minutes to work. It's a necessity when you live in White Afghanistan, surrounded by crippling poverty.
Unreal... All of this for a job where you did orange vest labor. What a galactic, shit-stirring asshole!
You don't need to bother with pseudonyms because you clearly work for Vault Tec! Jesus H. Christ!
I love it when huge companies do shit that private citizens would call suicidally stupid with their money.
That's a great simile. Well done!
I had to reread that three times because what I'm reading can't possibly be real. This sounds like Chernobyl or something.
Safety first until we run up against an impossible deadline and then it's safety last. Predictable.
You really did work for Vault Tec! Sounds like a death trap.
I'm glad to hear you quit that at any rate. And to think even the buddy cop of the story blamed you in the end. Fuck that place! Hope you found something tolerable in the end.
5783017
I was waiting to hear which malfunction led to a literal fire while Shakes was trying to fix shit on the 3rd floor.
5783014
Businesses have learned something American Protestant churches have known forever; you can motivate people with the offer of free pizza.
Aha, the good old 'shut up, we know better!' coming from above... Regardless of your profession, it's always there, eh
?
It reminds me of when, about four years back, we tried to modernize our aging laptops... I work as a software developer, so I need a machine with a ton of RAM to work efficiently. So, my colleague and I started filling out the appropriate request forms explaining why we needed the new hardware and what benefits it would bring to the company... standard corporate BS. Next => Next => Next and... finally, we see a combo box to select the available, preconfigured DEVELOPER laptops... each with 8 GB of RAM, some crappy i3 CPU, and 256 GB SSD
.
We ended up buying some moderate hardware with i5, 32GB of RAM, and 512 GB SSD, but man, we had to fight them for a few weeks, writing justification after justification to people who have no clue what software development looks like, on why we needed more powerful hardware...
Obviously, your story has a much higher level of FUBAR, but the way you described it, resigning was probably the appropriate decision. I wish you luck looking for a new job
Sorry Shakes, but that is way too damn long to make into an AI Generated song!
Try brevity next time!
5783025
Yeah, I'm not getting any more of my fingerprints on that train wreck.
I almost feel like I should apologize for laughing at the parts that were clearly written to make me laugh because holy fuckballs, how the hell did you slug it out that long?!
I often tell my family that when my job is boring that's a good day. Boring days means nothing went wrong and I have very minimum standards. Basically, nothing catches fire, I don't get shot at, I don't get bit by a creature, no wrecks (my fault or theirs. I drive a delivery truck.)
I feel like you and I have walked similar paths in life just in different locations. I too have a college degree and other professional certs that I don't use daily because of one reason or another. I work where I work because I love to drive, I hate having a boss breathing down my neck, and it pays the bills better than my attempted art career was giving me. I loathe dealing with people who think they know what they are doing and are too proud or stubborn to listen to others and lack the professionalism to at least pretend to listen and take it 'under advisement.'
Anyhow, I hope you find something again that allows you to live the life you want without a major move or life change.
Sometimes you just have to jump.
5783057
I am very stubborn.
paul-matthews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Stubborn-billboard.jpg
Kinda reminds me of when I was very new to my fist command and put in charge of our mobile comms gear for one of our evaluations. I was told to separate some of the equipment and have gear run in conditions they were never designed for, despite our gear setup being in a desert environment.... just not in the conditions they requested they requested.
Well, as I said, I was new, and by new, I mean junior rank, and told to "Just make it work," by those in much higher rank who either didn't care to hear my input or heed my warnings. Of course, as I warned, one of the crucial pieces of equipment burnt up, rendering our comms fucking impossible.
I was taking shit from everyone for not protecting the equipment. That was until one guy who was evaluating us and worked I had with to run the equipment so we could be evaluated asked me why I would do something so stupid as to separate the equipment. I told him the truth. "I explained to them what would happen, but they pulled rank. I had to follow orders."
I don't recall how much the whole evaluation cost, but it was in the seven figures. Not having comms is an instant failure, but since I was good with the guy, he allowed us to swap the part out, and we eventually passed.
The problem wasn't my immediate chain of command but, oddly enough, our operations, who pulled rank on my immediate chain of command and fed sweet-nothings to our commanding officer, who ended up taking the most heat for the fuck-up. In return, everyone was told not fuck with me or my equipment.
Sorry to hear your situation ended differently.
Please don't delete this one
Well just glad you're ok and alive.
5783189
I am hard to kill.
5783190
well that's good but we care about you
Damn, that's messed up. Hopefully you find someplace that lets you actually do your job.
I was in a similar situation doing tech support (really just a step below engineer) for a digital cinema company. I was the senior tech and over the years my mantra had become "Nobody ever listens to me" (my colleagues made it up for me).
Since I worked with clients directly I'd see developing problems but my warnings were ignored by management and the devs, and eventually they eliminated the rest of the support team as they generated no revenue (beancounters are the natural enemy of all support departments, second only to sales).
I was stuck on-call 24/6 for nearly a year. Even when they hired another tech I spent months of overtime drafting walkthroughs and training a team in another department to handle the basic support. The money was good but I never had time to spend it.
Then just as the largest product release yet was about to drop they eliminated my team entirely because the installation manager (who had no experience with support) threw a hissy fit about how 'his field techs' were too busy fixing things to do even more installations. I wasn't even given a chance to speak on my behalf.
A year later their main competitor bought them out for about 10% of their value when I had been let go.. most of the clients had canceled contracts because everything was broken and nobody was around to fix it.
5783197
Say it with me:
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
You held longer than was required, needed and acceptable, the simple fact that you didnt deck that guy on the head its a miracle in itself, and you should really think of that lawsuit.
I feel this entire experience within the core of my being. I had a very similar experience with Amazon.
Turn back the clock 4 years ago. I just graduated college into a job market on the verge of collapse as Covid ripped through mainland China and looked to be making its way to the US any week now. With student loans repayment just about to start up, and a career in my field not looking likely with a plague on the horizon, I turned to the only place still hiring: Amazon. I knew the place had high turn over, but pay was good, and the benefits were great. The work environment sucked, but it could be manageable if you weren't a complete idiot, and I don't consider myself one. Three weeks working the line and the head of ISS came up to me offering me something different. ISS stands for "Internal Support Systems." Think of it like IT for boxes. Anything that can't be fixed on the line got sent to us: Hazmat materials, oversized items like 12ft rugs, the occasional truckload of fireworks that weren't allowed in the state let alone in the building, but all taken off the trucks anyway because it was good for the dock's numbers. And frankly, that's where a lot of our issues started: on the dock.
Certain things aren't allowed in the building: guns, alcohol, explosives, etc, but farbeit from the dock to reject a trailer. It was a constant source of drama between them, our safety specialists, and our department, who had to store the items until we could get them out of the building (which could take up to a month, if not longer).
But the dock was only the tip of contention. Throw in a year with a bad supervisor who was FROM the dock, and had no idea what we did, or interest in learning how we did it, and it was a recipe for disaster. Our operations team, who ran the building, never saw anything that went wrong as a problem. "It's not a problem until it's a problem" seemed to be the mindset. We finally had to threaten lawsuits to get rid of the bad supervisor.
Add in one more layer to the crapcake: nightshift seemed to play by an entirely different set of rules than dayshift, which only served to make our jobs harder. They would leave literal piles of messes for us to clean up in the morning. Every. Single. Day. Not to mention nightshift dock double receiving inventory in order to artificially boost the site numbers. It made it look the the building was doing better than it actually was. We knew about it, but nobody else did, because deleting out old inventory numbers was one of our department functions. We would see overage numbers matching up to nightshift receive numbers. Anytime we tried to get operations to wrangle in nightshift's nonsense, all we got was empty promises and runarounds. Oh, and almost forgot! Even more genius was when operations decided to start understaffing our department to save money. It felt like they were deliberately setting us up for failure. I'm surprised I lasted the 4 years that I did.
TL;DR: it was poor management compounding in every direction possible. One particularly bad morning, we came in two two overfilled pallets of garbage left by nightshift. In a fit of absent minded rage, I grabbed a nearby box, punted it like it was kickoff at Super Bowl, and stormed out of the building never to be seen again. I'm at a new place now. Not sure if it's going to be better, but the environment is a lot more laid back, and that's doing wonders for my stress levels.
I don't blame you for quitting. Not one bit. You have to do what's best for your mental health, or you crack eventually, like I did. I hope you find happiness somewhere better, because that sure didn't sound like it.
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bruh, that was all you had to say. I knew the rest was going to be awful.
“Your beauty should not come from outward adornments, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight.”
1 Peter 3:3-4
Do you realize what a gem this woman is? You actually have one whose in your corner, a decided rarity in this country.
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Businesses now adays are headed by either decrepit crypt creepers or bright eyed bushy tailed intellectual nitwits who see dream catcher as a personality trait who both are utterly seperated from the end result of their decisions and the mechanics of the end product but ones who will never suffer any noteable quality dip in their standard of living should they fail. Just a matter of boarding up their pop stand and meandering down the road with their severance pay to set up elsewhere and start again.
Best decision Shakes made was dumping the whole shebang like a hot potato, worst was taking so long.
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And here we see the old green machine in its natural habitat and our tax dollars at work
But thats kind of to be expected. You could be God;s gift to humanity in terms of military requisistion, a unrivaled Adonus of martial girth in your field, and you'll be shackled to some baby Huey sized lame duck mongoloid.
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We actually just celebrated our 16th anniversary winning streak.
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Inform her she has been deemed an all around good egg by a random grumpy cunt on the net and remember, good sir, to do as the great sages say
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One thing I should have also said was the lessons I was given by the evaluator. He told me that he had entrusted me with the equipment and put me in charge of it because of it because, legally, no one else at that point could operate it except for me given my certifications. I was responsible to the equipment, which meant meant telling anying who would compromise it "no." And, I didn't... So, I was still at fault, but that was a lesson to be learned as a someone so junior.
Later on, I did apply that lesson and did tell those of higher rank no. Thankfully, 8n those cases, they either listened after I stood my ground and let me explain or removed me from the equation to fuck everything up on their own. Can never forget the feeling of relief of officers questioning me about court martial worthy offenses, only for me to reply with, "What are you talking about? They all kicked me out. I have no idea what happened if that shit is missing or broke. Wait? You're telling me they did what I told them not to do?"
People still find ways to cover their asses though. It certainly helps to have witnesses.
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No one understands the value of working at a place that just lets you do your job right until they've worked at a place that doesn't.
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I do believe you found two gems did you not?
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There is one thing I hate more than a lousy supervisor/manager and that is sales promises.
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I am surprised you havnt reported them to the appropriate agencies