Workplace Horror Stories!

Had a nice little encounter with the old floor supervisor on Friday. He shows up in the morning meeting, basically telling us we're behind in production due to absenteeism (this is true and a huge problem) and numerous summer power bumps due to summer storms. Whenever we're hit with a power bump from the power simply flickering off and on to completely going out, it throws all the machines out of whack in the plant and anything that was part way through its production cycle is instantly turned to scrap. August is always a bad month for getting hit with sudden summer storms.

So to combat absenteeism, for the last year the company has upped our mandatory on call from once a month, to two times a month. Extremely unfair to those of us who show up to work every shift. We basically lose an extra two days a month because when you're on call you can't make any plans for that day, even if you don't get called in. It's got to the point where people are even ignoring their on calls now because it is just so unfair.

Basically the plant is overstaffed with office personnel and understaffed with labor personnel. The reason they won't discipline people who are absent from work all the time is because it takes so long to train someone on one of the machines the company basically has to keep the absent worker on payroll in the hopes they show up enough to get some decent production in.

Anyway, during the morning meeting he adds in that we're obligated to work an additional one or two voluntary overtime shifts a month. This 'obligation' is not true or technically even legal and we all sort of rolled our eyes. I show up every shift, I show up on my on call shifts if I get called in and I am in no way volunteering to lose yet one to two more days off a month for this 'obligation' to come in because some scumbag who was out partying is too hung over to show up for work. It's hard pulling two twelve hour shifts in a row and it's even harder pulling three. Sometimes the on call is set up so you can end up pulling four or five in a row. So when I'm on shift I basically live off of advil and caffeine pills. I'm usually hurting pretty bad after a three day shift as a lifetime of manual labor is already taking its toll on me.

The meeting ends and we go to work. Within the first hour of the shift my loader brings me up a load ticket to scan in. Every time we load a product into one of the machines it has a scan ticket that needs to be scanned into the computer so every product can be traced in case something needs to be recalled. So I scan the ticket and get a big red flag on the computer. Machine is programmed to instantly stop production when this happens and although I can use a manual over ride to keep building, it's against the operating protocol. Best case scenario you get written up, worst case scenario you get fired. So of course I stop everything. Get on the walkie talkie to call the Line Leader to come look at the ticket. No response. Call again, no response. Call the quality control person on the walkie talkie, no response. Call again, no response. My loader picks up the phone and puts out a page on the plant's PA system for the Line Leader to come to our machine. We wait and wait and wait and he doesn't show up. After about half an hour I try calling him again on the walkie talkie. Finally he answers and comes to our machine. Says he and the quality control girl were both in morning meetings and that's why they couldn't come right away. Fine with me, I'm not mad or anything.

So he checks the ticket in the computer and the computer says the product has been blocked for use. Okay, woulda been nice if someone made a note on the ticket itself so the forklift driver wouldn't have brought it out to the machine. So we unload it, a process that takes a little while and load on the next one. Same thing, we scan the ticket, Product Blocked. We take all the time to unload it and load on yet another one. This time it's good. Crisis averted, we're back to building, didn't think anything of it. I log the down time in to the computer several times, unable to contact line leader, unable to contact quality control, waited for line leader, waited for quality control, loaded/unloaded blocked product x2. Shouldn't be a problem, both line leader and quality control were in a morning meeting, a blocked product ticket stopped production, took a while to load and unload two rolls of product. Total down time, about 75 minutes.

About three hours into the shift the old floor supervisor comes up on to the machine, ignores the other two workers and beeline's straight to me (of course). He has a print out of our logged in down time that I put in the computer and demands an explanation for the 75 minutes. He shouldn't need an explanation since when I log in the down time it also logs in the reasons I wrote down as well. So I explain to him the whole story and what I get is 'Unacceptable.' Okay???? If the line leader and quality control person are in morning meetings and we've called them numerous times, as well as put pages out over the PA system, what more can we do? The reason there is two people to call is in case one is tied up and you can get a hold of the other. It just so happens they were both together in a meeting and both unreachable. How is that my fault? He tells me we can't afford to waste a single minute not building stock. So I am supposed to violate the production code and keep manually building with what turned out to be blocked product? That would have seen me in someone's office either getting written up or canned and everything we built getting pulled and scrapped. Now this is the same prick who on multiple times had written me up for very minor infractions that were worth a verbal warning at best.

The new guy on our machine, Jeremy, I'm working with pipes up and basically explains the whole thing to him again, because he's bitching us out when we were following company production protocol to the letter. He says 'Unacceptable.' again and walks off. Now the new guy has never worked under this former line leader before but he's heard all the stories about what a jerk-off this guy has been over the years and everyone in the shop already knows the stories about the rage hard on he had for me when he was directly supervising us. I kinda just shrugged it off being used to it. I knew we didn't do anything wrong and weren't going to get in trouble. So the new guy, Jeremy, is standing there for about thirty seconds in disbelief and says 'I'm not putting up with that.' He walks over to the phone on our machine and puts out a plant wide PA for our current line leader to come to our machine immediately.

So our supervisor shows up a few minutes later and Jeremy starts explaining what happened and how we got bitched out for following building protocols. The supervisor tries to calm him down saying that's just how he is and we should probably just let it go. He says: 'No, I'm not letting it go. We did what we were supposed to do and he comes out here and shits all over us.' As he's saying this the guy must have heard the page on the PA system and shows back up on our machine midway through Jeremy explaining what just happened. Our supervisor said,"You're absolutely right, you followed company orders, he was in the wrong." And old line leaders face went beet red and then Jeremy started to pile on even more. "That thing you said in the morning meeting about being 'obligated' to come and work voluntary overtime shifts was complete bullshit and we're not doing it. And if you come up on our machine and harass us again it'll be you, me, human resources and the plant manager sitting in an office having a conversation about it." Wow. The look on his face... He says "I'm taking a walk." turns around and leaves and we never saw him again for the rest of the shift. Our supervisor says that he will get spoken to about coming up on our machine and doing that. I told Jeremy he just made someone's shit list and that he was probably headed right back to his office to look up Jeremy's file for anything that could be used against him, because he is petty enough to do that.

I had to congratulate him though. He shut down that shit in five minutes when it took me three years to do it.