Yet more bitching about work..

Yes, I'm going to rant and rave about work stuff again.

However, before I do, I sent some questions to my wife's blog at her request. I think you should check out her answers, and see what you think!

Anyway, on to my raving....

Yesterday, I had one CRAZY workday.

Let's start this thing out right, and I'll paint you a small picture.

When this warehouse was built, it was decided to build in a small rural area that wasn't being utilized extensively by anyone, and would be easily accessible from the main freeway. They found this spot, and proceeded to install an ENORMOUS warehouse here. I'm not kidding about the size. This warehouse is over 975,000 square feet of space (floorspace), and rises over 180 feet. Plenty of space to store things!

Anyway, things seemed well. That is, until the first real rain hit. Then we promptly lost phones. That's when we found out some seriously bad news.

The city around where we'd built this place had installed sub-market cabling in this area, since before we'd come here there was nothing but cows and fields.

Moving a heavy indutrial zone in here blew out all of the specifications for the underground conduit and wiring that ran through this area. Because of this problem, ground water was now able to seep into the undergroun cabling, and effectively shut off any communication we could have with the "outside" world after any kind of heavy rain.

We brought up this finding and our concerns, and were reassured that the city would replace the cabling as soon as it was able. Passified, we went back to get our work done.

That was 5 years ago. Since then, each and every winter and spring we deal with the serious loss of phone communication. This will also include cable, and electrical at times too.

Yesterday was one such day. It had been raining here for about 3 days, and the water tables were getting high. At the end of the workday on Wednesday, my connection to the corporate network was getting dicey, and phones were becoming heavily laden with white noise and static. I contacted the local phone company to come out and fix the issue.

They never showed up on Wednesday. At 5pm on Wednesday we lost ALL phones and data lines. It was a total death blow to my warehouse, as with no corporate server to work on gave us no ability to update inventory or stock. Thus my warehouse ground to a complete halt, and workers were sent home.

I came back to the warehouse on Thursday assuming that the phone technicians would have taken care of the trouble, and everything would be running again at normal pace.

Nope.

Workers were sitting around chatting, managers were discussing options, and nothing was being done out on the warehouse floor.

My General Manager spotted me, and called me into his office, demanding an explanation.

I proceeded to show him the emails I'd left, and the calls I'd made to take care of the problem BEFORE it got to this point. He agreed that I'd taken the right actions, and proceeded to chew a new one on the phone representative that he'd had on his cell phone.

I contacted my corporate advisor, and they started putting pressure on the phone company from their side as well.

In all, the warehouse was effectively shut down for nearly 18 hours, costing my company approximately 2.5 MILLION dollars in lost time and revenue.

Because I didn't stay past my quitting time to wait for the phone technicians to show up the day before, I got my butt chewed.

So, thanks to all of this, I was in a REALLY bad mood.

Enter in my "second" part of my job.

Not only do I work the technical side of this warehouse dealing with the network administration and upkeep, but I'm also part of the Quality Control group.

Being on the QC team means that we do daily audits of trailers being sent out in order to assure the stores that the product they ordered is correct.

Well, because of some slacking on the QC side, the department was behind on the number of annual audits needing to be done. My head QC manager decided to "bulk up" yesterday, and we did double the amount we normally do.

One lucky group of loaders had to deal with us 3 different times.

Yeah. Three.

The first one wasn't so bad. They didn't like being slowed down too much, because they wanted better hourly numbers, but they were willing to work past it. They started to seriously complain on the second one, and it took nearly twice as long to complete because of talking, whining, and going to their manager to "demand" a transfer to a different trailer.

Being in the piss-poor mood I was in, each whine and grumble from them just get me off a little bit more. Somewhere in the middle of the second audit, and listening to a basic temper tantrum from a middle-aged man, I broke.

I called my manager, and informed him that I'd be doing yet a THIRD audit in the same trailer. With the same people. He approved it, and informed the shipping and loading managers. That act caused a fuss that I've never seen before in an adult male.

Whining, moaning, pointing fingers, I half expected one of them to throw themselves on the floor of the trailer and pound on it with their fists and kick their feet.

This display lasted nearly 45 minutes before they finally agreed to settle down and load the store.

45 FREAKING minutes!

After much delay, and quite a bit of grumbling and moaning on their part, we got the store audit started and we finished in about 35 minutes. As I cleared out the gear, and headed to my office, one of the loaders proceeded to thank me for the work. I ignored him.

He followed.

I walked.

He asked me to tell him what I had a problem with.

So, because of his request, I did.

I told him that I understood about the pains of dealing with the slow audit process. I understood about wanting to get work done as quickly as possible in order to have the option to leave early if the chance presents itself.

But I also informed him that the QC part wasn't my only job. I told him about my sincere hatred of someone wasting my time by doing childish things.

Needless to say, I wasn't nice about the whole thing at all.

I was actually quite the jerk.

But I really don't like it when folks kill my time by doing something stupid and childish.

The time they spent crying could have been better served doing work, and 10 minutes after we finished the store, they would have finished their tirade!

So.. Guess what I got to deal with this morning?

Yeah. The manager for those two isn't going to act on the incident, and DEMANDS that I apologize for my actions the day before.

Um.. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

I think I'll waste his time today, and see how he likes it. If he enjoys it, then I'll apologize. If not, he can kiss my ass.

Hope you all have a good weekend. I'm looking forward to getting out of here for a while!

Time to bitch and moan

Why oh why is it that when I start something, someone I know tends to take a dislike to what I'm doing, and try to tell me how I should do something?

I work on the house, somehow what I'm doing isn't correct, and I need to do it this way.

I go out to play with the kids. That's great, but don't get TOO rough.

I chat with some online friends. "I don't really care, but you tend to get a bit too friendly with them, and that makes me upset"

I get on the computer.. "You play TOO long on there, and don't pay enough attention to anything else."

NOTHING seems to be done right!

Am I just a natural screw-up, or what?

I mean, I know that I've got my faults.

I love to tell stories. I love to make up silly things on the spot. I know that I love to play video games. I know that I shouldn't be typing this right now, and should really be finding something here at work to be doing, etc.

But last night REALLY took the cake for me.

Someone had to come over and talk to me, and confront me on something with other folks.

Blatant.

Right out front, let's get it on type of confrontation.

I could understand talking to me one on one, and telling me something.

But to confront and belittle me in front of other people?

Meh. Doesn't really jive with me.

Now? Yup. I'm pissed.

I'm sure that they'll be told about me writing here, and to be honest, I could care.

All I'm doing right now is venting my frustration and feelings. If that's a problem, then they have the option of not reading.

Plain.

And.

Simple.

Oh, and if they really don't like this? Then they should've thought of this before they decided to confront me in front of their friends, now shouldn't they?

Anyway, I think I'm done here.

Oh, and moderation for comments has been turned on, just specifically because of the new readers I've got that have a need to try to control this part of my online experience as well!

Talk more tomorrow

More Comments on Stereotypes...

Well, something I said actually got a response, so I'm going to talk more about it!

Steretypes.

Me? I'm tall. Since the 6th grade I've been well over 6 foot. As of now, I'm 6'4" tall, and I weigh 250 pounds.

This has been cause for quite a few comments.

"Youre tall, do you play basketball?"

How exactly should I answer this? I've almost felt like replying,
"You're short! Do you play miniature golf?"

Or this one: "How's the weather up there?"

I've had to suppress the urge to spit, and say "Rainy"

Then I get posts from people like Bee, who look Hispanic, and because of this are assumed that they cook a specific way.

Let's see.. My nose is big, that must mean I'm Italian, which means that I can cook one mean pasta dish!

I'm Black, so that must mean I love red beans and rice, cornbread, and fried chicken!

I'm Polish, so that means I like sausage, potatoes, and cabbage!

Give.

Me.

A.

Break!

I think most times folks automatically assume things because they don't really want to find out about the person they meet. What they really want is what they can get from said person. It's not about who they are, but what they can give.

Me? I tend to be more reserved, and I take people at face value. I also have a tendency to trust someone until I find out that they've earned my mistrust.

Take this for an example.

At my work I have a manager who told me when I started here that he had a degree in computer science, but he never pursued the job because there wasn't much of a demand for the work when he got it.

Me, being the trusting sort, nodded, and took him at his word. After all, why not? I mean, I've never met the guy, and chance are he's telling me the truth, because what value would there be in lying to a basic stranger?

Today, I had an issue that was simple to fix. One install and a reboot was all that was needed. I asked said manager to do it, since it was something any "normal" user could accomplish. His reply? "Um, where do I find the reboot switch?"

So, for a comment like this one, I'm definitely NOT going to believe one more word this jackass tells me. You've got a computer science degree, but you think there's a reboot SWITCH somewhere on the computer desktop?

Anyway...

For me, I think the only bad thing about this job is that I'm starting to stereotype all of my managers into one file.. "Dumbass"

This isn't fair, to be honest, as there are a few here that really have their stuff together.

Of course, these aren't the people I deal with on a weekly or even daily basis, so for the most part I still consider them strangers. They're nice, they get their work done, and they don't bother me about stupid stuff.

It's the other 80% of the management force here that gets my goat.

Really, if you're going to try to impress me, do it with something other than that blazing "intellect" you've got going on.

My example for this one? Yup. I've got one.

Three weeks ago I had to move a workstation and printer. The location they wanted it in had NO power source, so I asked the maintenance manager to drop a power box there so I could finish the job. I got the "We're busy, so you're going to have to wait"

Needless to say, I couldn't put this on hold, as the GM told me to "Get it done... NOW."

So I asked the manager how long I would have to wait. His response? "When I get to it. If you need it done now, then go do something yourself."

You say something like that to me, and you're darn well going to get a result, it's just not going to be one you like. Now, I have to wander through when they do the fire inspections here, and I know what you are and are NOT supposed to do. So I went and did something BAD.

I took a 150' extension cord, and a 10' power strip, and ran a line all the way to the desk location.

I did this just a week away from the next fire inspection tour.

Now, this morning, I got a nasty email, and an extension cord and power strip dropped in my office chair.

I'm not saying "I told you so", but if he'd been willing to work with me from the beginning, then everyone here could have been happy, don't you think??

Anyway, time for a meeting. More next week!

Have a great weekend!!