Rick's b.log - entry 2023/03/09

Oh dear...

Anyway, I am taking off this Friday, next Friday, and the entire last week of March.

I applied for these days ages ago.

I just don't have luck.
Here's the warning warning forecast for tomorrow.

Oh crap.

So, nothing to worry about...

Oh dear...

It was possible to provide your name if you wanted any potential follow-up. So I provided my name, because I believe that if you aren't willing to stand by what you say, then shut the hell up. The world already has more than it's fair share of trolls and dipshits, and most of them are on (or own) Twitter.

I had a terrible morning in plonge. One of the people hadn't turned up (a bad migraine), and the new guy was left on his own for over four hours. To put it into context, we have a huge machine that the trays and stuff passes through to prewash, wash, dry, and then dry some more. It requires somebody at each end, otherwise loads of time is wasted as one person keeps going back and forth, putting stuff in and then collecting it at the end. And there are certain things (like the flexible teflon baking sheets) that cannot be done without people at each end as they won't trip the "output is full" sensor, they'll just fall out and pile up (assuming the output conveyor doesn't get jammed trying to eat them).

So I turned up at nine, did my restocking round as usual, then went into plonge to lend a hand because the company owner was making a visit at 11am.
Just before me, somebody was quickly shuffled in from the production team because, I guess, one of the managers (that turn up around 8.30-9ish) looked in plonge and went nuts over the utter catastrophe there.

So I was feeding stuff into the machine like normal when one of the line managers comes in and starts pushing things at me saying "This is urgent, we need this NOW". Okay, that happens a lot.

Not five minutes pass when a different line manager comes in and pushes something else at me and says "This is urgent, we need this NOW".

I point out that somebody just said this for what I was currently doing, and she said "yes, that's urgent too".
So which one is the more urgent?
All of it.

I rolled my eyes and started to explain that different things go through the machine in different programmes, so no, we can't do everything at the same time.
And, no, we can't do a little of everything as we'd have to empty the machine and change programme each time, which will take even longer.

We can actually mix certain things, so long as what we are mixing in uses a lesser programme. For example, the silicone baking moulds go on a certain mid-speed cycle with continual rinsing after the main wash. We can also feed in the metal baking trays that they're usually piled on because the baking tray programme is a fast one without continual rinse (because they're flat). But as you can no doubt understand, we can't shove through the odd silicone mould while doing the baking trays; and no, we can't switch to the moulds programme for everything as it runs about half the speed of the tray programme...so the end result would be taking more time.

So I tell her to pick something. Getting stressed, she explains that she needs this to go into this along with this (and pulls over something else). So now I'm looking at three urgent things.

As she's not willing to pick, I do. And it's not the thing she wanted. She's unhappy. I tell her I picked the trays because it's the fastest cycle so it'll get done the quickest, and once that's done, I'll do her thing. I left it hanging in the air that if she really wanted her thing done first, she should have been willing to stand by saying it was the most important rather than saying "everything". Everything is not a valid response. Everything will not fit into the machine, no matter how much by this point I dearly wanted to try. With a sledgehammer.

A few minutes later the first woman comes back. I say "No" without even looking at her. To my great surprise, she looks at the stuff all around and is like "uh-hu" and quietly leaves.

Now, consider that nobody thought of helping the guy for most of the morning. And consider that production doesn't just pluck tasks out of a Sorting Hat. They would have needed to assign which of the machines would be used, which girls to do it, and tell the kitchen when to have the stuff (cake mix, icing, whatever) ready.
And the whiteboard on the wall behind me where they're supposed to write down what is important and when it needs to be ready for...completely empty.

So, yes, I was feeling mildly miffed. I liked my previous job because I looked after myself, got on with things, and stayed away from all this hassle (it's not a lack of organisation, it's a simple lack of anybody giving a shit, we plonge people rank somewhere between servant and slave, right?).

So in my questionnaire, it asked me for my job satisfaction out of ten. Last year, it would have been about a 7/10. But a combination of unpleasant morning and not liking how everything played out with the changes meant I ranked my job satisfaction as a 5/10.
Positives? I'm still working day hours (9am-4.45pm) and I do have some of my old roles so I'm not in plonge the entire time. I don't so much mind plonge itself, I just function much better if I'm given a list of what needs done, and then everybody except my cow-orker then buggers off and leaves us to get on with it. If a bunch of line managers want to try pathetic power plays with each other (one is notorious for saying what she needs the next morning is "urgent"), I'm afraid I have no desire to get into that sort of crap. It's one of the reasons I've never made much effort to use my brain for some sort of office job. I'd rather earn less doing manual work than put up with the sort of backstabbing drivel that office work entails. Given the number of techies expecting a large amount of work-from-home these days, I guess I'm not the only one who doesn't give a single flying flamingo about micromanaging narcissists and the Karens with their toxic opinions.
F all of that S.

As I did my various tasks today, I talked to some other people. My takeaways from those who were willing to talk to me:
Firstly, I might be the only person who put their name to their comments.
And I might have the highest job satisfaction in the place. What most people said was "two out of ten" and they only gave two because "things can always get worse".

Oh dear.

I'm afraid that I think 5/10 is a crap evaluation. I wouldn't ever rate the company 2/10. Not out of kindness or loyalty, but simply because if I hated my job so much that I only gave it that score on the anticipation that it could be worse, I'd find myself a different job.

Of course, this actually assumes that somebody bothers to read through all of the comments and pay attention to what people have said. Call me cynical, but I rather suspect that an amount of Brexit-style cherry-picking will be done so people higher up the food chain can delude themselves that everything is cool and the new site manager is doing a good job, etc, etc, etc.

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David Pilling, 9th March 2023, 23:25

Are you:  a) Happy  b) Very Happy  c) Extremely Happy

Rick, 10th March 2023, 05:13

There were multiple choice questions regarding things that would improve motivation and work happiness. Not one mentioned increased pay.  Given that for many of us, there was NO increase in January (when minimum wage went up 1.8%), I reckon quite a lot of people added this themselves.  I did, because pay remaining static when the minimum goes up is, in effect, a pay decrease.  But HR explained that it was only obligatory for those on the minimum and since most of us were making more, there was no obligation, so they didn't.

C Ferris, 10th March 2023, 11:40

Keep looking after you Cat :-)

C Ferris, 10th March 2023, 11:42

Woops that should be - your Cat

J.G.Harston, 15th March 2023, 23:10

Gawd, I've had that exact too-many-chiefs thing. It must be innate to the universe or something.  3.00, A: We need this room for a 4pm meeting  (ok, looks at tasks, winds down at 3:55 to clear out)  3:55, B: Right, set up the tables, we've got stuffing to do.  (ok, sits at table, starts suffing envelopes)  4:00, A: WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?! WE NEED THIS ROOM FOR A MEETING!!!!  (sigh. MYFMU!)

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