The worst job I ever worked at was at a door manufacturer, where I operated a large, computer controlled machine that trimmed the perimeter of doors and cut out the handle holes all in one process. You had to pay close attention to how you orientated the doors on the table because the hinges needed to be on the correct side. If not, you could ruin a door that costs up to $800 dollars. Speaking of doors, have you ever had to lift a solid oak door? Let me tell you, I consider myself to be stronger than the average man, and I struggled to lift these things on to the vacuum table. We didn’t have any special tools or mechanisms to help out, we had to use our brawn alone. At the end of the day my back would be killing me, I would routinely have to load over 60 of these big, heavy doors throughout the entire day. Occasionally the machine would run over a rogue screw and make a bad noise, or the door would pop off of the vacuum table and ruin the whole process. It was extremely noisy, I don’t often use the word “extreme” but in this case it warrants it. One time I used my phone to measure the decibel level during the machining process and it regularly hit 115 decibels. All day long.
We also had a near-impossible quota to hit for how many doors we had to machine in a day. We were supposed to hit 180 per day between the two machines and we struggled to hit 120. This meant that the CEO of the company would routinely have discussions with us about productivity and the importance of time management. After a couple days on the job I was dubious as to whether that 180 mark was even possible. I actually timed on how long it took to machine 10 doors and averaged that time out throughout the entire day. Without accounting for breaks, lunch, errors, or anything else that might come up, we could machine a maximum of 150 doors per day. It was literally impossible. Yet, our department was constantly under scrutiny from the higher ups, and was frequently blamed for the reason the company wasn’t hitting the target numbers.
There was also a very high turnover rate, almost everyone I talked to was new to the job and the veterans didn’t hesitate to tell me about how bad the supervisors treated the staff. This should have been a huge red flag, but I was still new to the job market and these red flags went in one ear and out the other. Pro tip: if everyone at your new job is new, that’s a very bad sign. To make matters even worse the schedule was horrendous, it was Monday-Thursday 5am to 1:30pm, and Fridays were 4am-12:30pm. Naturally I became sleep deprived during the week and I became depressed and anxious. I won’t get into specifics to what I was getting paid, but I will say it was not a lot and it was through a temp agency so there was zero negotiation. To summarize it all up, it was terrible. I was physically hurting all day from the bending and lifting, my ears rang, I was sleep deprived, depressed and anxious, all the while under the omnipresent thumb of the CEO.
Believe it or not, those weren’t the reasons I quit. Sure the job sucked, but I was still making decent money (so I thought) and it was tolerable for the time being. To get to the reason why I quit we have to go back to the beginning. When I was hired we had two machines that were each operated by an employee, doing all the described duties from before. The two people who operated these machines were me and another man named Bobby. Bobby was a tall, sarcastic man in his thirties who taught me everything about operating the machine. He also had a temper. He was a good employee, but he never held his tongue about his disdain for the bosses and the working conditions. Especially our shift supervisor, Matt. Matt who was a jovial, plump man with a big beard and everything Bobby wasn’t. He wasn’t a very good leader but he cared about the job and I liked him.
Four weeks after I started Bobby and Matt had a falling out and Bobby, like out of a movie, grabbed his things from his locker, yelled, “I quit!” and slammed the door. That could be a story in itself, but more importantly he was our shift lead, and now one of the machines didn’t have an operator. I continued to do my work, processing what has just happened, when Matt calls me in and informs me that I am the new shift lead and I will be operating both machines by myself. Despite having just learned how to operate one machine only four weeks ago. This meant, quite literally, doing double the amount of work, along with supervising two other employees and burdening the responsibility of quality inspection. All the while meeting daily quotas, and without a mention of any increase in my pay. At this point I was still somewhat committed to the company, being a shift lead felt kind of heroic in a way, having so much responsibility felt strangely good. But if I was going to double the amount of work, I rightfully expected to be compensated for it. So I summoned up the courage and talked to the CEO himself, David. David was a neatly put together man who appeared to be in great shape, he was also very cold and I got the feeling he missed out on a lot of his daughter’s school plays. I explained my reasoning, and expected to be offered something. Anything at all would be appreciated. Let’s just say, it didn’t happen how I planned. David, talked in circles about waiting to see how our quotas looked in a couple months and then he’ll see about increasing my pay. In other words, a big, fat no. I’m not an angry person, but I was having angry feelings at this moment.
I’m not an idiot, I took that conversation as a sign to immediately start looking for another job. I’ve made the mistake before of quitting a job before you have another one lined up, and I knew as much as the job was killing me I had to wait. For a couple weeks I endured hellish amounts of stress and anxiety, I had just learned how to operate one machine and now I was the captain of two of them. I was making mistakes and missing the daily quota by an even larger margin than before. By then there was no mention of introducing another person to operate the second machine, I suspect they figured out they could get away with having just me operate both at the same time. Fortunately, I interviewed at another company, a telescope manufacturer of all things, that was minutes away from where I lived. Did I mention this door job was a half hour commute from my house? Anyway, soon I received a call from the telescope job and was offered a position, but at a two dollar an hour decrease in pay. Roger that. At this point it was just a matter of when I was going to put in my two weeks, after all I was the only machine operator in the company and I didn’t want to leave them empty handed. So I called my wife to hear her advice, and she suggested I tell them to get f***ed. That was all the convincing I needed.
So I waited until the day was over, clocked out, took a deep breath and walked over to the department supervisor, Wade, and briefly told him my grievances regarding my pay (pro tip, never tell any more than you have to when quitting), and today was my last day. What Wade said is something I will hear again in the future from other employers, he said that they would have no problem paying me what I wanted. For the briefest moment I considered reversing my decision and staying with the company, but thankfully I stuck to my guns and remained firm. After all, if they thought I was worth more, they would have shown that when they “promoted” me to a shift lead. Brief words were exchanged and I left the office, that’s when I saw David, the CEO. I took another deep breath and gave him the same speech. He looked visibly more angry, and didn’t say much. I figured this was my cue to leave when out of the blue Matt, the shift supervisor who had the falling out with Bobby, walked over to us. David said, “James has something to tell you” and briskly stormed off. Matt gave me a confused look and I, once again, gave him the same speech about leaving because I felt I wasn’t getting compensated fairly. Matt looked hurt, but to his credit gave me a handshake and told me best of luck. As I was leaving the building I heard Wade yell dammit across the warehouse. I high tailed it out of there and jumped into the safety of my car. I checked my phone and it read 1:41, in a span of 10 minutes I quit three times.
The feelings I felt inside that old, beat up BMW, is something I will never forget. I felt happy it was over, happy I never had to go back to that place, happy I stood up for myself. But the only words that repeated in my head, were “That sucked. That sucked.” Those 10 minutes were some of the most emotionally draining minutes of my whole life. All in all folks if there is anything I learned from that experience is to know your worth, trust your gut when entering a new workplace, and never divulge more than you have to. Like a wise man once said, when it comes to most things professional; keep it direct and keep it simple.
Thank you for reading my long story. If you liked it you can check my post history for more or check out my blog Careercringe.com
usa jobs resume
usa hotel jobs
usajobs
usa jobs federal government
usa job in ksa
usa jobs
usa jobs login
usa jobs gov
usajobs.gov
www.usajobs.gov
usajobs.com
usajobs
usajobs.gov official
Aucun commentaire: