InfiniteTides

How much does a candy bar cost these days?  $.65?  $.75?  I confess that I do not know and cannot remember the last time I bought one in a store or from a vending machine.  The prices on things in the machines in the break room where I work are inflated, so maybe a candy bar costs as much as $.85.

What do you do when the vending machine fails to release your candy bar, we’ll say it’s a Heath, from its evil spiral clutches into the candy-grabbing area below?  Do you A) Purchase another Heath bar to dislodge the first one; B) Shake the machine violently until your Heath is dislodged (fork lifts won’t fit through the break room door); C) Fill out an envelope provided by the vending company to request a refund; or D) Smash the glass front of the machine and snatch several candy bars as recompense for the hunger pain, suffering, and stress of not getting what you paid for?  If you answered “D,” you might work where I work, and management would like to have a word with you.

Monday night at work, management posted a sign-up sheet for operators interested in returning to 2nd shift beginning next week.  If they don’t get enough volunteers, they will either call additional operators back from the lay-off or mandate that other operators move to 2nd.  When I heard this, I immediately emailed my supervisor to both inform her that 2nd shift will be starting up soon, and to ask if I would be able to switch back.  This evening, I found an email approving my move back to 2nd shift whenever it starts.  That made my week nearly as much as getting to see my parents who are visiting from Florida where they live.  On my to-do list for this weekend is to re-re-re-fix my sleep cycle for my preferred 2nd shift routine which means sleeping while it’s dark out.  Who knows?!  I might even get some sun sometime soon so people will stop complaining about how pale I am!  Walking to work in the afternoon with the summer sun still high in the sky certainly won’t hurt.

On a side note, I’m still mulling over my next project.  Since no one suggested anything, I’ll have to come up with something all by myself.  I have some vague ideas bounding around in my head, and I think one or two may begin to take shape before my long weekend is over.  Once I’ve made up my mind, I’m sure I’ll blog about it, but until then, sorry, no hints!

Do you work with (or for) someone who constantly grunts questions without listening to the answers?  Do you work with a knuckle-dragger who goes out of his way to make your help seem redundant and unappreciated?  Do you work with someone who criticizes everything, is quick to blame, but never has any ideas of ways to improve the situation himself?  Do you work with someone who needs everything explained and re-explained so he can be up to speed on a problem that has nothing to do with his job and gets involved, slowing down the problem-solving process?  Do you work with an unevolved Neanderthal who believes he has all of the answers, is incapable of delegating to more qualified co-workers and stubbornly clings to incorrect or defective ideas or reasoning in the face of evidence that clearly proves him wrong?  Do you work with a stone age troglodyte whose unintelligible emails are riddled with grammar and spelling errors (despite the availability of spell-check)?  Do you work with the gorilla who tells everyone else what their responsibilities are without having any actual knowledge about company job descriptions and duties?  Does the dearth of intelligence and acquired knowledge exhibited by your boss or co-worker lead you to question with whom and to what degree this Homo erectus demeaned himself?  Is your monkey’s first response to every problem to ask if we can’t just ignore it?

Are you interested in buying one?  My company has a surplus.

My brief time on first shift has allowed me a glimpse into a chaotic Bizzaro world which I thought I understood.  I’ve seen people running all over the place, constantly in (wasted) motion, trying to please too many masters, and accomplishing very little because of it.

One reason scheduling seems to be such a mess is that they have someone who is too eager to please the CSR’s, but who has no real authority to make her own decisions about priorities.  Basically, the scheduler doesn’t seem to have the big picture in mind as she goes about her daily duties.  She can’t possibly schedule with maximum efficiency.  Not to mention the fact that they have her doing too much, spreading her too thin.  There’s no good reason for her to be pulling the job files for jobs she’s scheduling, trucking them to the rooms in which they will run, AND scheduling when and where jobs will run.  The scheduler should be the hub, not a spoke, not someone charged with keeping the tire inflated.  If you could hear how often the scheduler’s phone(s) are ringing, beeping, and direct-connecting her, you would understand why she is the hub and should remain in a central location.  Other people can pull files.  Hell, die setters are constantly trotting through her office any way, not to mention the fact that supervisors really aren’t all that busy that they couldn’t be more involved as spokes for the hub.  I think our pressroom scheduling is a mess the way they do it on first shift, and it makes me even happier to be going back to third.

The level of support on first shift can be rather good.  Some people are helpful, and some are not.  The engineers who only work first shift always seem reluctant to get involved or make decisions.  I’m not talking about our quality engineers.  They are quite good, but our other engineers are rubbish.  For the most part, they seem to be people who don’t like to get their hands dirty or go out on the floor to investigate things.  It’s long been my experience that when faced with an issue like, the tooling can’t produce the part to our customer’s print specifications, the typical response from an engineer is something like, “they’re (the customer) gonna hafta use what we send them, I guess.”  I’ve never heard an engineer (without direct prompting) offer to call and consult a customer about a problem we’ve discovered with their tooling, especially after we’ve told the customer that we were ready to run production on those tools.  Engineers always seem ready to wash their hands of the problems and run back to their upstairs offices.  Another reason I prefer being on an off shift.  I don’t have to deal with the engineers very often.

Because the operators (and die setters) on first shift tend to have the most experience and have been with the company the longest, they tend also to ask the fewest questions.  I’ve seen a good number of things done wrong, because the operators presume that they know what they are doing, and no one can tell them a better way to do anything.  First shift operators tend to be know-it-alls who are very much stuck in their ways of inefficiency.  They tend to be less open-minded.  They tend to act as though the company owes them something for their length of service too.  It’s no wonder that so few employees of the month have come from production people on first shift.  They don’t impress me in the least, and their production numbers seem to back that up.

Communication on first shift is probably the best thing it’s got going for it.  So what do first shifters do with their great communication?  They horde it, and I think I know why.  Very few people on first shift can write an intelligible email explaining anything complex or nuanced.  So if they can’t explain something verbally, either face-to-face or over the phone, they can’t be bothered to send an email that will just be misunderstood any way.

There are some people on first with whom I enjoy working.  Dan is alright.  He does a good job as quality engineer.  Stacy is okay, I guess.  At least she isn’t super-annoying to me.  I’ve even found Cheri more personable than expected.  That said, I’ll be quite relieved to be back on third shift.

I suppose I should just be happy knowing that certain people who would have annoyed me were off all week.  I suppose I should be happy that I was only forced to endure one week of first shift.  I suppose I should be happy that I was able to walk to work every day this week.  I suppose I should be happy that I’m not laid off.  I am happy for all of those reasons, but most of all because it’s Friday.  The weekend is nearly here, and my sleep schedule is about to become unfuct.  :)