What I’m Playing

More Trials, Bonus Tribulations!

 The Rage! It Burns!
Apr 242008
 

So, no new BIG news on the work front, but I’ve recently become rather aware of a difference in me when I get home from work. Namely, I’m not real happy. Now, as many know, seeing me regularly grumpy in, say, the morning would hardly be news. (Hell, just ask Liam. At one point, he would walk here from his place, and I’d give him a lift to work, as his place of occupation was on my way. We would speak only in grunts and guttural grumblings, like some cro-magnon version of African tribes speaking in clicks and whistles). And, well, give me a big story of scandal rocking the government or the Catholic church, and I am OFF. However, the evening is kind of an odd time to be morose.

Now, I’ve always been TIRED when I get home, but this has been different. Truthfully, I don’t know when it really started…I just kind of ‘noticed’ it quite recently. Actually, it was pointed out to me by Richard, whom I drive to/from work every shift, that I was rather sullen. Well, actually, the point was more along the lines of “Man, you’re pretty fucking quiet”, but I really wanted to work the word sullen in there.

Certainly, all of the travails recently have taken their toll on the ol’ enthusiasm towards the job, but I think it goes beyond that. Check that, I KNOW it goes beyond that. I’m tired of this company hiring people that have no chance of possibly being good at this job. One woman was about 4 foot 10, and had shoulder, back and knee problems. Oh, and she was claustrophobic, and actually could not get in to a cargo pit. Now, what exactly is she supposed to do? Hell, I don’t even really blame her for her issues at the job, and never did…once she’d been there long enough to realize it wasn’t going to work out, she left. I blame the company for hiring her in the first place. How could they POSSIBLY have thought she would work out? And this happens too frequently. Or, as an alternative, a person is hired who really amounts to jack shit…they’re utterly useless. Yet month after month after fucking month, they continue to be employed there. An example…I was hesitant to get my D/A, not because I didn’t wanna drive, but because I was fearful that would become all I’d ever do. And lo and behold, that is pretty much exactly what has come to pass. There are other people with D/A certification, yet they always seem to rotate in one driving spot, while I perpetually fill the other. There are others with a D/A who never drive…why not? Well, they simply can’t be trusted to do it right. THEN WHY GET THEM THEIR D/A IN THE FIRST PLACE?! What a colossal fucking waste of everyone’s time! Now, I basically spend the majority of my 12 hours in solitude. When everyone else gets a break, I get to drive cargo, or set up gates for the next wave of flights. Part of what I really love about this job is the majority of people there are great…well, I no longer spend any time with any of them, so that’s pretty much out the window. Now, I get the monotony of the same flights on the same gates with the same approximate bag loads at close to the same times…EVERY GODDAMN DAY. What attracted me to this was variety, now I get singularity.

How is any of this fair in ANY way to those of us actually working? All it does is shift the load on to the people who actually work at work (what a concept!). I make no claims to being a perfect employee. I make mistakes, and we all have our days where we just have absolutely no energy. But the vast majority of the time, I do my job, and I do it well. And what’s the reward? Getting to help pick up the slack from the people who shouldn’t be there. Everywhere I have ever worked, this has been the case, to some extent, but never quite as acutely as it is here. HR doesn’t seem to get that just because they interview a person, they don’t HAVE to hire them. And management, again, doesn’t really seem to give a shit about how these people affect us…no, it’s still somehow EVERYONE’S fault when we fall short of a quota. We implore them to replace the dead weight, they do nothing,l and it’s magically our fault when reckoning comes. Yeah, that really inspires people to want to push hard. And yet, when good people DO leave, management then stands there and asks why…are you fucking kidding me? WHY?! It’s pretty simple…you take us for granted! You keep a guy like Zack onboard, even though Westjet Baggage Services have written you 3 separate emails in his month on the job, labeling him as, and I quote, “a burden to the entire operation.” Yet, who’s there again tonight? Zacky boy! Jessie, who amounts to a useless git when he does show up, skips 5 straight shifts. Doesn’t call, nothing. He comes back tonight, and it’s “Welcome back! Head back out there and continue being as useful as a pile of dessicated, month old dog shit!” Yet I ask if I could maybe work the ramp for one night, and get a glorified “Now, now, Cliff, you have to be a TEAM player.”

How can your priorities POSSIBLY get this messed up?! POSSIBLY become this scrambled?! Team? Where is this precious fucking ‘team’ that you like to pull out when ANYONE with ANY value utters a complaint? Fuck you, and fuck your team. I am sick and tired of being taken for granted. I am sick and tired of your jackwads just expecting everyone else to clean up behind your mistakes, simply because you lack the fucking nuts to take care of them.

I’ve decided I am reaching my breaking point. The more I look, the more I see like this. It’s like a pest inspector called in because of a small termite problem, and everywhere he looks, he sees nothing but infestation. I just keep peeling back the facade and finding more of this utter bullshit. I’m tired of it. As of this posting, I am giving them a month at the most to start cleaning shit up, as they keep promising to do. At the one month mark (of course, there is always the option of speeding this whole process up, depending on what comes down the ol’ shitpipe next), I start looking. Call my ‘bluff’. I fucking dare you.

  • Chad

    Some things that I’ve learned and will continually be reminded of until I retire:

    1) People who work hard and do a good job are always “punished” by being given more work. In my experience, it typically goes down like this, “we hired so-and-so to do this, but he/she can’t do it very well and you’ve got experience doing it, so you do it instead”.

    2) Upper management typically see the workers as bodies that fill chairs (or what have you). If one leaves, we’ll just put another body in that spot and things will magically continue to work exactly the same. Personality, skill set, experience, previous client relationships and other personal motivators are completely irrelevant.

    3) Comparing yourself against someone else who technically has the same tasks, responsibilities or classification as you is always bad. Even if everything between you and someone else is supposed to be equal, it’s not.

    I see a lot of direct comparisons between your job and mine. Incompetent or lazy coworkers, ignorant or arrogant management, the list goes on and on… these are things that you will find at any job. Just decide what your tolerance level is for the various facets of bullshit and stick to it.

  • Chad

    Some things that I’ve learned and will continually be reminded of until I retire:1) People who work hard and do a good job are always “punished” by being given more work. In my experience, it typically goes down like this, “we hired so-and-so to do this, but he/she can’t do it very well and you’ve got experience doing it, so you do it instead”.2) Upper management typically see the workers as bodies that fill chairs (or what have you). If one leaves, we’ll just put another body in that spot and things will magically continue to work exactly the same. Personality, skill set, experience, previous client relationships and other personal motivators are completely irrelevant.3) Comparing yourself against someone else who technically has the same tasks, responsibilities or classification as you is always bad. Even if everything between you and someone else is supposed to be equal, it’s not.I see a lot of direct comparisons between your job and mine. Incompetent or lazy coworkers, ignorant or arrogant management, the list goes on and on… these are things that you will find at any job. Just decide what your tolerance level is for the various facets of bullshit and stick to it.

  • El Cliff

    I really don’t mind getting extra work sometimes. That’s fine. I guess my biggest problem is that, almost anywhere else I have worked, once an employee proved below par, they were replaced. There ya go, you have a problem, ya solve it. Yet, at this place, that is not the case, which increases the load on everyone else until, quite literally, we make that person’s life so horrendous, they leave, which is the only way any sort of replacement plan ever takes place. How is that reasonable?

    I thought, previously, that a lot of it was job confusion at the management level. After all, we got a new branch manager in in January, one of the duty managers transferred to Calgary, and was replaced by an Ops Co-Ordinator, who was replaced as well. A few other people also moved up the chain. So, I figured that onjce everyone got their feet wet, things would improve. Maybe a lot of it was a combination of bad previous management combined with people still figuring out their new roles?

    Now that it’s been a few months, it’s becoming increasingly clear that, in fact, a lot of this garbage is just the way things are done here. I guess when I made my first post about problems it sort of forced me to take a second look at things, because I ripped the blinders off.

  • El Cliff

    I really don’t mind getting extra work sometimes. That’s fine. I guess my biggest problem is that, almost anywhere else I have worked, once an employee proved below par, they were replaced. There ya go, you have a problem, ya solve it. Yet, at this place, that is not the case, which increases the load on everyone else until, quite literally, we make that person’s life so horrendous, they leave, which is the only way any sort of replacement plan ever takes place. How is that reasonable?I thought, previously, that a lot of it was job confusion at the management level. After all, we got a new branch manager in in January, one of the duty managers transferred to Calgary, and was replaced by an Ops Co-Ordinator, who was replaced as well. A few other people also moved up the chain. So, I figured that onjce everyone got their feet wet, things would improve. Maybe a lot of it was a combination of bad previous management combined with people still figuring out their new roles?Now that it’s been a few months, it’s becoming increasingly clear that, in fact, a lot of this garbage is just the way things are done here. I guess when I made my first post about problems it sort of forced me to take a second look at things, because I ripped the blinders off.

  • Shaun Guthrie

    I think you have your answer by the last few blog postings you’ve made about your job. You need to quit. If you are not happy in your job then why are you there? Sure to make money cause money is good. Why not travel to another country and get a job there, see the world. Not saying I want to get rid of you but I know you’ve wanted to explore so why not use this opportunity. If you get any fare discount use it to fly your ass somewhere and work there. This province is full of lazy fucks who just don’t give a fucking rats ass about their job, how they do it or any pride. They get paid to fuck the dog and that’s it. You’ll find this at any job you go to. you’ve posted stuff like this about your previous jobs, Konica Minolta, Security, Warehouse’s… etc… I’m not saying it will be different elsewhere in the world but in a place where people value their jobs unlike Alberta, it might prove to be a bit different. Who knows…

  • Shaun Guthrie

    I think you have your answer by the last few blog postings you’ve made about your job. You need to quit. If you are not happy in your job then why are you there? Sure to make money cause money is good. Why not travel to another country and get a job there, see the world. Not saying I want to get rid of you but I know you’ve wanted to explore so why not use this opportunity. If you get any fare discount use it to fly your ass somewhere and work there. This province is full of lazy fucks who just don’t give a fucking rats ass about their job, how they do it or any pride. They get paid to fuck the dog and that’s it. You’ll find this at any job you go to. you’ve posted stuff like this about your previous jobs, Konica Minolta, Security, Warehouse’s… etc… I’m not saying it will be different elsewhere in the world but in a place where people value their jobs unlike Alberta, it might prove to be a bit different. Who knows…

  • legion

    Well, I certainly can’t recommend the computing industry then. Complete and utter cluelessness is par for the course there too.
    I have realized over the last few years that I have just come to inspect incompetency everywhere I go, the useful guys get all the work. I guess I’ve just gotten good at bending over and taking it. At least I’ll be popular in prison :P

  • legion

    Well, I certainly can’t recommend the computing industry then. Complete and utter cluelessness is par for the course there too. I have realized over the last few years that I have just come to inspect incompetency everywhere I go, the useful guys get all the work. I guess I’ve just gotten good at bending over and taking it. At least I’ll be popular in prison :P

  • Peter Gulka

    tell us how you really feel. don;t hold back.

  • Peter Gulka

    tell us how you really feel. don;t hold back.

  • http://liamj.blogspot.com Liam

    While I don’t disagree that there is a disgusting proliferation of clueless and useless people out there, it is also true that if you are willing to work hard and come back for more work and volunteer when they’re looking and put everything you can into the job, it will be recognized.

    Maybe it’s not true everywhere, but I doubt that. Look at managers. Yeah, it’s fun to mock them, it’s fun to brutalize them, it’s fun to dream of setting fire to their cars.

    Oh wait, I’m sure I had a point… yeah, that’s right.

    Managers have it shittier right now than anyone else in the work force. If you’re in charge of staffing a team to.. well.. to do anything, you’re competing against at least a dozen other companies who are also starving for manpower. So, you take the people you can get. And if they turn out to be drooling incompetents, you do what you can to replace them but you still need them. And who do you trust to get the job done when shit’s on the line? The one who’s still tying his shoe laces ten minutes into his shift? No. You’re going to trust the ones who have done it before. Yes, you could look at it as a hardship as a worker. I choose to see it differently. If they know that I’m the one they can come to when they need work done fast and well, then they’ll keep coming to me. And if I go to them and ask for more work when I’m finished with what I’m doing, they’ll notice that too. Yeah, maybe right away it doesn’t mean big money or scantily-clad women in sequins holding up big presents for you to take home but management puts a great value on workers they can trust.

    If you are not finding that you are valued, definitely move on, because that is the sign of dysfunctional management. But don’t resent the extra work they want you to do. That’s a good thing. That kind of thing leads to advancement (in a proper structure) and then you get to have the headaches of trying to staff your own little task force.

    And who will you call on then, when shit gets tight?

  • http://liamj.blogspot.com Liam

    While I don’t disagree that there is a disgusting proliferation of clueless and useless people out there, it is also true that if you are willing to work hard and come back for more work and volunteer when they’re looking and put everything you can into the job, it will be recognized.

    Maybe it’s not true everywhere, but I doubt that. Look at managers. Yeah, it’s fun to mock them, it’s fun to brutalize them, it’s fun to dream of setting fire to their cars.

    Oh wait, I’m sure I had a point… yeah, that’s right.

    Managers have it shittier right now than anyone else in the work force. If you’re in charge of staffing a team to.. well.. to do anything, you’re competing against at least a dozen other companies who are also starving for manpower. So, you take the people you can get. And if they turn out to be drooling incompetents, you do what you can to replace them but you still need them. And who do you trust to get the job done when shit’s on the line? The one who’s still tying his shoe laces ten minutes into his shift? No. You’re going to trust the ones who have done it before. Yes, you could look at it as a hardship as a worker. I choose to see it differently. If they know that I’m the one they can come to when they need work done fast and well, then they’ll keep coming to me. And if I go to them and ask for more work when I’m finished with what I’m doing, they’ll notice that too. Yeah, maybe right away it doesn’t mean big money or scantily-clad women in sequins holding up big presents for you to take home but management puts a great value on workers they can trust.

    If you are not finding that you are valued, definitely move on, because that is the sign of dysfunctional management. But don’t resent the extra work they want you to do. That’s a good thing. That kind of thing leads to advancement (in a proper structure) and then you get to have the headaches of trying to staff your own little task force.

    And who will you call on then, when shit gets tight?

  • http://www.peerpressureworks.com Cliff

    Jesus…gotta keep on my toes with Liam, and his thread resurrection powers, around.

    I probably wasn’t really clear about this, but the truth is, I don’t mind doing extra work when the chips are down. It doesn’t bother me. Hell, I’m at work to WORK (which is a concept that seems to baffle a surprising number of people), so give it to me. My issue was more with the fact that some of us were constantly being dealt more work to cover for the SAME useless gits time and time again. So, if they’re constantly unable to finish a task…why are they still there? THAT was what I had an issue with. Whenever a review would come in, which would be failed miserably (seriously, for anyone who lauds Westjet…hi, Shaun!…you’d be horrified to see the performance reviews their support companies all get), nobody would say a thing about the gits. Nope, the rest of us would be told we need to work harder. Yeah, cause it’s OUR fault we failed…THAT’S nice.

    I do agree with you completely about the difficulty of finding workers in such a competitive market, but you can’t get them if you pretty much refuse to compete. That was a major issue at ATS. Because the corporate offices are in St. Louis, they ran the whole company based on the job market…in St. Louis. They didn’t give a crap that in Alberta, and other locations, they were falling behind. Sure, the promise of a grand after 4 months is nice, but a lot of people stay that long, then they leave. Hell, now that I think about it, it was after I got my grand that I let myself take the blinders off and really take an honest look at the place I was working. That was an issue I had with the corporate bigwigs, not with local management.

  • http://www.peerpressureworks.com Cliff

    Jesus…gotta keep on my toes with Liam, and his thread resurrection powers, around.

    I probably wasn’t really clear about this, but the truth is, I don’t mind doing extra work when the chips are down. It doesn’t bother me. Hell, I’m at work to WORK (which is a concept that seems to baffle a surprising number of people), so give it to me. My issue was more with the fact that some of us were constantly being dealt more work to cover for the SAME useless gits time and time again. So, if they’re constantly unable to finish a task…why are they still there? THAT was what I had an issue with. Whenever a review would come in, which would be failed miserably (seriously, for anyone who lauds Westjet…hi, Shaun!…you’d be horrified to see the performance reviews their support companies all get), nobody would say a thing about the gits. Nope, the rest of us would be told we need to work harder. Yeah, cause it’s OUR fault we failed…THAT’S nice.

    I do agree with you completely about the difficulty of finding workers in such a competitive market, but you can’t get them if you pretty much refuse to compete. That was a major issue at ATS. Because the corporate offices are in St. Louis, they ran the whole company based on the job market…in St. Louis. They didn’t give a crap that in Alberta, and other locations, they were falling behind. Sure, the promise of a grand after 4 months is nice, but a lot of people stay that long, then they leave. Hell, now that I think about it, it was after I got my grand that I let myself take the blinders off and really take an honest look at the place I was working. That was an issue I had with the corporate bigwigs, not with local management.

  • http://liamj.blogspot.com Liam

    Well, that’s a job structure it definitely doesn’t pay to stay in. If you’re not hitting your performance goals because of a few people a little further back on the evolutionary chain, and management is a) not recognizing you for going above and beyond and b) not finding a way to replace the “special people” then I would hope that you would find a better place.

  • http://liamj.blogspot.com Liam

    Well, that’s a job structure it definitely doesn’t pay to stay in. If you’re not hitting your performance goals because of a few people a little further back on the evolutionary chain, and management is a) not recognizing you for going above and beyond and b) not finding a way to replace the “special people” then I would hope that you would find a better place.

   
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