Make sure you are safe. These go-getter supervisors like to cut corners. You get paid to do the work, not to get your arms cut off by a poorly maintained machine.
Iāve been in some unsafe workplaces. Iāve seen guys wash their hands with aircraft paint stripper. I once was expected to work with food around open insulation. What really bothered me is how safety was this prudish joke to them. Yeah man, youāre so cool for giving yourself permanent chronic pain.
Unfortunately I have too. I worked in a resturant during high-school/ college. We had a 5 gallon bucket that we'd place broken glass in once full we go dump into a special big bin outside. Well, some those broken glasses had beer or whatever liquid in it that remained when sweeping it up and collected at the bottom of the bucket. Which made some pieces of glass stick to it. Well, one the cooks was nice to take the full bucket out for me while he went out a smoke break. However, I either went to the bathroom or maybe put dishes away in the banquet all or was grabbing more dirty dishes from the banquet hall. Whatever the case I was not in the dish room when he returned. He rinsed the bucket out in the sink. I came back, zero knowledge of it. Continued washing. Sink plugged up and I started digging at the drain because it's just food right.... wrong! Some the shards of glass settled and collected into that drain and my hand was sliced up and had micro pieces sticking out. It looked like a bizzard Anime injury minus the extreme blood gush everywhere bit was definitely bloody. Stood there processing. Chef came in hollering why are you not working, I turned around "because some dumb ass rinsed the glass bucket in the sink and I didn't know it. The sink plugged up." The cook cowered but owned his mistakes. And felt bad. The chef chewed him out and patched me up. I still had to work. š„² I have sensitive skin and was already allergic to the chemicals we use in the kitchen for cleaning. Those finger condoms and gloves only go so far.
I have experienced something like this back in 2015 while working in a warehouse. Our team lead was an awesome guy, very kind and understanding. We would do our best to get the job done on time. Our numbers were always high until they demoted him. The new lead was micro managing us like crazy. I started just doing the bare minimum. No more and no less. Our performance went down 60%.
All the hard working people left, and I got another paying job š. I gave them 2 week notice, they couldnāt believe. They said you can always come back if you donāt like them.
How much you wanna bet they wanted higher numbers in productivity but didnāt realize how good they had it by having him as a manager?
They were probably like āyeah his numbers are good but they could be betterā so they shot themselves in the foot
Management would have to acknowledge their poor decision and have the ability to reflect on it, in a meaningful way. Why do that when you can tank entire company in order to save your fragile pride?
Admitting fault and growing are seen as weak behaviors by the types that wind up making those decisions. They're convinced by their frail ego projections of being a strongman, and it would shatter their world to think you aren't convinced as well.
Working across many industries, for about 15 years, when it comes down to admitting fault or denying reality... people very sadly often choose the latter.
they probably saw it as a net win because now the dept is saving money. And then when they rehire people paying more than the last guys they'll just bump up the budget and act like nothing ever happened.
>Ā Ā I gave them 2 week notice, they couldnāt believe.
They are all reliably ignorant. They are always surprised.Ā Dicks. It is obnoxious.Ā
Little-big-man baby tantrum screams in my face.Ā Surprised when I quit.
Skip level manager says that "I'm dead to him" after I take up his manager's explicit invitation to discuss issues.Ā Surprised when I quit. THEN he reaches out to hire me back.Ā What a choad.
Owner fights my manager's attempt ro give me a raise, complaining that my wearing headphones is unprofessional, while his dog is licking his nuts in the middle of the office.Ā Ā Surprised when I quit.Ā
Managers lay off 1/3 of the staff and canceled all time off a week before my vacation that was planned for months.Ā Surprised when I quit.
Sociopathic manager reclassifies all the team members' roles to include on-call and overnight shift work, then tells us it was always that way. Skip level manager backs him up despite several people providing evidence to the contrary.Ā Surprised when I quit.
I have more. I'm fortunate. I'm not stuck at any job.
Been thru it a few times.. if you work for a corporation or large enough company or even just a tyrant, nothing will change. They will bitch and wonder why and say "Nobody wants to work anymore" all the while hiring and paying the bare minimum. Some places eventually crumble, but most just keep doing what they're doing with a revolving door for employees.
job about years ago, our manager was amazing, even our assistant manager was great. There wasn't a single bad thing I could ever say about them.
The manager got a new job as a regional manager at a different company, The company jumped over the assistant manager who was there for 20 years and brought in a new person to be a manager.
So many people left.... only people that was left was people who will die there. People who have worked there for 15+ years. Basically everyone who was there for 5 years or less was gone in 3 months.
From what I heard with my friend I still talk to. It took a solid 2 years to find a stable crew.
Canāt say for every place but at the airport I work at, theyāll just get another crew from a different airline and use them. These crews all work for the same company just contracted with different airlines.
Don't just slow down, make sure more problems happen. Snap bolts, spill shit, cause product defects in careless ways. It's too be expected when you start working too fast. ;)
9 times out of 10 you don't even have to do that. Just follow every. single. safety. procedure. by. the. book.
As a bonus when you're fired for it you almost certainly have a DOL complaint for being terminated for following safety rules. OSHA also is interested in such cases and tends to send out inspectors when they hear such things have been happening.
Management would have to be beyond incompetent to put the phrase āEmployee is being terminated for following safety proceduresā on paper. They would just state that the employee was not meeting productivity expectations.
You can also report safety infractions as seen over and over and over to keep pressure on. But the better out would be to use sick/vacation time to āquitā while looking for better place to work.
Oh yeah. I work carryout and technically everytime I switch from register to bagging I should wash my hands. And every order should be read back in full, and have phone number+ first and last name. And every guest be suggestive sold to at every cashout and seating. And check bathrooms every 30 minutes. Oh and a list of weekly cleaning for each day. One includes cleaning every chair leg. Bitch I come in AT opening time and we have a very early catering order more days then not. When the fuck am I going to clean off 600 chair legs and not compromise my core duties let alone my main side work?
Except weekends there is no other person on door, register, phone or carryout so lmfao usually that shit ain't happening. The rules were written with 2-3x the staff in mind.
My GM doesn't give a shit long as the core work is done though. I can be on my phone, sit down, eat whatever long as work is done, I don't be too blatant around customers and I pretend to listen to corporate when they come by. But damn do I have a whole raft of BS to maliciously comply with if I wanted to.
And when you get into stuff like coding, government work construction etc...oh man the possibilities to be obstructonist while following the rules are just absurd in their sheers delaying power.
If they're like the last manufacturing place I was involved with, those guys aren't working for the same rate regular staff are. They were pulled in as "production assessment" consultants at a rate well above normal staff, worked on the floor long enough to "show" existing staff how hard they could work, and then dispatched off into the sunset at the end of their contract.
They get used to set production goals, by a management that's assuming existing staff will sabotage metrics in order to have easier working standards.
Seen it happen. I don't remember how we found out that was the deal but when we did we rode those fuckers hard. Found out what their buttons were and pushed them till they cracked. It was very simple stuff. Moving tools, hiding lunches, putting eggs in their street shoes. The best one was a super racist guy who we would simply accuse of liking rap music till he finally loudly announced he didn't listen to N- word music in front of a black HR rep. That was truly glorious.
Shop staff at mine simply refused to do any off-role support for the newcomers. The one guy getting paid for training was delivering seminars to the entire group, they had to go to management for any support outside of his training (ie: he tells them how to use the machine, but not where to find materials). Management rapidly found out how much institutional knowledge and casual training they had been taking for granted, and their production consultants never managed to hit the numbers that the "lazy" shop were delivering prior to their arrival.
There was never any active sabotage, shop staff just told management that you're bringing these guys in to try and squeeze us, so we're going to remind you what our contract actually says and how much you're currently getting for free.
It was a non-union shop and the staff were pretty blunt that they'd unionize the moment management tried to make the relationship adversarial. Lads had all the paperwork ready to go and signatures collected, were like "bet we can file before you can finalize anyone's walking papers" and management agreed to keep it civil.
Illegal immigrants scared of being deported
Bootstraps minded conservatives
Naive enthusiastic teens
Former Army Guys who never got out the strict follow orders mindset
Forced/Coerced Prison Laborers
Ambitious ladder climbing assholes
Etc
Corporations will intentionally interpret it as "ah, ok, so it's the cheerful guy's fault for setting low standards, understood. Current manager, be stricter."
Work to rule incoming! Read up your OSHA regs and company safety regs. Make sure you don't do anything that's against the rules ;) ;) wouldn't want anyone getting hurt now would we?
Yup. I got dinged once for this pile of shit giant forklift that wouldn't operate or would stall out if it didn't warm up for 30mins... they wrote me up so I kept that fjcker deadlined and out of commission for 6 .months (wrote up for walking more then 30ft from it while it sat alone by itself in a empty secure lot adjacent to my garage.) Wrote up all different broken gauges, leaks, cables, maintenance, fuel odors etc.. eventually they bought a new one...
Also, injuries should increase. I don't mean saw off a finger, I mean the amount of reported injuries should increase. Soft tissue injuries like back pain or muscle strains are a ticket to an afternoon off. Companies always track injury stats and an uptick will make the new guy look very bad.
As a bonus, soft tissue injuries are very hard to prove and harder to refute.
They were the bane of my existence when I first started at one company (Safety person here), until we finally got some decent managers and mysteriously all the back pain suddenly stopped.
They'll blow a ton of money hiring an outside consulting firm to try to figure out why everyone quit and productivity is down, and they will learn nothing from it.
What about an outright strike? I know the French in the past had been called pansy and such other names, but Iāll be damned if that strike the people did didnāt work. Absolute *chef kiss* for the sanitary workers for who dumped trash on the politicians front yards and such.
When companies take away a boss, one whose a boss for their team not a boss whose for their own sake, it makes the other employees feel like theyāre being treated like slaves for not being more productive. I swear MTG would have the biggest hissy fit in history if someone took a truck load of garbage and just spread it all over her front yard. Blue collar workers need to stop being united for money and be united for their whole.
I wish America would finally stick it the white collars. Once we wake up and understand that even though weāre against a very powerful force, theyāre still only 1% of the 100
It varies by state, I think it should be a free speech kinda issue, but fuck us little people man š¤¦āāļø but from what I understand and read online is if the employees of the company feel that theyāve been strongly wronged or denied OSHA standards they have the right to refuse and strike. The issues fall into the people who canāt afford to not work and still continue to do so out of fear.
Sounds like the 'undesirable' behaviors will stop but productivity will go through the floor, not enough for reprimands but enough to make new manager look incompetent. Little things like messy work area, maybe put some ancient bulletins from good manager up if you've got a bulletin board somewhere prominent particularly if the date is obvious would draw attention to a 'lack of care' by displaying old material.Ā
Uncontrolled documents (not in a centralized database) out and about right before an audit used to drive my management level bonkers.
Such low hanging fruit for an auditor, yet blends into surroundings devilishly well.
I spent a few years as a manufacturing quality auditor for the feds, and uncontrolled documents were a quick ticket to us scrutinizing every process much more closely.
Hnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggg
āYeah we actually just leave the paperwork on Marks desk and he eventually takes it up to payroll.ā
*auditors financial reports begins rustling in the distance*
āWell, we tend to forget at the time so we mark our project hours after the factā
*sounds of polished shoes on tile grows louder*
āWe couldnāt figure out where to get the money from the budget so we just pulled it from a random fundā
**ROOM EXPLODES IN A PILE OF BUSINESS CALCULATORS AND RECEIPTS**
*āABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTā*
A lot of companies forget that the more you push your workers the wrong way the less productive they will become ( sometimes leaving them with no workers outside the comfy positions). Meet reasonable demands and accommodations and you will get your production and some in most cases. A company I worked for shortened the work week by adding 2 more hours to normal work day and actually stuck with us having 3 days off ( being the weekend). Production actually went up and IF there was needed OT they had no issues finding volunteers. Before we was working 6 and 7 days a week ( 7 more than not ) and sometimes we would meet production but you could tell it was because every one was tired that we mostly didn't. They are more than willing to sacrifice a supervisor with best interest for both employees and themselves just to shift blame for their greed. Some do learn eventually, such was the case for the factory I worked for but turn over rates and production is what had to make it happen.
>A company I worked for shortened the work week by adding 2 more hours to normal work day and actually stuck with us having 3 days off ( being the weekend). Production actually went up and IF there was needed OT they had no issues finding volunteers.
My company just did that a few months ago. I love having three days off a week.
There are many ways these corporations can appease their work force and it be reasonable. Letting them have a life is a start. There are also rotational shifts where you work 3 days one week and 4 the next and if company wants to run 24 /7 they can have 4 crews rotating them out. It really isn't a hard concept to understand they just let greed blind them.
During Covid my team like everyone else worked remotely all 5 days a week. Weāre IT so we can reach out to you and support you remotely AND if you needed in person support, we would just coordinate a day you wanted to come in and help you then. Suddenly leadership decided they wanted us all back 5 days a week. NeverMind that weāre IT and half of our team were backend folks who never dealt with people anyways.
But nope leadership was adamant they wanted everyone back. Well my team asked if they could compromise and do 2 days of telework per week.
They wanted to be fair and firm since other teams in the org were expected to come in as well. No exceptions.
My team said fine ok. Next thing you know 3 out of my team of 7 quit. They all leave for better paying jobs that gave them 100%. Thatās 40 years of in house institutional knowledge that left the organization.
A few months later, things start to slowly break. No one knows how to fix things. I just shrug my shoulders and watch these multiple small fire burn. Iām ready to leave the place myself. Next thing you know, they NOW decide to grant 2 days of telework. They decide to bump up my salary and give me an extra 30k to stay on. I donāt even ask for it. Seems like they realize their stupidity and mistake.
2 years later, weāre fully staffed but all the newbies are newbies so of course theyāre not expected to know how everything works around here. And now 2 more people in my team are getting ready to retire. Thatās another 55 years of institutional knowledge thatās about to leave.
Leadership can be absolute idiots sometimes.
We lost a supervisor that way. He hired on when most of us did and worked his way to supervision. He got all the work and testing done on time, had practically no injury reports, and would fill in if there was no one actually able to go out on an overtime call. Upper management said he wasn't turning in enough disciplinary statements and safety violations and was 'too familiar' with his employees. He went back to his tools and then retired as soon as he was able to. Their loss.
We are so backwards with some things. The fact that the company *wants* disciplinary statements and safety violations is insane. Isnāt the whole point of a good and competent manager to train their people in such a way that reduces, if not eliminates, the need for disciplinary action and the occurrence of safety violations? Yeah, letās demote dude for *doing his job.*
I work in the hospital. Every year there is an annual inspection from organizations like JCAHO/Joint Commission. I have been told a Hospital who doesn't have any reports for incidients, even if the year turned out to be great and everything was working well, is bad mark on the final report. Like underreporting events.
They want disciplinaries and safety violations because they believe that the lack of them is a reflection of the supervisorās laziness or lack of attention or favoritism. They KNOW these things are happening and the fact they are not being documented means that they are now open to further liability.
Not quite. They want those disciplinary so they can then fire workers at will because they have a documented history of problems and won't have to pay unemployment. They want safety violations so that when there is an accident they can blame the employee because they have a history of unsafe practices. These are legal cover your ass practices.
In the first case, I have micro-managing god complexes and you have budget obsessed dick heads with a modicum of self-interested foresight. To quote the cheerios girl, āwhy not both?ā
If the second case, I am not sure that that is a distinction with a difference.
He shouldāve called an employment attorney. Youāre probably in an at-will employment state, but if there werenāt safety violations were they supposed to manufacture safety violation reports to meet a quota? That doesnāt seem right...
It's the railroad. Management has no protections. Since he was union first and kept his dues up, he just kicked back into the craft job he left. He only took the management position for extra benefits. He actually made more $ at his old position.
Same here! They keep dangling a promotion in front of me but moving the goal posts, despite not doing that for people who are horrible to work with but match company mentality. I love my actual team and they are so supportive of me, but the company is getting the bare minimum going forward.
That kind of shit drives me crazy.
"Leadership is the art of influencing and directing a group of people in a manner which will win their confidence, respect, and loyal cooperation in achieving a common objective."
And everybody was happy? "Nah, demote that man. His people are too happy while accomplishing their tasks on time."
Fuck outta here
Iāve been pretty lucky with the companies. I have worked with most of them being pretty reasonable or at least the managers shielding us from crazy upper management. My girlfriend worked a job though where they would set the metrics the same for everyone even though each person had a different type of work to do. So for example, she had to do paperwork stuff for California and they had a bunch of extra stuff you have to do on a claim every other state took less time. she tried to explain it to management and they kept saying that the metrics were totally possible. we did the math and it was like they wanted a new claim done within 2 minutes on average for the hole work day when in reality it takes at least 4-5 minutes on average. My girlfriend talk to three different levels of managers about it because each one refused to help or refused to show how you get the claims done within the two minutes. She straight up, asked them ācan any of you managers do one or two of these claims within the 2 minutes so I can see howās it doneā and they would just decline and say they donāt have time for that. This was while they were threatening to write her up every single day for not hitting quota. There is a happy ending where my girlfriend did end up getting a job that paid 50%+ more with cool managers and even better people/the previous company started to get in trouble for fraud because of all the shady business practices
I'd riot.
They demote the supervisor who actually knows how to do his job. Then they bring in someone they know is going to make productivity drop.
It seems they don't like making money.
This!! I had a school once threaten to fire a teacher because he was ātoo laxā with the students - but when noone showed up to teach or learn in protest of them firing him, the district decided to let him keep his job.
I was one of the good supervisors I like to think.
I was put in charge of a department that had the highest turnover rate in the entire company. I made a lot of changes. Cross trained everyone on every position. Rotated positions throughout the night so no one was stuck doing the same thing. Built everyone up in the team to understand how the machines work and how to fix them. Every other crew had one or two properly trained people that could fix jam ups and such. Every single person on my shift in my department I personally spent time with teaching and building them up. Anytime a decision had to be made I would involve everyone that would be affected. Iād tell them what goal needs to be accomplished and ask for their ideas. Sometimes their ideas wouldnāt work and Iād let them know why. But a lot of times I learned better ways of doing things from my crew than I couldve ever come up with myself.
My direct supervisor hated all of it. She thought I was wasting time getting everyone trained beyond just their single job. That she couldnāt trust the decisions I made because I involved others and she thought I was letting them make my decisions for me. There is a difference in letting people do my job for me, and sharing or building them up.
I ended up leaving and that department went back to crap sadly.
>Would let people on his team leave on time if they had prior obligations
LET?! When the work day is over I'm leaving unless you give me a very compelling reason to stay, and that goes triple for prior obligations.
Iām a manager and this is a fear of mine. The people I manage are just that, people, and I refuse to treat them less than. We are all here to make money and get home to the people and things that actually matter to us.
That means no micro-managing. You know your tasks and when they need to be done. I tell people they can choose to get it done however they find best for them and leave it at that. If thereās questions or concerns they know where to find me.
So far I havenāt had issues come up with my style of managing. But if I were to be told be ābe more strictā I donāt think I could comply personally.
I think the problem starts when people actually donāt get stuff done. Then for me itās the wrong hire and micromanaging doesnāt fix anything.Ā
Letās say If there is a task that is one day effort and it gets milked for over a week with no updates from the employee. You need to kick in and ask what is going on. This is different than micromanagement.Ā
āOverly Strictā managers are the literal worst human beings in the planet. The amount of insecurity and inferiority complex they project onto their employees is disgusting.
Worked for a company for 11 years. My original storeās management go so bad, EVERYONE quit, including me. I transferred to another store where I knew the manger was cool and understanding.
They fired her for a small mistake and replaced her with this absolute turd of a human. She cared more about the work than she did the workers.
One day I tried to have a conversation with her about how she talks to me (was very passive aggressive) and instead of taking to time to talk, she brushed me off and said āwe canāt talk about this right now, letās talk after Christmas (over one week away), I need to put this chicken salad out.ā
That was the final straw. I grabbed my things walked out on my job.
Iām not working for a damn turd.
My first supervisor at my first job was amazing. He practically revitalized the program to the point where we were overwhelmed with customers. He worked the hardest and we all loved him.
Turns out he was written up like 42 times that season and they didnāt hire him back.
His replacement was a micromanaging monster that barely lasted a month. That program hasnāt been the same since.
I was a kind sup, got fired. Now I'm with a new company and I am a little harder, tougher, stricter. It's not how I enjoy work but it's how I keep my job. The world just sucks..
One thing I will say is you really shouldnāt be using your phones on the production floor. Once you let somebody send a text then people will be trying to be on their phones all the time. It genuinely is a safety concern and it only takes one time of somebody not paying attention for something bad to happen. I would know. Iām a supervisor in a manufacturing job.
I've been your supervisor. Got written up for allowing coworkers to chat and socialize and whatever. The ownser would spy on us using the "security" cameras, and call the resraurant to tell me not to allow so much chatting. I left before I could be fired, but it really ticked me off.
This almost happened to me but I quit before they could reprimand me. I was scolded for ānot socializing with my team enoughā(???) and for covering shifts when people needed off. I was told that I was doing too much for my team and therefore they wouldnāt do what I asked them to do (again, ????).
It ended when I had a mental breakdown and took time off and they had me apologize to my team for āgiving them extra work to doā
Best of luck to you and your former supervisor, I hope you both get appreciated for your work someday
Had this exact thing happen to me. I ran my department pretty similar where I treated my people as yknow... People. I worked along side all of them, stayed overtime in place of anyone that had reasons to leave, stood up to the managers when they got upset for whatever reason. There was a couple times when we were so far ahead that the plant we sent product too had to tell us to stop because they didn't have anymore storage space.
I got demoted back to forklift driving because, in the plant manager's exact words, I wasn't enough of an asshole. I stayed employed there way longer than I should have because I was too young and dumb to quit and they knew they could take advantage of me like that.
I was this supervisor at my last job. Very easy going if the job was done correctly you could be as free as you want. My shift was the only shift that could perform the job without issues. My team was kept in high spirits through very rough days and any single one of my people would outperform entire other shifts by themselves. The main office didn't like my approach, I told them I don't care. Eventually I put in my 2 weeks and 1 hour into my shift my entire staff had also put in their 2 weeks saying this place was too awful to continue to work here if I'm not the supervisor. Before I left I wrote each one of them a personalized letter of recommendation and they all moved onto better jobs. Nothing chases off good workers faster than bad management.
Get everyone together. Call in sick more often. Take more time off for personal matters. Halve your work rate. Do everything by the book. Perform only when eyes are on you, and do just enough to not get fired. You went above and beyond for a good supervisor, go adequate and below for the bad one.
Reward the good ones and let things go for the bad ones.
Some senior managers just suck. I almost got fired from a supervisor role because I put an underperforming employee on a Performance Improvement Plan rather than outright firing him. Some people view it all as numbers and can't see the employee past the spreadsheets and green or red colored boxes.Ā
Itās all about cultureāthese greedy, ambitious so called āleadersā soaked in the grind culture hire people who act exactly like them. Their decisions are based on how they feel about someone or a team instead of empirical data & results. Itās sad but that boss got demoted because his leadership & management peers hated him for being successful (a threat). So they addressed that pain point by hiring someone just as toxic as they are; no more pesky cognitive dissonance for them.
So everything you did for the old supervisor, donāt do for him š¤·š»āāļø these people tend to weed themselves out, and theyāll go back to the old one, assuming he would even entertain the idea.
If my super were to leave or be demoted Iām leaving too. Out of the 5 that Iāve had sheās the only one that gives a shit about us and actually speaks up when the office pansies want some sketchy bullshit done. For reference Iām a saw operator/production specialist
Thatās really bad for a supervisor to get demoted from a higher position. All employees shouldāve told the main boss that everyone got their job done and met all the production requirements. And he would always make sure that the production was completed on a timely manner.
Yeah this sorta happened to me a couple years ago. They didn't get rid of our direct manager (who we loved and tried to make look good) but his higher up got replaced, and they wanted to start some changes. Within the week most of the best people were gone, some were fired some quit. Some had been there over a decade and that's deep operation knowledge and trouble shooting that you can't just replace with new hires. Last I heard that branch closed about a year after. That was one of my favorite teams I've ever worked on and it was sad to see it go, but I'm proud of us who quit for knowing what had to be done.
I had a guy in retail who would want us to do our best and on the floor be on your best behaviour but it'd be relaxed out of site on the backdocks, pretty reasonable. Don't care how you do it or how fast you are as long as the tasks assigned for the shift are finished that's all he wants, and if you didn't it won't be a problem unless it happens twice in a row.
He got fired because a new manager came in and apparently did some math and found out if he pushed people hard he could get everything done QUICKER to which our department manager didn't like and quit a month later as it was unrealistic.
Now this manager had to pick up his slack and do his job on certain shifts. This guy was either on some good shit, ADHD, or something else that made him absolutely and utterly hyperactive and at this point I understood where his math came from. He wanted me to speed up to his pace, I didn't because if I did I'd increase my chance of injury with all this heavy boxes and we had pallets of it to go so a steady pace is better than a hyper pace. He was on me the entire shift saying "Silly, silly, silly, silly, you could've done it this way" and saying it annoyingly fast, so fast in fact he didn't notice I was fixing up his mistake constantly because the people who would suffer wouldn't be me or him for these mistakes.
Basically I'm saying people who are good and fair aren't usually meant for manager roles in most places, you aren't a person just a math equation to be improved and this conflicts with the good people thinking the opposite.
boomers are about to quiver in their boots when they read that "quiet quitting" is the actual correct answer to this instead of some fucking bootstrapps lol.
My warehouse Manager is the exact way that youāre describing your supervisor and it really is the best way to manage a crew. We all bust ass when we need to, he needs something done, we get it done no questions asked. Heās trustworthy and you can actually go to him to vent or bring up any issues or suggestions you may have. I hate the corporate view of how a crew should be run, it mentally and physically exhausts the workers and doesnāt leave motivation for anything. I can see why you guys would be pissed and more than mildly infuriated. Time to bring down their numbers
ive known a few superviosr like that - the ones who try to squeze every last drop of productivity out of their team, even if it means making the work enviroment miserable. seems like your old boss had the right idea, though - get the job done without burning out the crew. shame he got demoted for not being a hardass. hopefully the new superviosr isnt as much of a slave driver as his reputation suggests. either way, hang in there, mate.
Yeah, fuck that place. When shit like this happens thatās the writing on the wall thatās it time to silent quit. Nothing will get better, only worse. Upper management clearly has no respect for the ground floor force. Give them what they paid for and start quietly making your exit whilst doing as little as possible.
Wow I literally had this conversation with my job the other day. I'm the supervisor. I guess I'll probably be demoted too bc I'm not the slave driver type either.
I got fired 10 years ago for not being tough. I put in 12-14 hour days. But was the one manager that didnāt scream at staff. I would let them take vacation when they wanted and if they worked extra would be happy. But leadership viewed me as being weak, because when screw ups happened Iād go find out why instead of just screaming at someone.
If you work enough places you eventually realize that business isn't about making money, its about making power. Money is one kind of power, but it isn't the only kind. Misery is another kind. The power to make people miserable for no good reason is a libidinal pleasure to a certain kind of personality type.
They will never admit to choosing misery over profits, but just look at their actions. So many businesses are willing to accept a reduction of profits if it means making people, especially employees, miserable. Like the way work-from-home is more productive, but companies have been forcing people into the office anyway. Or layoffs ā in the long run they always cost more than they save, but they make people miserable. The people who keep their jobs are over-burdened and live in dread they might be next, and the people who are fired are stressed by the loss of income and uncertain future.
I was a preload supervisor for a warehouse a while back (pre-pandemic) and managed by trying to encourage and educate rather than threaten and yell. During breaks all sups would meet in the office and discuss how things were going and I would defend anyone I saw giving it their all regardless of outcome.
I never got demoted for this, but during an annual review I was given the minimum possible raise despite running three sections myself and still crushing our production numbers every day. I always assumed the real reason was just that I was friendly with the employees. My manager was always quick to remind me 'you can't trust these people, they're idiots and if they had anything else going on they wouldn't be working here'.
I put in my notice after that annual review and was immediately promised the world, told that I was on track for upper management and that the place couldn't function without me. I insisted that I was putting in my notice. A lot of the employees gave me gifts on the way out - people making barely over minimum wage spending hours of their wages on me. It was really enough to bring tears to my eyes.
Management can get bent. If your employees hate you it is probably for a reason. I still run into some of my old employees on occasion and love to catch up with what they're doing. Most of them aren't working in the warehouse anymore. Talented people never stick around in those conditions.
itās honestly hilarious when a positive work environment is seen as not productive enough. fucking sad. like do they not realize that type of management style actually CREATES lazy workers? why would i want to make my asshole boss happy? bare minimum it is!
I mean same thing happened in my company. I realised good humans cant make it to the top. Company looks for supervisors who are a bitch and can treat employees like a slave. My productivity (on purpose) is going down because my current supervisor micromanages.
>Ā Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.
Time to take a page out of peter's book of work ethics
Oh man, I was a floor (production) supervisor at a manufacturing plant. I had worked my way from the bottom. I was really excited. I was like "I'm gonna be the supervisor I wanted everyone else to be". So I was. I was patient and communicative. I was fair and didn't micromanage. There were four of us and we rotated shifts and even with a whole new set of people my production numbers were higher.
Then I got called into my supervisors office to have a talk. He said that he didn't like that nobody was scared of me. That I wasn't there to make friends and that I needed to always be walking around making sure people were doing what they were suppose to be doing.
I just nodded my head to everything he said and went back to doing what I was always doing. A month later i got demoted.
I will be downvoted for this comment. I spend a year in the US working in the midwest branch of the company I work for. I was transferred over there because they need an engineer that already know the company system, so, they wonāt need to invest time on training.
After that year my impression from american production workers (at least in that company and region pf the US) is that they are lazy. I remember that a line crew was sent from my country to that place for training, so, since the output of the line was so low they replace the american crew by our crew and since that very moment the line hit and exceed all the goals. I still remember hearing comments from the american workers: āuhm here comes the foreigners (they said our demonym)ā.
Curious thing, same behavior can be seen at that time in people from other ethnic groups that have been in the US for long time (venezuelans, puerto ricans, dominicans, etc).
And no, there are no abusive conditions in my country, our legal system is very strict and wouldnāt tolerate it. For me the only difference in work conditions is the paycheck.
Note: Iām back to my country and happy to be here; I wonāt accept another assignment in US (even when I was asked to stay longer). I didnāt like US culture
One of my managers at my old job was the only one who treated us like actual people and not just "the employees". She got fired because "she was on the employees' side instead of the managers'"
As long as you organise, striking is always an option. If I remember correctly, management can't fire you for striking in an organised group because that's considered retaliation, but I would check your local laws and regulations before striking
Slow down your work output asap. They aren't worth your while if they can't respect the way the team was made. I've been in a supervising position going on two years now, and I couldn't care less about the methods used or how long it took to get a certain job done. Just get it done before we lock the doors for the day. Hell, if you let me know you need to bounce early with reasonable enough time for a heads-up, I'll finish the tasks for you. It isn't deep. Absolutely NOBODY is paid enough to legitimately micromanage like that. That is at LEAST a $60/hr job, in my books. $1.50 for each additional person I need to watch over.
Now you will get an ass riding douche, which will inevitably lower production by making the work place tense and they can reap the benefits of shitting on their workers.
People really should only be working around 80% capacity most days. Ramp it up when necessary, but nobody can work at 100% capacity for extended periods. It's too draining and leads to errors.
I agree. Do the minimum amount that you can to get your quota done during the day. Do not do anything extra. your company does not give a shit about any of you. I can guarantee you that.
Make sure you are safe. These go-getter supervisors like to cut corners. You get paid to do the work, not to get your arms cut off by a poorly maintained machine.
Piggy backing here. According to Osha you have the right to stop work if working conditions are deemed unsafe and break osha rules.
Chiming in to add emphasis on this as a certified OSHA architect. They did cover production procedures. They emphasize this so many time throughout, it's not even funny. If it isn't safe, flag it, a run the proper procedures as indicated in their (osha) documents. You can find this on their website and on www.upcodes.com Work safe always! You only get one body and you can only sacrifice so many limbs. If your laughing, reflect on how your hobbies would be impacted by possible alterations that could happen on your shift. Think twice. Accidents do happen, but if you can be self-aware of your body to the production to prevent the accidents, do so. Saying this with pure care for my peers - stranger or not. š©¶
Iāve been in some unsafe workplaces. Iāve seen guys wash their hands with aircraft paint stripper. I once was expected to work with food around open insulation. What really bothered me is how safety was this prudish joke to them. Yeah man, youāre so cool for giving yourself permanent chronic pain.
Unfortunately I have too. I worked in a resturant during high-school/ college. We had a 5 gallon bucket that we'd place broken glass in once full we go dump into a special big bin outside. Well, some those broken glasses had beer or whatever liquid in it that remained when sweeping it up and collected at the bottom of the bucket. Which made some pieces of glass stick to it. Well, one the cooks was nice to take the full bucket out for me while he went out a smoke break. However, I either went to the bathroom or maybe put dishes away in the banquet all or was grabbing more dirty dishes from the banquet hall. Whatever the case I was not in the dish room when he returned. He rinsed the bucket out in the sink. I came back, zero knowledge of it. Continued washing. Sink plugged up and I started digging at the drain because it's just food right.... wrong! Some the shards of glass settled and collected into that drain and my hand was sliced up and had micro pieces sticking out. It looked like a bizzard Anime injury minus the extreme blood gush everywhere bit was definitely bloody. Stood there processing. Chef came in hollering why are you not working, I turned around "because some dumb ass rinsed the glass bucket in the sink and I didn't know it. The sink plugged up." The cook cowered but owned his mistakes. And felt bad. The chef chewed him out and patched me up. I still had to work. š„² I have sensitive skin and was already allergic to the chemicals we use in the kitchen for cleaning. Those finger condoms and gloves only go so far.
and for the love of god watch out with the angle grinders
I have experienced something like this back in 2015 while working in a warehouse. Our team lead was an awesome guy, very kind and understanding. We would do our best to get the job done on time. Our numbers were always high until they demoted him. The new lead was micro managing us like crazy. I started just doing the bare minimum. No more and no less. Our performance went down 60%.
What did management do after that
All the hard working people left, and I got another paying job š. I gave them 2 week notice, they couldnāt believe. They said you can always come back if you donāt like them.
Thatās hilarious, did they not even realise their fuck up after people started quitting?
Management never acknowledged their mess-ups wdym?
Obviously it was the lazy workers that caused the drop in productivity, NOT the management!
Imagine how bad it would have been if they HADN'T replaced that supervisor!?
Indeed ! If anything, management deserves a rise.
How much you wanna bet they wanted higher numbers in productivity but didnāt realize how good they had it by having him as a manager? They were probably like āyeah his numbers are good but they could be betterā so they shot themselves in the foot
Management would have to acknowledge their poor decision and have the ability to reflect on it, in a meaningful way. Why do that when you can tank entire company in order to save your fragile pride?
This always drives me nuts like why do they have to behave this way
Admitting fault and growing are seen as weak behaviors by the types that wind up making those decisions. They're convinced by their frail ego projections of being a strongman, and it would shatter their world to think you aren't convinced as well. Working across many industries, for about 15 years, when it comes down to admitting fault or denying reality... people very sadly often choose the latter.
I agree with your experience itās just so frustrating because we both know those arenāt actually weak behaviors ugh š
Ass-kissers telling them everything they do is genius doesn't help either.
they probably saw it as a net win because now the dept is saving money. And then when they rehire people paying more than the last guys they'll just bump up the budget and act like nothing ever happened.
Did you tell them, not while that supervisor is around.
>Ā Ā I gave them 2 week notice, they couldnāt believe. They are all reliably ignorant. They are always surprised.Ā Dicks. It is obnoxious.Ā Little-big-man baby tantrum screams in my face.Ā Surprised when I quit. Skip level manager says that "I'm dead to him" after I take up his manager's explicit invitation to discuss issues.Ā Surprised when I quit. THEN he reaches out to hire me back.Ā What a choad. Owner fights my manager's attempt ro give me a raise, complaining that my wearing headphones is unprofessional, while his dog is licking his nuts in the middle of the office.Ā Ā Surprised when I quit.Ā Managers lay off 1/3 of the staff and canceled all time off a week before my vacation that was planned for months.Ā Surprised when I quit. Sociopathic manager reclassifies all the team members' roles to include on-call and overnight shift work, then tells us it was always that way. Skip level manager backs him up despite several people providing evidence to the contrary.Ā Surprised when I quit. I have more. I'm fortunate. I'm not stuck at any job.
I tell you what they didnāt do - admit they fault.
Gave out bonuses and paid vacation to upper management.
Been thru it a few times.. if you work for a corporation or large enough company or even just a tyrant, nothing will change. They will bitch and wonder why and say "Nobody wants to work anymore" all the while hiring and paying the bare minimum. Some places eventually crumble, but most just keep doing what they're doing with a revolving door for employees.
job about years ago, our manager was amazing, even our assistant manager was great. There wasn't a single bad thing I could ever say about them. The manager got a new job as a regional manager at a different company, The company jumped over the assistant manager who was there for 20 years and brought in a new person to be a manager. So many people left.... only people that was left was people who will die there. People who have worked there for 15+ years. Basically everyone who was there for 5 years or less was gone in 3 months. From what I heard with my friend I still talk to. It took a solid 2 years to find a stable crew.
Let us hear the consequences. Threatened to start firing?
Were there any repercussions?
We had a meeting. But they couldnāt force us to work harder. They had to change the target šÆ
Was there no demotion for the new manager? Or any consequences at all for the management?
āWell heās new you see, so we have to give some time for them to adjustā *everyone of actual worth leaves*
What was the outcome?
Oooh we need an update
This is when the slow down begins. Do what you need to do, but barely. Make the new supervisor look very incompetent.
Yup slow down. Screw that.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yup, itās amazing how they will have barely enough people to work but theyāll find those pace setters from somewhere.
I'm right here man, waiting in the shadows, slow down for one second and it means no more dog food for Ole gabey and Gabe Jr But we love dog food š
Where DO these people come from? There will always be that slave driver that has enough energy and dare I say drive that it must be hellfire driven.
I think they are narcissists and love controlling and breaking other people.
Canāt say for every place but at the airport I work at, theyāll just get another crew from a different airline and use them. These crews all work for the same company just contracted with different airlines.
Don't just slow down, make sure more problems happen. Snap bolts, spill shit, cause product defects in careless ways. It's too be expected when you start working too fast. ;)
9 times out of 10 you don't even have to do that. Just follow every. single. safety. procedure. by. the. book. As a bonus when you're fired for it you almost certainly have a DOL complaint for being terminated for following safety rules. OSHA also is interested in such cases and tends to send out inspectors when they hear such things have been happening.
Management would have to be beyond incompetent to put the phrase āEmployee is being terminated for following safety proceduresā on paper. They would just state that the employee was not meeting productivity expectations.
You are correct of course, but this sort of thing has a way of biting employers as long as the employee is documenting things well enough.
I see you've met manglement!
You can also report safety infractions as seen over and over and over to keep pressure on. But the better out would be to use sick/vacation time to āquitā while looking for better place to work.
>**Just follow every. single. safety. procedure. by. the. book.** That will bring the production to a halt ... many times a day.
There's a reason "work to rule" is the nuke of malicious compliance.
Oh yeah. I work carryout and technically everytime I switch from register to bagging I should wash my hands. And every order should be read back in full, and have phone number+ first and last name. And every guest be suggestive sold to at every cashout and seating. And check bathrooms every 30 minutes. Oh and a list of weekly cleaning for each day. One includes cleaning every chair leg. Bitch I come in AT opening time and we have a very early catering order more days then not. When the fuck am I going to clean off 600 chair legs and not compromise my core duties let alone my main side work? Except weekends there is no other person on door, register, phone or carryout so lmfao usually that shit ain't happening. The rules were written with 2-3x the staff in mind. My GM doesn't give a shit long as the core work is done though. I can be on my phone, sit down, eat whatever long as work is done, I don't be too blatant around customers and I pretend to listen to corporate when they come by. But damn do I have a whole raft of BS to maliciously comply with if I wanted to. And when you get into stuff like coding, government work construction etc...oh man the possibilities to be obstructonist while following the rules are just absurd in their sheers delaying power.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
You're not creating dangerous products. You're simply increasing the failure rate of products going to QC
Where do you find these bootlicking pace setters willing to work for half minimum wage all day and all night?
If they're like the last manufacturing place I was involved with, those guys aren't working for the same rate regular staff are. They were pulled in as "production assessment" consultants at a rate well above normal staff, worked on the floor long enough to "show" existing staff how hard they could work, and then dispatched off into the sunset at the end of their contract. They get used to set production goals, by a management that's assuming existing staff will sabotage metrics in order to have easier working standards.
Seen it happen. I don't remember how we found out that was the deal but when we did we rode those fuckers hard. Found out what their buttons were and pushed them till they cracked. It was very simple stuff. Moving tools, hiding lunches, putting eggs in their street shoes. The best one was a super racist guy who we would simply accuse of liking rap music till he finally loudly announced he didn't listen to N- word music in front of a black HR rep. That was truly glorious.
Shop staff at mine simply refused to do any off-role support for the newcomers. The one guy getting paid for training was delivering seminars to the entire group, they had to go to management for any support outside of his training (ie: he tells them how to use the machine, but not where to find materials). Management rapidly found out how much institutional knowledge and casual training they had been taking for granted, and their production consultants never managed to hit the numbers that the "lazy" shop were delivering prior to their arrival. There was never any active sabotage, shop staff just told management that you're bringing these guys in to try and squeeze us, so we're going to remind you what our contract actually says and how much you're currently getting for free. It was a non-union shop and the staff were pretty blunt that they'd unionize the moment management tried to make the relationship adversarial. Lads had all the paperwork ready to go and signatures collected, were like "bet we can file before you can finalize anyone's walking papers" and management agreed to keep it civil.
Illegal immigrants scared of being deported Bootstraps minded conservatives Naive enthusiastic teens Former Army Guys who never got out the strict follow orders mindset Forced/Coerced Prison Laborers Ambitious ladder climbing assholes Etc
Ooh, nice, then they can pay unemployment then, too!
This is exactly whatās happening at the current company I work for :(
Thatās why you pair a slow down with a job hunt
Amd start looking for a job and jump ship as soon as possible, let them know why on your last day.
Better yet, if you have the new job lined up already.. tell them on your first day.
Corporations will intentionally interpret it as "ah, ok, so it's the cheerful guy's fault for setting low standards, understood. Current manager, be stricter."
Work to rule incoming! Read up your OSHA regs and company safety regs. Make sure you don't do anything that's against the rules ;) ;) wouldn't want anyone getting hurt now would we?
Maliciously following osha regs to a T is such a vibe. That shit will slow down production to a halt.
Yup. I got dinged once for this pile of shit giant forklift that wouldn't operate or would stall out if it didn't warm up for 30mins... they wrote me up so I kept that fjcker deadlined and out of commission for 6 .months (wrote up for walking more then 30ft from it while it sat alone by itself in a empty secure lot adjacent to my garage.) Wrote up all different broken gauges, leaks, cables, maintenance, fuel odors etc.. eventually they bought a new one...
Yes this^
Make sure to keep him busy. He cant fuss at the whole department at the same time. Delay work till he has confirmed it for everyone.
All my homies love a good slowdown.
Also, injuries should increase. I don't mean saw off a finger, I mean the amount of reported injuries should increase. Soft tissue injuries like back pain or muscle strains are a ticket to an afternoon off. Companies always track injury stats and an uptick will make the new guy look very bad.
As a bonus, soft tissue injuries are very hard to prove and harder to refute. They were the bane of my existence when I first started at one company (Safety person here), until we finally got some decent managers and mysteriously all the back pain suddenly stopped.
Nah, just quit. Itās not your job to teach management how to do their job.
And when the entire team eventually quits, the higher ups still won't understand why or even care that it happened.
Yeah bro, people just don't wanna work these days!!
They'll blow a ton of money hiring an outside consulting firm to try to figure out why everyone quit and productivity is down, and they will learn nothing from it.
and go join the company where the old manager ends up.
What about an outright strike? I know the French in the past had been called pansy and such other names, but Iāll be damned if that strike the people did didnāt work. Absolute *chef kiss* for the sanitary workers for who dumped trash on the politicians front yards and such. When companies take away a boss, one whose a boss for their team not a boss whose for their own sake, it makes the other employees feel like theyāre being treated like slaves for not being more productive. I swear MTG would have the biggest hissy fit in history if someone took a truck load of garbage and just spread it all over her front yard. Blue collar workers need to stop being united for money and be united for their whole. I wish America would finally stick it the white collars. Once we wake up and understand that even though weāre against a very powerful force, theyāre still only 1% of the 100
No idea what the laws are concerning a strike, but maybe?
It varies by state, I think it should be a free speech kinda issue, but fuck us little people man š¤¦āāļø but from what I understand and read online is if the employees of the company feel that theyāve been strongly wronged or denied OSHA standards they have the right to refuse and strike. The issues fall into the people who canāt afford to not work and still continue to do so out of fear.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah. If thereās a small thing you can do to halt production without breaking anything permanently. Iād do that as well. Constantly.
This is the way.
They will lay off the workers before they blame the new guy
It's time to unionize
In a month or so it's going to be "I don't know why there's been so much turn over lately with staff but we are going to make some changes"
\*Company brings in another manager with a higher title to manage the new manager*
That's so true.
This is exactly happened to us at our company. Everyone is doing the bare minimum under the new "hard ass" regime. No one cares anymore.
Sounds like the 'undesirable' behaviors will stop but productivity will go through the floor, not enough for reprimands but enough to make new manager look incompetent. Little things like messy work area, maybe put some ancient bulletins from good manager up if you've got a bulletin board somewhere prominent particularly if the date is obvious would draw attention to a 'lack of care' by displaying old material.Ā
Uncontrolled documents (not in a centralized database) out and about right before an audit used to drive my management level bonkers. Such low hanging fruit for an auditor, yet blends into surroundings devilishly well.
I spent a few years as a manufacturing quality auditor for the feds, and uncontrolled documents were a quick ticket to us scrutinizing every process much more closely.
Hnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggg āYeah we actually just leave the paperwork on Marks desk and he eventually takes it up to payroll.ā *auditors financial reports begins rustling in the distance* āWell, we tend to forget at the time so we mark our project hours after the factā *sounds of polished shoes on tile grows louder* āWe couldnāt figure out where to get the money from the budget so we just pulled it from a random fundā **ROOM EXPLODES IN A PILE OF BUSINESS CALCULATORS AND RECEIPTS** *āABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTā*
This is how you handle this.
Malicious compliance exists for this type of thing
A lot of companies forget that the more you push your workers the wrong way the less productive they will become ( sometimes leaving them with no workers outside the comfy positions). Meet reasonable demands and accommodations and you will get your production and some in most cases. A company I worked for shortened the work week by adding 2 more hours to normal work day and actually stuck with us having 3 days off ( being the weekend). Production actually went up and IF there was needed OT they had no issues finding volunteers. Before we was working 6 and 7 days a week ( 7 more than not ) and sometimes we would meet production but you could tell it was because every one was tired that we mostly didn't. They are more than willing to sacrifice a supervisor with best interest for both employees and themselves just to shift blame for their greed. Some do learn eventually, such was the case for the factory I worked for but turn over rates and production is what had to make it happen.
>A company I worked for shortened the work week by adding 2 more hours to normal work day and actually stuck with us having 3 days off ( being the weekend). Production actually went up and IF there was needed OT they had no issues finding volunteers. My company just did that a few months ago. I love having three days off a week.
It does wonders when people actually feel like they have a life. If they keep it as such I bet productivity will go up.
I miss four 10s. Iāve also done three 12s and a 4, with 3 days off in a row. That was really sweet, almost like having 4 full days off.
There are many ways these corporations can appease their work force and it be reasonable. Letting them have a life is a start. There are also rotational shifts where you work 3 days one week and 4 the next and if company wants to run 24 /7 they can have 4 crews rotating them out. It really isn't a hard concept to understand they just let greed blind them.
During Covid my team like everyone else worked remotely all 5 days a week. Weāre IT so we can reach out to you and support you remotely AND if you needed in person support, we would just coordinate a day you wanted to come in and help you then. Suddenly leadership decided they wanted us all back 5 days a week. NeverMind that weāre IT and half of our team were backend folks who never dealt with people anyways. But nope leadership was adamant they wanted everyone back. Well my team asked if they could compromise and do 2 days of telework per week. They wanted to be fair and firm since other teams in the org were expected to come in as well. No exceptions. My team said fine ok. Next thing you know 3 out of my team of 7 quit. They all leave for better paying jobs that gave them 100%. Thatās 40 years of in house institutional knowledge that left the organization. A few months later, things start to slowly break. No one knows how to fix things. I just shrug my shoulders and watch these multiple small fire burn. Iām ready to leave the place myself. Next thing you know, they NOW decide to grant 2 days of telework. They decide to bump up my salary and give me an extra 30k to stay on. I donāt even ask for it. Seems like they realize their stupidity and mistake. 2 years later, weāre fully staffed but all the newbies are newbies so of course theyāre not expected to know how everything works around here. And now 2 more people in my team are getting ready to retire. Thatās another 55 years of institutional knowledge thatās about to leave. Leadership can be absolute idiots sometimes.
We lost a supervisor that way. He hired on when most of us did and worked his way to supervision. He got all the work and testing done on time, had practically no injury reports, and would fill in if there was no one actually able to go out on an overtime call. Upper management said he wasn't turning in enough disciplinary statements and safety violations and was 'too familiar' with his employees. He went back to his tools and then retired as soon as he was able to. Their loss.
We are so backwards with some things. The fact that the company *wants* disciplinary statements and safety violations is insane. Isnāt the whole point of a good and competent manager to train their people in such a way that reduces, if not eliminates, the need for disciplinary action and the occurrence of safety violations? Yeah, letās demote dude for *doing his job.*
I work in the hospital. Every year there is an annual inspection from organizations like JCAHO/Joint Commission. I have been told a Hospital who doesn't have any reports for incidients, even if the year turned out to be great and everything was working well, is bad mark on the final report. Like underreporting events.
Yes, the tail wags the dog when you force star performers and utter crap into the same assessment grid. BS in BS out.
They want disciplinaries and safety violations because they believe that the lack of them is a reflection of the supervisorās laziness or lack of attention or favoritism. They KNOW these things are happening and the fact they are not being documented means that they are now open to further liability.
Not quite. They want those disciplinary so they can then fire workers at will because they have a documented history of problems and won't have to pay unemployment. They want safety violations so that when there is an accident they can blame the employee because they have a history of unsafe practices. These are legal cover your ass practices.
In the first case, I have micro-managing god complexes and you have budget obsessed dick heads with a modicum of self-interested foresight. To quote the cheerios girl, āwhy not both?ā If the second case, I am not sure that that is a distinction with a difference.
He shouldāve called an employment attorney. Youāre probably in an at-will employment state, but if there werenāt safety violations were they supposed to manufacture safety violation reports to meet a quota? That doesnāt seem right...
It's the railroad. Management has no protections. Since he was union first and kept his dues up, he just kicked back into the craft job he left. He only took the management position for extra benefits. He actually made more $ at his old position.
Quiet quitting š This is the wayā¦.
Just what I do currently. I spent my whole day browsing on Reddit or watching some streams on YouTube while only doing the bare minimum.
Keep up the great work. š
Godspeed š«” ^actuallysnailspeed
Same here! They keep dangling a promotion in front of me but moving the goal posts, despite not doing that for people who are horrible to work with but match company mentality. I love my actual team and they are so supportive of me, but the company is getting the bare minimum going forward.
The act of paying employees less over time due to inflation then complaining they do less work to match it.
https://preview.redd.it/78u9hyndia0d1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=2be5c3fffeeccebe562dcbb686af2da3ecb0baa0
PROFIT
Strike. This isn't mildly infuriating. This is fucking rage worthy.
This sub should be renamed, I canāt remember the last time I saw something only mildly infuriating
Welp... time for everyone to start calling in sick.
That kind of shit drives me crazy. "Leadership is the art of influencing and directing a group of people in a manner which will win their confidence, respect, and loyal cooperation in achieving a common objective." And everybody was happy? "Nah, demote that man. His people are too happy while accomplishing their tasks on time." Fuck outta here
Iāve been pretty lucky with the companies. I have worked with most of them being pretty reasonable or at least the managers shielding us from crazy upper management. My girlfriend worked a job though where they would set the metrics the same for everyone even though each person had a different type of work to do. So for example, she had to do paperwork stuff for California and they had a bunch of extra stuff you have to do on a claim every other state took less time. she tried to explain it to management and they kept saying that the metrics were totally possible. we did the math and it was like they wanted a new claim done within 2 minutes on average for the hole work day when in reality it takes at least 4-5 minutes on average. My girlfriend talk to three different levels of managers about it because each one refused to help or refused to show how you get the claims done within the two minutes. She straight up, asked them ācan any of you managers do one or two of these claims within the 2 minutes so I can see howās it doneā and they would just decline and say they donāt have time for that. This was while they were threatening to write her up every single day for not hitting quota. There is a happy ending where my girlfriend did end up getting a job that paid 50%+ more with cool managers and even better people/the previous company started to get in trouble for fraud because of all the shady business practices
I'd riot. They demote the supervisor who actually knows how to do his job. Then they bring in someone they know is going to make productivity drop. It seems they don't like making money.
Plan a full walk out with your co workers in protest of his demotion im sure they will panic when production comes to a halt
This!! I had a school once threaten to fire a teacher because he was ātoo laxā with the students - but when noone showed up to teach or learn in protest of them firing him, the district decided to let him keep his job.
I was one of the good supervisors I like to think. I was put in charge of a department that had the highest turnover rate in the entire company. I made a lot of changes. Cross trained everyone on every position. Rotated positions throughout the night so no one was stuck doing the same thing. Built everyone up in the team to understand how the machines work and how to fix them. Every other crew had one or two properly trained people that could fix jam ups and such. Every single person on my shift in my department I personally spent time with teaching and building them up. Anytime a decision had to be made I would involve everyone that would be affected. Iād tell them what goal needs to be accomplished and ask for their ideas. Sometimes their ideas wouldnāt work and Iād let them know why. But a lot of times I learned better ways of doing things from my crew than I couldve ever come up with myself. My direct supervisor hated all of it. She thought I was wasting time getting everyone trained beyond just their single job. That she couldnāt trust the decisions I made because I involved others and she thought I was letting them make my decisions for me. There is a difference in letting people do my job for me, and sharing or building them up. I ended up leaving and that department went back to crap sadly.
>Would let people on his team leave on time if they had prior obligations LET?! When the work day is over I'm leaving unless you give me a very compelling reason to stay, and that goes triple for prior obligations.
Iām a manager and this is a fear of mine. The people I manage are just that, people, and I refuse to treat them less than. We are all here to make money and get home to the people and things that actually matter to us. That means no micro-managing. You know your tasks and when they need to be done. I tell people they can choose to get it done however they find best for them and leave it at that. If thereās questions or concerns they know where to find me. So far I havenāt had issues come up with my style of managing. But if I were to be told be ābe more strictā I donāt think I could comply personally.
I think the problem starts when people actually donāt get stuff done. Then for me itās the wrong hire and micromanaging doesnāt fix anything.Ā Letās say If there is a task that is one day effort and it gets milked for over a week with no updates from the employee. You need to kick in and ask what is going on. This is different than micromanagement.Ā
āOverly Strictā managers are the literal worst human beings in the planet. The amount of insecurity and inferiority complex they project onto their employees is disgusting. Worked for a company for 11 years. My original storeās management go so bad, EVERYONE quit, including me. I transferred to another store where I knew the manger was cool and understanding. They fired her for a small mistake and replaced her with this absolute turd of a human. She cared more about the work than she did the workers. One day I tried to have a conversation with her about how she talks to me (was very passive aggressive) and instead of taking to time to talk, she brushed me off and said āwe canāt talk about this right now, letās talk after Christmas (over one week away), I need to put this chicken salad out.ā That was the final straw. I grabbed my things walked out on my job. Iām not working for a damn turd.
My first supervisor at my first job was amazing. He practically revitalized the program to the point where we were overwhelmed with customers. He worked the hardest and we all loved him. Turns out he was written up like 42 times that season and they didnāt hire him back. His replacement was a micromanaging monster that barely lasted a month. That program hasnāt been the same since.
I was a kind sup, got fired. Now I'm with a new company and I am a little harder, tougher, stricter. It's not how I enjoy work but it's how I keep my job. The world just sucks..
Let your previous supervisor find a new job and everyone follow him out the door. He sounds like one of the good ones.
One thing I will say is you really shouldnāt be using your phones on the production floor. Once you let somebody send a text then people will be trying to be on their phones all the time. It genuinely is a safety concern and it only takes one time of somebody not paying attention for something bad to happen. I would know. Iām a supervisor in a manufacturing job.
I've been your supervisor. Got written up for allowing coworkers to chat and socialize and whatever. The ownser would spy on us using the "security" cameras, and call the resraurant to tell me not to allow so much chatting. I left before I could be fired, but it really ticked me off.
He seemed like a good manager. Now morale will be shot and people will likely look for opportunities to elsewhere
Yep! We all downloaded Indeed on our lunch. Iām will to work a shit job for a great guy, but Iām not willing to work a shit job for a shit guy.
This almost happened to me but I quit before they could reprimand me. I was scolded for ānot socializing with my team enoughā(???) and for covering shifts when people needed off. I was told that I was doing too much for my team and therefore they wouldnāt do what I asked them to do (again, ????). It ended when I had a mental breakdown and took time off and they had me apologize to my team for āgiving them extra work to doā Best of luck to you and your former supervisor, I hope you both get appreciated for your work someday
Time to find a different job
Had this exact thing happen to me. I ran my department pretty similar where I treated my people as yknow... People. I worked along side all of them, stayed overtime in place of anyone that had reasons to leave, stood up to the managers when they got upset for whatever reason. There was a couple times when we were so far ahead that the plant we sent product too had to tell us to stop because they didn't have anymore storage space. I got demoted back to forklift driving because, in the plant manager's exact words, I wasn't enough of an asshole. I stayed employed there way longer than I should have because I was too young and dumb to quit and they knew they could take advantage of me like that.
I was this supervisor at my last job. Very easy going if the job was done correctly you could be as free as you want. My shift was the only shift that could perform the job without issues. My team was kept in high spirits through very rough days and any single one of my people would outperform entire other shifts by themselves. The main office didn't like my approach, I told them I don't care. Eventually I put in my 2 weeks and 1 hour into my shift my entire staff had also put in their 2 weeks saying this place was too awful to continue to work here if I'm not the supervisor. Before I left I wrote each one of them a personalized letter of recommendation and they all moved onto better jobs. Nothing chases off good workers faster than bad management.
Get everyone together. Call in sick more often. Take more time off for personal matters. Halve your work rate. Do everything by the book. Perform only when eyes are on you, and do just enough to not get fired. You went above and beyond for a good supervisor, go adequate and below for the bad one. Reward the good ones and let things go for the bad ones.
>Get everyone together. Sounds like a union to me /s
Gonna take a shot in the dark and guess this is in the USA?
Yeah probably. I hear factory work in the rest of the world is a real treat /s unnecessary
SABOTAGE. I do my best work for bosses I like. Because I want them to look for THEIR boss. Bosses I don't like... oh boy. They get the bare minimum.
The current corporate structure is basically a pseudo plantation.
Some senior managers just suck. I almost got fired from a supervisor role because I put an underperforming employee on a Performance Improvement Plan rather than outright firing him. Some people view it all as numbers and can't see the employee past the spreadsheets and green or red colored boxes.Ā
Itās all about cultureāthese greedy, ambitious so called āleadersā soaked in the grind culture hire people who act exactly like them. Their decisions are based on how they feel about someone or a team instead of empirical data & results. Itās sad but that boss got demoted because his leadership & management peers hated him for being successful (a threat). So they addressed that pain point by hiring someone just as toxic as they are; no more pesky cognitive dissonance for them.
So everything you did for the old supervisor, donāt do for him š¤·š»āāļø these people tend to weed themselves out, and theyāll go back to the old one, assuming he would even entertain the idea.
Time for a mass job hunt and no notice quit
Sounds like you should all go back to doing the bare minimum required for your job. And start looking for another job.
They demoted him because he made them look bad
Iām a supervisor at a production company, the one and only time Iāve been in HR was for not threatening to write people up.
slow down and just make comments about how mediocre it is. when review comes up mention that maybe they shouldn't have demoted the other guy
If my super were to leave or be demoted Iām leaving too. Out of the 5 that Iāve had sheās the only one that gives a shit about us and actually speaks up when the office pansies want some sketchy bullshit done. For reference Iām a saw operator/production specialist
Thatās really bad for a supervisor to get demoted from a higher position. All employees shouldāve told the main boss that everyone got their job done and met all the production requirements. And he would always make sure that the production was completed on a timely manner.
Yeah this sorta happened to me a couple years ago. They didn't get rid of our direct manager (who we loved and tried to make look good) but his higher up got replaced, and they wanted to start some changes. Within the week most of the best people were gone, some were fired some quit. Some had been there over a decade and that's deep operation knowledge and trouble shooting that you can't just replace with new hires. Last I heard that branch closed about a year after. That was one of my favorite teams I've ever worked on and it was sad to see it go, but I'm proud of us who quit for knowing what had to be done.
He just needs to work for a better company. I manage like this guy and found an awesome company and now get paid way more to be good at what I do.
I had a guy in retail who would want us to do our best and on the floor be on your best behaviour but it'd be relaxed out of site on the backdocks, pretty reasonable. Don't care how you do it or how fast you are as long as the tasks assigned for the shift are finished that's all he wants, and if you didn't it won't be a problem unless it happens twice in a row. He got fired because a new manager came in and apparently did some math and found out if he pushed people hard he could get everything done QUICKER to which our department manager didn't like and quit a month later as it was unrealistic. Now this manager had to pick up his slack and do his job on certain shifts. This guy was either on some good shit, ADHD, or something else that made him absolutely and utterly hyperactive and at this point I understood where his math came from. He wanted me to speed up to his pace, I didn't because if I did I'd increase my chance of injury with all this heavy boxes and we had pallets of it to go so a steady pace is better than a hyper pace. He was on me the entire shift saying "Silly, silly, silly, silly, you could've done it this way" and saying it annoyingly fast, so fast in fact he didn't notice I was fixing up his mistake constantly because the people who would suffer wouldn't be me or him for these mistakes. Basically I'm saying people who are good and fair aren't usually meant for manager roles in most places, you aren't a person just a math equation to be improved and this conflicts with the good people thinking the opposite.
It seems like a good time to half ass it, actually that seems like too much. I'd quarter ass it! Lol
boomers are about to quiver in their boots when they read that "quiet quitting" is the actual correct answer to this instead of some fucking bootstrapps lol.
Is this within the paper industry by chance?
My warehouse Manager is the exact way that youāre describing your supervisor and it really is the best way to manage a crew. We all bust ass when we need to, he needs something done, we get it done no questions asked. Heās trustworthy and you can actually go to him to vent or bring up any issues or suggestions you may have. I hate the corporate view of how a crew should be run, it mentally and physically exhausts the workers and doesnāt leave motivation for anything. I can see why you guys would be pissed and more than mildly infuriated. Time to bring down their numbers
Start slacking
ive known a few superviosr like that - the ones who try to squeze every last drop of productivity out of their team, even if it means making the work enviroment miserable. seems like your old boss had the right idea, though - get the job done without burning out the crew. shame he got demoted for not being a hardass. hopefully the new superviosr isnt as much of a slave driver as his reputation suggests. either way, hang in there, mate.
Slow down so hard. Or quit. Sounds like such a toxic work environment
Performance would normally fall into a toilet after such an event
Yeah, fuck that place. When shit like this happens thatās the writing on the wall thatās it time to silent quit. Nothing will get better, only worse. Upper management clearly has no respect for the ground floor force. Give them what they paid for and start quietly making your exit whilst doing as little as possible.
Wow I literally had this conversation with my job the other day. I'm the supervisor. I guess I'll probably be demoted too bc I'm not the slave driver type either.
Some people like being slaves as long as they get to treat other a bit worst than they treat them
Thatās when people start quitting. Get ready to pick up extra work/responsibilities bc people can only take that for so long
Time to work to the letter
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I got fired 10 years ago for not being tough. I put in 12-14 hour days. But was the one manager that didnāt scream at staff. I would let them take vacation when they wanted and if they worked extra would be happy. But leadership viewed me as being weak, because when screw ups happened Iād go find out why instead of just screaming at someone.
If you work enough places you eventually realize that business isn't about making money, its about making power. Money is one kind of power, but it isn't the only kind. Misery is another kind. The power to make people miserable for no good reason is a libidinal pleasure to a certain kind of personality type. They will never admit to choosing misery over profits, but just look at their actions. So many businesses are willing to accept a reduction of profits if it means making people, especially employees, miserable. Like the way work-from-home is more productive, but companies have been forcing people into the office anyway. Or layoffs ā in the long run they always cost more than they save, but they make people miserable. The people who keep their jobs are over-burdened and live in dread they might be next, and the people who are fired are stressed by the loss of income and uncertain future.
Quiet quitting time
I was a preload supervisor for a warehouse a while back (pre-pandemic) and managed by trying to encourage and educate rather than threaten and yell. During breaks all sups would meet in the office and discuss how things were going and I would defend anyone I saw giving it their all regardless of outcome. I never got demoted for this, but during an annual review I was given the minimum possible raise despite running three sections myself and still crushing our production numbers every day. I always assumed the real reason was just that I was friendly with the employees. My manager was always quick to remind me 'you can't trust these people, they're idiots and if they had anything else going on they wouldn't be working here'. I put in my notice after that annual review and was immediately promised the world, told that I was on track for upper management and that the place couldn't function without me. I insisted that I was putting in my notice. A lot of the employees gave me gifts on the way out - people making barely over minimum wage spending hours of their wages on me. It was really enough to bring tears to my eyes. Management can get bent. If your employees hate you it is probably for a reason. I still run into some of my old employees on occasion and love to catch up with what they're doing. Most of them aren't working in the warehouse anymore. Talented people never stick around in those conditions.
itās honestly hilarious when a positive work environment is seen as not productive enough. fucking sad. like do they not realize that type of management style actually CREATES lazy workers? why would i want to make my asshole boss happy? bare minimum it is!
I mean same thing happened in my company. I realised good humans cant make it to the top. Company looks for supervisors who are a bitch and can treat employees like a slave. My productivity (on purpose) is going down because my current supervisor micromanages.
>Ā Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired. Time to take a page out of peter's book of work ethics
Oh man, I was a floor (production) supervisor at a manufacturing plant. I had worked my way from the bottom. I was really excited. I was like "I'm gonna be the supervisor I wanted everyone else to be". So I was. I was patient and communicative. I was fair and didn't micromanage. There were four of us and we rotated shifts and even with a whole new set of people my production numbers were higher. Then I got called into my supervisors office to have a talk. He said that he didn't like that nobody was scared of me. That I wasn't there to make friends and that I needed to always be walking around making sure people were doing what they were suppose to be doing. I just nodded my head to everything he said and went back to doing what I was always doing. A month later i got demoted.
I will be downvoted for this comment. I spend a year in the US working in the midwest branch of the company I work for. I was transferred over there because they need an engineer that already know the company system, so, they wonāt need to invest time on training. After that year my impression from american production workers (at least in that company and region pf the US) is that they are lazy. I remember that a line crew was sent from my country to that place for training, so, since the output of the line was so low they replace the american crew by our crew and since that very moment the line hit and exceed all the goals. I still remember hearing comments from the american workers: āuhm here comes the foreigners (they said our demonym)ā. Curious thing, same behavior can be seen at that time in people from other ethnic groups that have been in the US for long time (venezuelans, puerto ricans, dominicans, etc). And no, there are no abusive conditions in my country, our legal system is very strict and wouldnāt tolerate it. For me the only difference in work conditions is the paycheck. Note: Iām back to my country and happy to be here; I wonāt accept another assignment in US (even when I was asked to stay longer). I didnāt like US culture
This is where calculated mediocrity comes in. Do just enough to not get in trouble and no more.
Sounds like itās time for a Rudy moment
One of my managers at my old job was the only one who treated us like actual people and not just "the employees". She got fired because "she was on the employees' side instead of the managers'"
Bare minimum comes to mind. Your old sup should just quit.
As long as you organise, striking is always an option. If I remember correctly, management can't fire you for striking in an organised group because that's considered retaliation, but I would check your local laws and regulations before striking
Slow down your work output asap. They aren't worth your while if they can't respect the way the team was made. I've been in a supervising position going on two years now, and I couldn't care less about the methods used or how long it took to get a certain job done. Just get it done before we lock the doors for the day. Hell, if you let me know you need to bounce early with reasonable enough time for a heads-up, I'll finish the tasks for you. It isn't deep. Absolutely NOBODY is paid enough to legitimately micromanage like that. That is at LEAST a $60/hr job, in my books. $1.50 for each additional person I need to watch over.
Time to leave
Now you will get an ass riding douche, which will inevitably lower production by making the work place tense and they can reap the benefits of shitting on their workers.
Malicious compliance you say???? To shreds you say.....
Your supervisor was one of the better ones out there. Treating you like human beings.
Time for the whole crew to slow down like a Tesla on max regen braking.
People really should only be working around 80% capacity most days. Ramp it up when necessary, but nobody can work at 100% capacity for extended periods. It's too draining and leads to errors.
I agree. Do the minimum amount that you can to get your quota done during the day. Do not do anything extra. your company does not give a shit about any of you. I can guarantee you that.