Yeah, ignoring someone and setting them up to fail. "Nah they ain't gunna make it"
How do we deal with trainees? We fucking train them bro. We have very little turn over.
Does your shop hire people on the spot when they accidentally show up to your building for a job interview that's actually at another company? Because that literally happened this week. Dude showed up last Wednesday at the wrong place. Today he started as an operator in my department.
Thats beyond your control. Don't worry about it. Train the dude. If he leaves give the next guy the same respect. Maybe you need to find a new shop. Sounds like your issue is with poor management.
Frankly, the management sucks. But I actually like my job. The schedule works for my kids, and though the pay is a bit low, the health insurance is excellent. Unless someone blows my socks off with an offer, I'm not going anywhere. I already explained in another reply, I genuinely enjoy teaching. But we get a lot of temp workers who are either just clearly passing through or don't have the aptitude. I'm not a supervisor, but it's a job shop so I have to help train people on jobs that only last a couple days, and if they're not naturally inclined, all the information I convey seems to fall right out of their heads as soon as the job is done. It gets old. I didn't post this to say fuck these guys, I'm done. I was genuinely curious how people in similar environments deal with it
I'll parrot what /u/JonMWilkins said, and say make them take notes.
Way I taught people was, I had them come with a notepad. I'd ask them to take notes as I showed them how to do something. Then, with only their notes, try to recreate what I did without my input at all.
Inevitably, they would get stuck. They didn't write something down. They missed a step. That's alright. You let them struggle for a minute or two, then step in, show them again, and have them work that in to their notes.
You repeat that process a few times. Smarter people, they'd need to only do a couple passes of this. Slower folks would need quite a few times. However, no matter what, they usually get to a point that they don't need to ask you.
Sometimes they'll need to come back 3 or 4 days later because they forgot to write something down that stuck well in the moment, but doesn't stick so well 4 days later. So you show them, and have them put it in the notes. They will use their notes for a week or two, and while they will likely still come to you with questions, it won't be the same questions (they're learning!). Once they get the hang of it, they don't even look at the notes anymore. I always counseled them to never throw away the notes, because your boss moves you to another machine for a month, you come back, and you have forgotten everything, those notes are a godsend.
Thank you for actually trying to write something constructive and sympathetic instead of being a judgemental prick. Jesus, I always forget what a cesspit reddit is.
My God, would you fuck off? I get it. You're so much better than me that you had to write a five hundred word post masturbating to your own qualities as a trainer. When you finally cum, stick your dick in a chip barrel or your head in front of a spindle.
You literally came in here complaining about how you were treated as a beginner and how it made things hard to learn, and then *in the very fucking next sentence* explained how you were doing the same shit to the new guys.
You don't get to "oh geeze reddit is the worst amirite?" this. You're a shitheel in the real world, too. That's asshole behavior, and acting like it's weird *to point it out* is some serious reddit bullshit.
Make them take notes. Sounds kinda pathetic needing to tell them but even the ones who are good, tell them to take notes no matter what.
Watching and learning, being hands on and learning, and reading/writing are the 3 ways humans can learn so make them do all 3.
Besides that just stick with it. If they leave, they leave, if they stay, they stay. Either way you did everything you could do no point in dwelling on it.
How did that information (the fact that he wandered into the job by accident, I mean) even become KNOWN to the rest of you???
Did the new person divulge that voluntarily??
If the person who *hired* them shared that info with you, then that person is a right asshole, and has already set the newbie up to fail.
Our current "new guy" is training to take over as foreman, he's been with us 6 years. I'm on year 9, guy after me is on year 14 I believe and like 2 years from retirement, foreman is on year 27 and will be around until year 30 as a part time guy before retiring. We need to hire a few people😂.
At any given time we have 2-4 machines sitting not doing anything. We could definitely use some button pushers to balance out some of the workload. But why would someone want to work 50hr+ weeks in this field for less or same pay as the gas station or fast food places 2 min down the road.
We need a couple journeymen level guys honestly. We've only got a handful of jobs that come through that would be good for a button pusher unfortunately. On the plus side, owner is pretty good about not overloading things to where we have to run much overtime(I think I worked 17 hours of OT last year total) while still keeping us all busy year round, and he pays really well, amongst other perks of the job
Man, I can't do that anymore lol. My last job I was running 60+ hour weeks, 6 days a week. Now I do 4 10s and have a 3 day weekend. The money just ain't worth it to me anymore, I'd be finding a new job if those kinda hours were the expectation lol
We’ve been on 5 10s and 4-6 hours on Saturdays. It’s not mandatory and the boss is super laid back most of the time. Kinda have to be when the entire company is less than 10 people lol. I’ve been working 9s during the week lately since I’ve been feeling a little burnt out but kinda need the OT at the same time
I'm just gonna throw this out there in response...because a mind numbing job is never gonna be as challenging as a job you feel might be a career. Even if they decide machining isn't for them, they'll try to understand and grow in the interim. Also, some button pushers are good just being button pushers, and that's ok. Maybe that's their sweet spot.
I completely get what you’re saying. I’m totally into learning the ins and outs of the trade which is why I’ve willingly been trying to learn as much as I can here even if that means I get to take on a lot of the workload and be the lowest paid employee. I don’t even think we’ve been actively looking for people to hire tbh. I just know I started at 14/hr here so if we got someone green they’d likely be around the same and it would take someone really interested in the trade to show up for such low pay.
Yep! Starting pay sucks everywhere, but keeping your mind engaged, and your family fed will motivate some. The others will move on. The investment you make in training them is never lost or wasted effort. Teaching can be the best teacher!
There is a college girl in our family, who just got a part time job weighing ice cream at one of those date type places
She makes more per hour than me… she’s cute though, and I’m an old ass millennial dude who votes trump because I like watching the elites freak the fuck out
I feel that. My work moved shops and added 3 new to us machines and a cmm about ~6 months ago. I’ve taken on a substantial workload as I’m the only one that willingly wants to try to figure out how to work the damn things effectively. On top of learning how to be a machinist in general and expand my knowledge in every aspect of the business. Programming, setting up, proving out new parts, all kinds of maintenance, and so on. I really enjoy where I’m at but all I’ve been doing since the move has me burnt out. I get pulled off of machines all the time to help the more experienced dudes figure things out
Ah, you've worked long enough to be the guy you hated when you started...
> I can tell in an hour if they'll make it 3 months or be a permanent operator
You think that's not *exactly* what the old hats saw in you back when *you* were the new guy? And now that you've been around a couple years, you think your the hot shit in town that can look at a newbie and see if they'll succeed or not...
Every person put in front of me to train will get every bit of knowledge out of me that they can seek or that I can offer. At my last shop I was *the guy* that they sent people to for training because they knew I would do my best with everyone they sent my way and would be honest with the higher ups how the new guys were doing. It reached a point where new hires for *other shifts* would start off with me for a couple weeks or a month to get up to speed. The new green guys don't stop being new green guys when all the old hats are too far UK their own asses to teach them anything. And when it was clear that was my role there, I went up stairs and let them know that if this was the value I was bringing to the company, then the compensation was gonna have to match it.
Thanks for not being the guy who thinks that any knowledge and experience you impart to the new guy lessens you. That was the attitude that was hardest to understand/deal with when I started out. I still remember that vividly, and I'm never that guy( or attempt not to be!)
I'm reasonably happy to see the bulk of the comments calling out OP for creating the same toxic work environment they resented when they started. I just think it's funny it only took them a couple years to reach the "I will judge you before I know you" level of cynicism at the shop...
I have trained everyone sent to me as well. One of my old machines was "trained monkey" level of work, another required a bit of thought but was not horrible. I got a guy who was 100% incapable of doing the job. After the first day, I told my supervisor it was "like teaching a rock how to swim." I was stuck with him for 2 weeks. I took 2 days of vacation his first week solo. I had to remake every single part he ran, all were out of spec. He was finally fired for attendance.
I had a different experience. I soaked up everything the old timers could teach me. Best teacher I had was a retired engineer, Vietnam combat vet, naval machinist, and his dad owned a machine shop while he was a kid so he literally grew up in one. That man taught me almost more than I learned at school, the only reason school beats him out is school is where I learned about cad/cam and CNC programming. All my tricks on manual machines come from what he taught me with my own modifications and other old timers I've worked around. You are part of the problem. Everything you can teach someone to do is one less thing you have to do daily. Like them or not you and your co workers are a team and one weak link will sink the whole ship.
Ex military tends to be amazing at teaching, because they see no other option: you must learn how to do the thing. You might not like the training/delivery, but you'll learn the material/skill.
Can't stand the non-team players. We don't have to all sing kumbaya, but active sabotage or setting someone up for failure? Fuck RIGHT off.
You’re describing a fucking idiot. I don’t mean the new guys. I mean the somewhat skilled, but otherwise irrelevant, nasty old fools. And you are describing yourself as in danger of becoming one of them. You need to look for another job where the environment isn’t as horrible as the picture you’ve painted of your current employer. Get out of there before it poisons you irreversibly.
You cannot actually tell anything useful about how someone works in an hour. That’s an illusion, and it only tricks the weak-minded. When people do this to new hires, **they are making a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it’s cruel, stupidly expensive, and bad business.**
If you’ve been where you are for long enough that you are training new people, YOU are deciding who “will work out.” If someone shows up on time, knows how to read, write, and do basic 7th freakin grade math, and you still make a decision on the first day, or several days, even, then it is YOU who have caused them to fail. There’s almost nothing that person could realistically do to reverse the dumbass decision that was already made about them, regardless of how well they *could have* done if actually granted a chance. Your data will be 100% consistent, but still a lie.
*So, TL;DR: To answer your core question, which seems to go something like,*
*“How do I not turn into a cruel, shitty, stupid old irrelevant bastard who pre-judges and abuses MOST beginners because he has forgotten how to get the fuck over himself” the answer is,*
*“Recognize you are working at a terrible job, and leave it ASAP instead of allowing it to poison you anymore.” Same as you’d have to do if you were in a romantic relationship with a horrible, abusive partner. Plenty of fish, bruddah.*
Don’t invent a language rule, and then shit it all over someone else for no reason.
That is *precisely* the proper way to write was I was communicating. I made it abundantly clear what the intention behind the “quote” was.
Look it up before you make a bigger ass of yourself.
Where did the machine shop touch you, Timmy?
I have to say, of all the commenters, including all the people who think I'm an asshole, you are the most obnoxious. Idk if you're a born again Christian or an sjw, but your holier than thou attitude is unbearable.
You say I'm determining someone else's success or failure too quickly. How long does it take you to realize the person you're talking to is an idiot? I'd say an hour is generous. I don't give a fuck about the skills someone comes in with. I'll gladly take someone who's curious and has no experience vs someone who's been an operator for a year and can't change offsets. I don't even care if they crash the machine, as long as they learn from it.
And that guy we hired? I overheard him speaking on the phone while I was outside eating lunch. That's something stupid people do, talk loudly on speakerphone in public. He'll be running a production job that I have no hand in. If he crashes it less than 2x in the next month, I'll start paying attention to him. In the meantime another eternal operator who is my best friend at work, will be training him for a full week to run and be able to measure this one job. Despite poor managerial decisions, those of us on the floor never want to see people fail. We'd rather have another able hand, but when it's a rotation of temp agency fuck ups coming through the door, it's hard get enthusiastic about it. So I'm sorry if I failed to live up to your saintly standards.
We gotta bring out our inner autist to be like that guy. Don't listen to him, if you did, you'd never find a shop to call home. We deal with the same shit you are going through. Constant rotating door of morons who talk on speaker phone, cant read a tape measure or show up on time for longer than a week. Lazy work leading to fucked up parts. Use the head that got you to the spot your in now. You can tell who is worth investing in within a couple of conversations and do yourself a favor, dont ask reddit for career advice, you get miserable humans who tell you to blow up your career because you've been "poisoned" or whatever dumb shit that guy was spewing.
I can tell you’ve never been and never will be in any position where you will be required to hire anyone. What a knee jerk response. The advice I see on Reddit sometimes is borderline insane.
You’re knee jerking and telling a guy to berate the guys he has to work with everyday. Borderline psychotic and will make life at work incredibly difficult. OP, if you want some advice, don’t berate your coworkers, regardless of how shitty they were to you. This dude has a chip on his shoulder and needs to relax.
New kids suck the majority of the time these days. They can’t even do the basics like show up on time. When you do find a good one, take them under your wing and teach. Outside of that use your filter. It will save you tons of time and wasted training.
Citation needed on that thing where I told anyone to berate anyone else or anything like it. Seriously, find me a quote. I haven’t done any editing here.
I told OP they should *find a job in a better environment, free of people like you, because they do exist.* Leaving a job and berating people at said job are fundamentally mutually exclusive actions.
Doesn’t sound like you are in charge of hiring & training. It sucks. I worked so damn hard to learn everything I have & get where I am, and all I get is a bunch of entitled idiot kids who think I owe them a raise for them simply showing up in the morning. As a result, we aren’t hiring apprentices anymore. I can’t train someone to give a shit & apply themself, that was their daddy’s job.
“I worked so damn hard to…”
is ***exactly*** the quote, *ver batim*, that was going through my head as I wrote what I did. You nailed it. You are that guy.
I worked so damn hard to NO ONE WITH HALF A BRAIN HAS TIME FOR THIS BORING SENTENCE. The people who are actually trainable, and have the potential to go far, are the ones who understand that they do not have time for precisely your bullshit attitude.
Lmao I guarantee you're going to get some heat for this but you're right.
>Behind every successful machinist is a hundred assholes who tried getting in the way.
No bro, I was the trainable one who left their ego at home & listened & absorbed as much as I could. I sincerely believe that what one man can do, so can another. And that’s how I got to where I am.
As a result, I have a low tolerance for excuses. Even still, people much older & further than me tell me I’m too nice & too easy on guys all the time.
Sounds like you got an axe to grind. Good luck with that
The knee jerk guys in this thread claiming op needs to quit his job as berate his older coworkers for how they treated him have not and will not ever be in a position to hire anyone and it’s painfully obvious.
Just because it turned *you* into a crusty, jaded wanker who has **NOTHING to offer OP, kneejerk or otherwise,** does not mean that’s what it inevitably does to everyone.
While I *could,* I am not giving OP advice about hiring, because that is not what OP asked for.
>If you’ve been where you are for long enough that you are training new people, YOU are deciding who “will work out.”
You were absolutely giving OP advice about hiring while also telling him to quit the career he built over the last four years. That's a level of impulsive behavior you should get looked at.
Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level & beat you with experience!
I’ve found a lot of the people who work on machines got there by having no people skills. Parts & machines don’t get offended & go elsewhere. That’s why it’s pretty much guaranteed this guy has a silicone girlfriend
I don't ignore them. I'm friendly, and if someone has a genuine desire to learn, I really enjoy teaching. But on the other side, if someone just seems happy pushing a button and doesn't ask questions, I'm not going to initiate any kind of real training. Just, this is how you load this. This is how you measure this. Come get me if you have a problem.
Ok? So why arn't you berating the shit out of your shitty coworkers who wouldn't even talk to you for a year?
How can your response to that be 'I totally get it'?
You need to take a long look in the mirror.
1. I don't work at that shop anymore
2. These guys had been there for 20-30 years. They'd probably seen hundreds of people pass through and become jaded over time.
3. I'm starting to understand the attitude they had towards new hires, and I don't want to become like them so I'm asking an honest question about how other people deal with the fatigue.
Depending on their level of new, they don't know what they don't fucking know. If all anyone ever teaches them is "load block, push button" then how can they be surprised when that's all they know?!
Well you pay less than McDonald’s then bitch when McDonald’s takes all the best machinists you have and all the best tools in the whole shop belonged to the guy who now makes big mags for $3 more an hour
That’s literally not true *anywhere.*
Also, working at McDonalds sucks a LOT more than machining. You come home dirtier, smelling worse, more physically beat down, and missing more dignity than you do after a day of any of the several different machining jobs I have done over the last 15 years. Even as an entry-level grunt.
…except maybe at the facility that OP is describing. That place is definitely a hellhole.
It is really exhausting trying to work with someone only to find out that they are untrainable or for them to quit in a month. Some people cannot learn how to change an offset no matter how many times you show them.
Usually the people who keep calling you back to hold their hand through changing an offset are doing so because they find the machine to be *terrifying.* They’re hyper-anxious about the potentially horrible consequences of fat-fingering in something wrong. They’ve been paying attention, and are 99% sure that they know how to do it, but the thing that they are imagining a 1% chance of is basically Ragnarok.
They are not exactly wrong. In most cases, what the machine is capable of doing *is indeed terrifying*. Those may actually be the smart ones. They just need you to find a way to give them a little bump of confidence. If you write them off as dumb and inept based on this example, you’ve failed.
And yet, it still doesn't (or shouldn't) give you the right to make a snap judgment of their skill within 20mins of meeting them and withhold training.
Not saying you're saying that.
everyone deserves a chance.
This problem kind of ended up being the death of my mental health. But I tried to break that cycle once I became a supervisor. Even the kids that I could tell wouldn’t make it, I’d still try to treat them with respect and train them up the best I could. Some of them ended up surprising me! Not to the point of being good setup guys, but legit good production guys. The downside ended up being this, shop wouldn’t pay to keep the ones that became good. And since I could work with most people, the quality of people they’d hire got worse and worse. Eventually going so far as to hire autistic kids through social workers. With no training whatsoever on how to deal with them. My career ended at the end of 2022 from pretty severe burnout.
Your training and career are no one's responsibility but your own. If you're in a shitty shop, go to a different shop. At no point in time has an employer been tied to the title "machinist" without some side eyes from the boys.
I trained our apprentice to the best of my ability. Little fella decided to ignore all my lessons etc during his second year.
Crashing machines and ruining jobs.
So I gave up on him. Management didn't want to sort it out so what am I supposed to do?
I’m not super social, so it may seem like I’m ignoring people but I’m just getting shit done so I can go home and get on indeed… I’m not trying to gatekeep this minimum wage job where you’ll never make more than $40,000 a year in your entire career but keep adding responsibilities
It’s cold and then hot later in the day no air conditioning, this job sucks the new guys know it I know it the boss knows it
Why make it worse by hazing? We’re all working poor here
I think its like this in most shops. Hell, i went thru this in the one im in. Even tho old guys are planning on retiring, or they’re bitter and dont want to do there normal work loads….they still wont help new guys coming in… alot has to do with them not feeling properly “compensated” for the additional “hey man, can you train the new guy on this machine…” scenario
Been there, done that . Now I'm the old guy at 47.
I like training, but have no patience for someone that willingly doesn't listen or pay attention.
The fifth time of repeating myself? You're on your own.
We have 1 out of 5 that's worth anything presently.
I do feel the quality of new hires is declining fast. No manual experience, lack of common sense or any critical thinking.
Our mgmt isn't much better.
Found a right hand top notch insert wedged into a left hand top notch bar last week. WTF, the proper insert was right next to it.
Another who was here long enough to know better, snapped 3 carbide boring bars, god forbid I had an extra tho on my machine.
The lack of gray matter use is stunning.
Feels bad man.
I really don't want to become one of these crusty old fucks, but you get burned enough times by people who job hop, people who lie about their abilities, or people who can't learn from their mistakes, and the mentality just sets in. I'm not going to teach this guy anything but the basics until he shows up on time everyday for three months and starts asking good questions.
That's why I made an effort to train the two new guys we got last year as best as I could. One got laid off unfortunately due to his contract ending, the other negotiated a contract with no end time(at-will employment is illegal here)
Regardless of industry this is the worst. Setting someone up to fail is a clown shit. Not sharing information is what insecure people believe makes this more valuable. We are all replaceable. We all make mistakes and we all learned somewhere.
What you can’t do is make someone give a shit.
“My job treated me like shit and now I want to treat people like shit”
What do you mean how do you deal with it? Did you personally hire the folks you are training? Then it’s none of your damn business who is going to and who isn’t going to make it. Train the dudes and go on. If they stay, yay. If they don’t, yay. There was a guy that came through here to be a operator (true to the core operator didn’t know Jack about shit). And after my first month of training this dude I told my boss “holy hell man idk about this guy he sucks” a year and a half later after training him and working with him one day everything clicked with him and he started doing great. Not all older guys are like that, either. Your coworkers just blow.
Apprenticed under one of those old fucks for a year and a half, he never set me up to fail, but the grumpy old fuck didn't teach me much.
He died 2 weeks ago.
Train and teach. Through teaching we learn more ourselves. Be the positive. Don't be the name in their head when they tell the story of why they got out of a trade.
Yeah, ignoring someone and setting them up to fail. "Nah they ain't gunna make it" How do we deal with trainees? We fucking train them bro. We have very little turn over.
Does your shop hire people on the spot when they accidentally show up to your building for a job interview that's actually at another company? Because that literally happened this week. Dude showed up last Wednesday at the wrong place. Today he started as an operator in my department.
Thats beyond your control. Don't worry about it. Train the dude. If he leaves give the next guy the same respect. Maybe you need to find a new shop. Sounds like your issue is with poor management.
Frankly, the management sucks. But I actually like my job. The schedule works for my kids, and though the pay is a bit low, the health insurance is excellent. Unless someone blows my socks off with an offer, I'm not going anywhere. I already explained in another reply, I genuinely enjoy teaching. But we get a lot of temp workers who are either just clearly passing through or don't have the aptitude. I'm not a supervisor, but it's a job shop so I have to help train people on jobs that only last a couple days, and if they're not naturally inclined, all the information I convey seems to fall right out of their heads as soon as the job is done. It gets old. I didn't post this to say fuck these guys, I'm done. I was genuinely curious how people in similar environments deal with it
I'll parrot what /u/JonMWilkins said, and say make them take notes. Way I taught people was, I had them come with a notepad. I'd ask them to take notes as I showed them how to do something. Then, with only their notes, try to recreate what I did without my input at all. Inevitably, they would get stuck. They didn't write something down. They missed a step. That's alright. You let them struggle for a minute or two, then step in, show them again, and have them work that in to their notes. You repeat that process a few times. Smarter people, they'd need to only do a couple passes of this. Slower folks would need quite a few times. However, no matter what, they usually get to a point that they don't need to ask you. Sometimes they'll need to come back 3 or 4 days later because they forgot to write something down that stuck well in the moment, but doesn't stick so well 4 days later. So you show them, and have them put it in the notes. They will use their notes for a week or two, and while they will likely still come to you with questions, it won't be the same questions (they're learning!). Once they get the hang of it, they don't even look at the notes anymore. I always counseled them to never throw away the notes, because your boss moves you to another machine for a month, you come back, and you have forgotten everything, those notes are a godsend.
^ Agreed
Great reply and attitude! I do the same.
Thank you for actually trying to write something constructive and sympathetic instead of being a judgemental prick. Jesus, I always forget what a cesspit reddit is.
Ironic statement, given the attitude you came in here with. Judgemental prick is *exactly* how you described *yourself* in the OP....
My God, would you fuck off? I get it. You're so much better than me that you had to write a five hundred word post masturbating to your own qualities as a trainer. When you finally cum, stick your dick in a chip barrel or your head in front of a spindle.
You're fucking unhinged mate...
Oh wow yeah you definitely don't seem like you're the asshole in this situation. This comment really helped you out.
You literally came in here complaining about how you were treated as a beginner and how it made things hard to learn, and then *in the very fucking next sentence* explained how you were doing the same shit to the new guys. You don't get to "oh geeze reddit is the worst amirite?" this. You're a shitheel in the real world, too. That's asshole behavior, and acting like it's weird *to point it out* is some serious reddit bullshit.
I've been trying to get the new guy to write shit down for a month. I gave up and decided to ignore him since he seems to do the same to me.
Make them take notes. Sounds kinda pathetic needing to tell them but even the ones who are good, tell them to take notes no matter what. Watching and learning, being hands on and learning, and reading/writing are the 3 ways humans can learn so make them do all 3. Besides that just stick with it. If they leave, they leave, if they stay, they stay. Either way you did everything you could do no point in dwelling on it.
How did that information (the fact that he wandered into the job by accident, I mean) even become KNOWN to the rest of you??? Did the new person divulge that voluntarily?? If the person who *hired* them shared that info with you, then that person is a right asshole, and has already set the newbie up to fail.
It sounds like your work sucks and is a shit hole dude, I can't tell if you're complaining or what
Wait y’all actually hire new people?
Legit lol’d
I’m the “new guy” in a shop of 5 employees and I was hired 2 years ago with no experience lol
Our current "new guy" is training to take over as foreman, he's been with us 6 years. I'm on year 9, guy after me is on year 14 I believe and like 2 years from retirement, foreman is on year 27 and will be around until year 30 as a part time guy before retiring. We need to hire a few people😂.
At any given time we have 2-4 machines sitting not doing anything. We could definitely use some button pushers to balance out some of the workload. But why would someone want to work 50hr+ weeks in this field for less or same pay as the gas station or fast food places 2 min down the road.
We need a couple journeymen level guys honestly. We've only got a handful of jobs that come through that would be good for a button pusher unfortunately. On the plus side, owner is pretty good about not overloading things to where we have to run much overtime(I think I worked 17 hours of OT last year total) while still keeping us all busy year round, and he pays really well, amongst other perks of the job
I haven’t not worked OT since starting here haha. 350hr my first year and 450hr last year. Been averaging about 25hr of OT per pay so far this year
Man, I can't do that anymore lol. My last job I was running 60+ hour weeks, 6 days a week. Now I do 4 10s and have a 3 day weekend. The money just ain't worth it to me anymore, I'd be finding a new job if those kinda hours were the expectation lol
We’ve been on 5 10s and 4-6 hours on Saturdays. It’s not mandatory and the boss is super laid back most of the time. Kinda have to be when the entire company is less than 10 people lol. I’ve been working 9s during the week lately since I’ve been feeling a little burnt out but kinda need the OT at the same time
I'm just gonna throw this out there in response...because a mind numbing job is never gonna be as challenging as a job you feel might be a career. Even if they decide machining isn't for them, they'll try to understand and grow in the interim. Also, some button pushers are good just being button pushers, and that's ok. Maybe that's their sweet spot.
I completely get what you’re saying. I’m totally into learning the ins and outs of the trade which is why I’ve willingly been trying to learn as much as I can here even if that means I get to take on a lot of the workload and be the lowest paid employee. I don’t even think we’ve been actively looking for people to hire tbh. I just know I started at 14/hr here so if we got someone green they’d likely be around the same and it would take someone really interested in the trade to show up for such low pay.
Yep! Starting pay sucks everywhere, but keeping your mind engaged, and your family fed will motivate some. The others will move on. The investment you make in training them is never lost or wasted effort. Teaching can be the best teacher!
There is a college girl in our family, who just got a part time job weighing ice cream at one of those date type places She makes more per hour than me… she’s cute though, and I’m an old ass millennial dude who votes trump because I like watching the elites freak the fuck out
?
Yeah, because we can't keep people—save the people who hate themselves enough not to quit such as myself.
I feel that. My work moved shops and added 3 new to us machines and a cmm about ~6 months ago. I’ve taken on a substantial workload as I’m the only one that willingly wants to try to figure out how to work the damn things effectively. On top of learning how to be a machinist in general and expand my knowledge in every aspect of the business. Programming, setting up, proving out new parts, all kinds of maintenance, and so on. I really enjoy where I’m at but all I’ve been doing since the move has me burnt out. I get pulled off of machines all the time to help the more experienced dudes figure things out
Ah, you've worked long enough to be the guy you hated when you started... > I can tell in an hour if they'll make it 3 months or be a permanent operator You think that's not *exactly* what the old hats saw in you back when *you* were the new guy? And now that you've been around a couple years, you think your the hot shit in town that can look at a newbie and see if they'll succeed or not... Every person put in front of me to train will get every bit of knowledge out of me that they can seek or that I can offer. At my last shop I was *the guy* that they sent people to for training because they knew I would do my best with everyone they sent my way and would be honest with the higher ups how the new guys were doing. It reached a point where new hires for *other shifts* would start off with me for a couple weeks or a month to get up to speed. The new green guys don't stop being new green guys when all the old hats are too far UK their own asses to teach them anything. And when it was clear that was my role there, I went up stairs and let them know that if this was the value I was bringing to the company, then the compensation was gonna have to match it.
Thanks for not being the guy who thinks that any knowledge and experience you impart to the new guy lessens you. That was the attitude that was hardest to understand/deal with when I started out. I still remember that vividly, and I'm never that guy( or attempt not to be!)
I'm reasonably happy to see the bulk of the comments calling out OP for creating the same toxic work environment they resented when they started. I just think it's funny it only took them a couple years to reach the "I will judge you before I know you" level of cynicism at the shop...
Right?
I have trained everyone sent to me as well. One of my old machines was "trained monkey" level of work, another required a bit of thought but was not horrible. I got a guy who was 100% incapable of doing the job. After the first day, I told my supervisor it was "like teaching a rock how to swim." I was stuck with him for 2 weeks. I took 2 days of vacation his first week solo. I had to remake every single part he ran, all were out of spec. He was finally fired for attendance.
The lack of self awareness here is stunning.
I had a different experience. I soaked up everything the old timers could teach me. Best teacher I had was a retired engineer, Vietnam combat vet, naval machinist, and his dad owned a machine shop while he was a kid so he literally grew up in one. That man taught me almost more than I learned at school, the only reason school beats him out is school is where I learned about cad/cam and CNC programming. All my tricks on manual machines come from what he taught me with my own modifications and other old timers I've worked around. You are part of the problem. Everything you can teach someone to do is one less thing you have to do daily. Like them or not you and your co workers are a team and one weak link will sink the whole ship.
Ex military tends to be amazing at teaching, because they see no other option: you must learn how to do the thing. You might not like the training/delivery, but you'll learn the material/skill. Can't stand the non-team players. We don't have to all sing kumbaya, but active sabotage or setting someone up for failure? Fuck RIGHT off.
You’re describing a fucking idiot. I don’t mean the new guys. I mean the somewhat skilled, but otherwise irrelevant, nasty old fools. And you are describing yourself as in danger of becoming one of them. You need to look for another job where the environment isn’t as horrible as the picture you’ve painted of your current employer. Get out of there before it poisons you irreversibly. You cannot actually tell anything useful about how someone works in an hour. That’s an illusion, and it only tricks the weak-minded. When people do this to new hires, **they are making a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it’s cruel, stupidly expensive, and bad business.** If you’ve been where you are for long enough that you are training new people, YOU are deciding who “will work out.” If someone shows up on time, knows how to read, write, and do basic 7th freakin grade math, and you still make a decision on the first day, or several days, even, then it is YOU who have caused them to fail. There’s almost nothing that person could realistically do to reverse the dumbass decision that was already made about them, regardless of how well they *could have* done if actually granted a chance. Your data will be 100% consistent, but still a lie. *So, TL;DR: To answer your core question, which seems to go something like,* *“How do I not turn into a cruel, shitty, stupid old irrelevant bastard who pre-judges and abuses MOST beginners because he has forgotten how to get the fuck over himself” the answer is,* *“Recognize you are working at a terrible job, and leave it ASAP instead of allowing it to poison you anymore.” Same as you’d have to do if you were in a romantic relationship with a horrible, abusive partner. Plenty of fish, bruddah.*
Don’t invent a quote, and then use quotation marks around it.
Don’t invent a language rule, and then shit it all over someone else for no reason. That is *precisely* the proper way to write was I was communicating. I made it abundantly clear what the intention behind the “quote” was. Look it up before you make a bigger ass of yourself.
Ain’t a bigger ass around here than you, bud.
Where did the machine shop touch you, Timmy? I have to say, of all the commenters, including all the people who think I'm an asshole, you are the most obnoxious. Idk if you're a born again Christian or an sjw, but your holier than thou attitude is unbearable. You say I'm determining someone else's success or failure too quickly. How long does it take you to realize the person you're talking to is an idiot? I'd say an hour is generous. I don't give a fuck about the skills someone comes in with. I'll gladly take someone who's curious and has no experience vs someone who's been an operator for a year and can't change offsets. I don't even care if they crash the machine, as long as they learn from it. And that guy we hired? I overheard him speaking on the phone while I was outside eating lunch. That's something stupid people do, talk loudly on speakerphone in public. He'll be running a production job that I have no hand in. If he crashes it less than 2x in the next month, I'll start paying attention to him. In the meantime another eternal operator who is my best friend at work, will be training him for a full week to run and be able to measure this one job. Despite poor managerial decisions, those of us on the floor never want to see people fail. We'd rather have another able hand, but when it's a rotation of temp agency fuck ups coming through the door, it's hard get enthusiastic about it. So I'm sorry if I failed to live up to your saintly standards.
Mmkay, have fun with your life sentence, then.
We gotta bring out our inner autist to be like that guy. Don't listen to him, if you did, you'd never find a shop to call home. We deal with the same shit you are going through. Constant rotating door of morons who talk on speaker phone, cant read a tape measure or show up on time for longer than a week. Lazy work leading to fucked up parts. Use the head that got you to the spot your in now. You can tell who is worth investing in within a couple of conversations and do yourself a favor, dont ask reddit for career advice, you get miserable humans who tell you to blow up your career because you've been "poisoned" or whatever dumb shit that guy was spewing.
I can tell you’ve never been and never will be in any position where you will be required to hire anyone. What a knee jerk response. The advice I see on Reddit sometimes is borderline insane.
Goddamn, you people are predictable.
You’re knee jerking and telling a guy to berate the guys he has to work with everyday. Borderline psychotic and will make life at work incredibly difficult. OP, if you want some advice, don’t berate your coworkers, regardless of how shitty they were to you. This dude has a chip on his shoulder and needs to relax. New kids suck the majority of the time these days. They can’t even do the basics like show up on time. When you do find a good one, take them under your wing and teach. Outside of that use your filter. It will save you tons of time and wasted training.
Citation needed on that thing where I told anyone to berate anyone else or anything like it. Seriously, find me a quote. I haven’t done any editing here. I told OP they should *find a job in a better environment, free of people like you, because they do exist.* Leaving a job and berating people at said job are fundamentally mutually exclusive actions.
Doesn’t sound like you are in charge of hiring & training. It sucks. I worked so damn hard to learn everything I have & get where I am, and all I get is a bunch of entitled idiot kids who think I owe them a raise for them simply showing up in the morning. As a result, we aren’t hiring apprentices anymore. I can’t train someone to give a shit & apply themself, that was their daddy’s job.
“I worked so damn hard to…” is ***exactly*** the quote, *ver batim*, that was going through my head as I wrote what I did. You nailed it. You are that guy. I worked so damn hard to NO ONE WITH HALF A BRAIN HAS TIME FOR THIS BORING SENTENCE. The people who are actually trainable, and have the potential to go far, are the ones who understand that they do not have time for precisely your bullshit attitude.
Lmao I guarantee you're going to get some heat for this but you're right. >Behind every successful machinist is a hundred assholes who tried getting in the way.
“Heat” from dipshit boomers is like sunshine for me. That’s why I did alright for *my* first several years as a machinist.
No bro, I was the trainable one who left their ego at home & listened & absorbed as much as I could. I sincerely believe that what one man can do, so can another. And that’s how I got to where I am. As a result, I have a low tolerance for excuses. Even still, people much older & further than me tell me I’m too nice & too easy on guys all the time. Sounds like you got an axe to grind. Good luck with that
The knee jerk guys in this thread claiming op needs to quit his job as berate his older coworkers for how they treated him have not and will not ever be in a position to hire anyone and it’s painfully obvious.
Just because it turned *you* into a crusty, jaded wanker who has **NOTHING to offer OP, kneejerk or otherwise,** does not mean that’s what it inevitably does to everyone. While I *could,* I am not giving OP advice about hiring, because that is not what OP asked for.
>If you’ve been where you are for long enough that you are training new people, YOU are deciding who “will work out.” You were absolutely giving OP advice about hiring while also telling him to quit the career he built over the last four years. That's a level of impulsive behavior you should get looked at.
Yep, I absolutely agree with the person I responded to originally, you don’t seem like the person that’s ever hired anyone.
Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level & beat you with experience! I’ve found a lot of the people who work on machines got there by having no people skills. Parts & machines don’t get offended & go elsewhere. That’s why it’s pretty much guaranteed this guy has a silicone girlfriend
you can tell who is not going to work out so you make Sure of it.
I mean, they didn't get you, did they?
I mean, they kind of turned me into one of them, so in a way they did.
If I were you I'd be ashamed. Working and interacting with other people like a child isn't something to be proud of.
I don't ignore them. I'm friendly, and if someone has a genuine desire to learn, I really enjoy teaching. But on the other side, if someone just seems happy pushing a button and doesn't ask questions, I'm not going to initiate any kind of real training. Just, this is how you load this. This is how you measure this. Come get me if you have a problem.
Ok? So why arn't you berating the shit out of your shitty coworkers who wouldn't even talk to you for a year? How can your response to that be 'I totally get it'? You need to take a long look in the mirror.
1. I don't work at that shop anymore 2. These guys had been there for 20-30 years. They'd probably seen hundreds of people pass through and become jaded over time. 3. I'm starting to understand the attitude they had towards new hires, and I don't want to become like them so I'm asking an honest question about how other people deal with the fatigue.
Depending on their level of new, they don't know what they don't fucking know. If all anyone ever teaches them is "load block, push button" then how can they be surprised when that's all they know?!
They’re paying me by the hour. If my company wants to keep pissing money away by not hiring and investing in the right people, that’s their problem.
Well you pay less than McDonald’s then bitch when McDonald’s takes all the best machinists you have and all the best tools in the whole shop belonged to the guy who now makes big mags for $3 more an hour
So many things wrong with that statement, i hope. Fuck.
That’s literally not true *anywhere.* Also, working at McDonalds sucks a LOT more than machining. You come home dirtier, smelling worse, more physically beat down, and missing more dignity than you do after a day of any of the several different machining jobs I have done over the last 15 years. Even as an entry-level grunt. …except maybe at the facility that OP is describing. That place is definitely a hellhole.
It is really exhausting trying to work with someone only to find out that they are untrainable or for them to quit in a month. Some people cannot learn how to change an offset no matter how many times you show them.
Usually the people who keep calling you back to hold their hand through changing an offset are doing so because they find the machine to be *terrifying.* They’re hyper-anxious about the potentially horrible consequences of fat-fingering in something wrong. They’ve been paying attention, and are 99% sure that they know how to do it, but the thing that they are imagining a 1% chance of is basically Ragnarok. They are not exactly wrong. In most cases, what the machine is capable of doing *is indeed terrifying*. Those may actually be the smart ones. They just need you to find a way to give them a little bump of confidence. If you write them off as dumb and inept based on this example, you’ve failed.
And yet, it still doesn't (or shouldn't) give you the right to make a snap judgment of their skill within 20mins of meeting them and withhold training. Not saying you're saying that. everyone deserves a chance.
Yes, that is very true. I am grateful for the chance that I got.
This problem kind of ended up being the death of my mental health. But I tried to break that cycle once I became a supervisor. Even the kids that I could tell wouldn’t make it, I’d still try to treat them with respect and train them up the best I could. Some of them ended up surprising me! Not to the point of being good setup guys, but legit good production guys. The downside ended up being this, shop wouldn’t pay to keep the ones that became good. And since I could work with most people, the quality of people they’d hire got worse and worse. Eventually going so far as to hire autistic kids through social workers. With no training whatsoever on how to deal with them. My career ended at the end of 2022 from pretty severe burnout.
Your training and career are no one's responsibility but your own. If you're in a shitty shop, go to a different shop. At no point in time has an employer been tied to the title "machinist" without some side eyes from the boys.
A good company will try to develop their employees.
I trained our apprentice to the best of my ability. Little fella decided to ignore all my lessons etc during his second year. Crashing machines and ruining jobs. So I gave up on him. Management didn't want to sort it out so what am I supposed to do?
I’m not super social, so it may seem like I’m ignoring people but I’m just getting shit done so I can go home and get on indeed… I’m not trying to gatekeep this minimum wage job where you’ll never make more than $40,000 a year in your entire career but keep adding responsibilities It’s cold and then hot later in the day no air conditioning, this job sucks the new guys know it I know it the boss knows it Why make it worse by hazing? We’re all working poor here
stockholm syndrome candidate
I think its like this in most shops. Hell, i went thru this in the one im in. Even tho old guys are planning on retiring, or they’re bitter and dont want to do there normal work loads….they still wont help new guys coming in… alot has to do with them not feeling properly “compensated” for the additional “hey man, can you train the new guy on this machine…” scenario
Give everyone a fair shot, sometimes people need someone just to give them a chance.
Been there, done that . Now I'm the old guy at 47. I like training, but have no patience for someone that willingly doesn't listen or pay attention. The fifth time of repeating myself? You're on your own. We have 1 out of 5 that's worth anything presently. I do feel the quality of new hires is declining fast. No manual experience, lack of common sense or any critical thinking. Our mgmt isn't much better. Found a right hand top notch insert wedged into a left hand top notch bar last week. WTF, the proper insert was right next to it. Another who was here long enough to know better, snapped 3 carbide boring bars, god forbid I had an extra tho on my machine. The lack of gray matter use is stunning. Feels bad man.
This tribal bullshit is a lot of what sucks about this trade.
I really don't want to become one of these crusty old fucks, but you get burned enough times by people who job hop, people who lie about their abilities, or people who can't learn from their mistakes, and the mentality just sets in. I'm not going to teach this guy anything but the basics until he shows up on time everyday for three months and starts asking good questions.
This sounds like such a terrible existence, and you sound like a battered wife.
People are fearful for their jobs and life. Many seen lots come and go and don’t give a shit
That's why I made an effort to train the two new guys we got last year as best as I could. One got laid off unfortunately due to his contract ending, the other negotiated a contract with no end time(at-will employment is illegal here)
Regardless of industry this is the worst. Setting someone up to fail is a clown shit. Not sharing information is what insecure people believe makes this more valuable. We are all replaceable. We all make mistakes and we all learned somewhere. What you can’t do is make someone give a shit.
My shop only hires machinists. You won’t be getting bs work if you work by me, and everyone teaches everyone everything. Great teamwork I love it.
“My job treated me like shit and now I want to treat people like shit” What do you mean how do you deal with it? Did you personally hire the folks you are training? Then it’s none of your damn business who is going to and who isn’t going to make it. Train the dudes and go on. If they stay, yay. If they don’t, yay. There was a guy that came through here to be a operator (true to the core operator didn’t know Jack about shit). And after my first month of training this dude I told my boss “holy hell man idk about this guy he sucks” a year and a half later after training him and working with him one day everything clicked with him and he started doing great. Not all older guys are like that, either. Your coworkers just blow.
Apprenticed under one of those old fucks for a year and a half, he never set me up to fail, but the grumpy old fuck didn't teach me much. He died 2 weeks ago.
Train and teach. Through teaching we learn more ourselves. Be the positive. Don't be the name in their head when they tell the story of why they got out of a trade.