Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I just got let go. What a fun week.
Rant VIII: The Reckoning
- Thread starter Anonymous
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- boat people
I worked in a restaurant and it's been pretty slow lately, so I expected cut shifts (most of us were down to 2-3 days a week). According to my manager, his boss and the owners decided who was getting let go and he didn't really have any say (they, of course, are barely there and don't work in the kitchen like he does). He was told it was due to how slow it's been (even though they'd just hired two people last month) and availability issues which is bullshit, as the only times I can't work are Mon-Thursday mornings. He said if things pick back up he'd love to hire me back, but I don't really believe that. After the talk I told him "I'm just really disappointed that all the work I put into this place amounts to this" and left.
Have to go in next week to turn in my hat/shirts and grab my tips, so maybe I'll get a real answer then.
If they hired new people last month, it seems ridiculous to let the older staff go.
This happens all the time in high turnover jobs. Especially if the newer staff can be paid less.
Well of the 14 or so people working there, only 3 of them had been there longer than me (I was at around a year and a couple months). It was just a part-time thing to bring in some money while I'm in school, but getting a job out here is a huge pain so it was nice to not have to worry about that.[DOUBLEPOST=1436305063,1436304997][/DOUBLEPOST]
They can't, at least not for long, as minimum wage in CA is going up pretty soon. It's one of the reasons we've been getting slower, too, as they had to bump prices and while the food's pretty good, it's not as good as the pricetag implies.
GasBandit
Staff member
A little bit!
Though, I'm sure there are good owners out there. It's just that my particular business' owner just can't help trying to micromanage from a hundred miles away, mostly via e-mail.
Yeah the restaurant is owned by an elderly couple (they're both 60+ years old) and they're fairly out of touch with how the world works. For whatever reason our daily specials were mostly terrible (save for two days) and Saturday, which could be one of the busiest days, has no special at all. If it weren't for all the pee-wee team parties the place hosted and one owner's connections in the pee-wee/middle school soccer groups, they'd probably have gone out of business.
Is this the "Reply To All" email person?
GasBandit
Staff member
YES
So, was replacing the rubber flat washers in my shower's faucet stems - faucets had been leading for a while, this was some past-due maintenance. When I put the stems back into place and turned the water back on, it flowed constantly, as though the tops were fully opened. Couldn't figure it out, until I went to replace the brass seat that the washers were supposed to press against. It pulled right out. Because the FUCKING SEAT THREADS on the INSIDE of the pipe fitting had corroded to the point that they fell apart.
The shower is a one-piece fiberglass tub/shower. There is no access panel for the plumbing. Guess who just had to carve a hole in the sheetrock to get at the pipes.
This whole odyssey about prompted the first full-blown domestic dispute between my wife and I. Right there in the middle of Lowe's when we found out just how severe the damage was.
THANKFULLY our neighbor has a handyman friend who can do the work for half the price of a plumber. But it's still not gonna get done until about Monday. FML...
The shower is a one-piece fiberglass tub/shower. There is no access panel for the plumbing. Guess who just had to carve a hole in the sheetrock to get at the pipes.
This whole odyssey about prompted the first full-blown domestic dispute between my wife and I. Right there in the middle of Lowe's when we found out just how severe the damage was.
THANKFULLY our neighbor has a handyman friend who can do the work for half the price of a plumber. But it's still not gonna get done until about Monday. FML...
We were actually planning a similar project this weekend (the faucets in our main bathroom tub have been leaking). While, thankfully, the tub is so old that being one piece isn't an option, it is the only set of pipes in our house we can't find the shut-off valve for (yet). Thank you for the cautionary tale, though sorry you have to go through it first!
The first fight?! I call that a downright miracle. My wife and I get into a squabble at least every 6 months - poor communication and misunderstanding are usually to blame. I want to move your post to the epic win thread.
We've had our share of bickering (money sucks), but we've never had a full-bore argument, one that that results in the other party needing to sleep in another room.
My mother, who does repair work for a rental holding company, talked about needing to install independant shut-offs on several bathrooms. She said it's gonna be a mandatory fixture on any future home. After this, I'm inclined to agree with her.
I can not bro-fist this any harder.[DOUBLEPOST=1436405701,1436405578][/DOUBLEPOST]
As a fellow (kinda) LEO/CO, you do not know how lucky you are for that.
A
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous for external search result reasons, spoilered for length.
Things are going incredibly badly at work. Incredibly badly. The company is on the verge of failure due to some heinous mismanagement. The investment firm that backs us has put a hold on all investments, the bank is auditing us quarterly instead of annually, we can't pay any of our vendors (or even meet our payment agreements), we are in legal proceedings with several of our customers over completion timelines and substandard work, and we are currently hemorrhaging money on overtime payouts with no light at the end of the tunnel. We've lost 4 of our 5 senior managers in the past 7 months, along with approximately half of our engineering staff, a third of our project managers, our best estimator, several of our shop foremen, and our three best install crews. Most of our subcontractors won't answer our phone calls. Attitudes in the company have gone from strained-but-optimistic to stressed-and-ambivalent, and right on through to downright-hostile.
We have two co-owners, one of whom is the president of the company, and the other of whom is general counsel and VP of internal operations. We've also recently brought in a new VP of operations, who will be taking over as COO within the next 4 months (assuming there's anything left). These three individuals cannot agree on priorities for the shop. One of them has a semi-reasonable understanding of what is and what isn't physically possible for our shop to accomplish on a daily basis, and the other two are complete fucking morons (which makes sense, one's a lawyer and one used to run a travel company). If one of these people decides at an early morning meeting that we're going to concentrate on project-a, the second will come in at the midmorning meeting and change the priority to project-b, and the third will have the shop do project-z instead, while telling the other two that they're doing project-c.
Our shop employees have been working mandatory 60 hour weeks with mandatory Saturdays for over two months straight, with an additional night shift that's been working mandatory 48 hour weeks. The entire company was supposed to have the 3rd, 4th, and 5th as a holiday, but we had people working the 3rd and 5th, and as of today we announced that this Saturday was again mandatory (after telling everyone for a month that their would be no Saturday requirements after the 4th), and that anyone not in attendance would be written up and have 8 hours of their PTO deducted from their balance. Three of our best workers walked off the job when that was announced. I fully expect to get an email late tonight or late tomorrow night telling all salaried employees that their attendance on Saturday is mandatory as well and that we will be expected to be in the shop working (nevermind the fact that we haven't had safety training or any of that fun stuff).
One of the most frustrating things about all of this is that the most obvious underlying problem is that we have too much work to do right now, because we accepted a job "as a favor" to a general contractor, which of course went awry, and in addition to the fact that we lost our asses on the job (we easily lost $250k), it was such low margin work, but so time consuming, that we lost the ability to do three months' worth of high margin work, and completely shot ourselves in the foot on delivery dates for our school jobs (which is most of our work). There is actually too much work in the marketplace right now, as all kinds of schools passed bond measures for building improvements, coupled with hospitals and health centers making massive improvements with their Affordable Care Act proceeds, and that doesn't even touch all of the municipal work we do. Right now we are actually trying to lose bids, and failing.
Unfortunately, the most obvious underlying problem is not the biggest or most serious underlying problem. No, that falls squarely on those co-owners and their purchase of a brand new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. The computer software we were using was out of date, and did need an upgrade - they get no argument from anyone on that point. However, what we didn't need was an outside contractor to lead the conversion. Especially not someone who was horrendously disorganized, relentlessly stubborn, and completely ignorant of how our industry worked. We paid $2M for a software suite that could have been tailored to our company's needs, and instead tried to tailor our company to its default configuration. Any time someone tried to bring up a (very valid) concern about how something wouldn't work, the answer we got was always either "real companies don't do things that way" or "your biggest competitors don't do things that way". No mention of the fact that our largest competitor west of the Appalachians might - might - be half of our size. And to top it all off, we provided no executive oversight to the transition team, so a lot of people were completely surprised when the whole thing went tits up on launch. Now we're $2M in the hole on a piece of software that has such horrendous system architecture that we can:
That tune is "Oh, we don't use the system for inventory management, purchasing, demand, stock control, payroll, accounts payable or accounts receivable, estimating, engineering, drafting, or anything other than the machine code, and we had to write our own software workarounds to make it work with our saws."
Now, I'm not really worried about my own job. I'm already looking for a new job and I'm quite certain that I'll land on my feet and can find a job that pays substantially more than what I'm making now. I've already had a couple of phone interviews, and I only started looking last week. My concern is all of the other people that work for us. All of the incredibly loyal employees that have been with us for 10, 15, 25+ years, who've put their hearts and souls into the company, only to have it fall apart around them and be led to believe that everything's going fine while Nero fiddles and Rome burns. The way I see it (and the way a lot of the smarter, more realistic managers see it), we only have three options to get out of this with our skin intact. We could sub out a lot of work - but our subs won't answer our calls because we haven't paid them for work they did for us last year. We could run three shifts - but we can't afford the material to keep the shop running that much or the labor. Or, and this is the least likely of the three, we could call a board meeting and call for a vote of no confidence on the current leadership, replace them with an experienced leader, and eat crow with a lot of very unhappy school districts.
Honestly, at this point, I'm hoping for a general strike this weekend, a vote of no confidence, a lot of lawsuits and penalties, and a bankruptcy to bail us out of our current financial position, that we could possibly recover from if we can find enough new customers that we haven't already pissed off. Oh, and did I mention that the co-owner/president is my brother-in-law? Yeah... family gatherings are so much fun right now.
We have two co-owners, one of whom is the president of the company, and the other of whom is general counsel and VP of internal operations. We've also recently brought in a new VP of operations, who will be taking over as COO within the next 4 months (assuming there's anything left). These three individuals cannot agree on priorities for the shop. One of them has a semi-reasonable understanding of what is and what isn't physically possible for our shop to accomplish on a daily basis, and the other two are complete fucking morons (which makes sense, one's a lawyer and one used to run a travel company). If one of these people decides at an early morning meeting that we're going to concentrate on project-a, the second will come in at the midmorning meeting and change the priority to project-b, and the third will have the shop do project-z instead, while telling the other two that they're doing project-c.
Our shop employees have been working mandatory 60 hour weeks with mandatory Saturdays for over two months straight, with an additional night shift that's been working mandatory 48 hour weeks. The entire company was supposed to have the 3rd, 4th, and 5th as a holiday, but we had people working the 3rd and 5th, and as of today we announced that this Saturday was again mandatory (after telling everyone for a month that their would be no Saturday requirements after the 4th), and that anyone not in attendance would be written up and have 8 hours of their PTO deducted from their balance. Three of our best workers walked off the job when that was announced. I fully expect to get an email late tonight or late tomorrow night telling all salaried employees that their attendance on Saturday is mandatory as well and that we will be expected to be in the shop working (nevermind the fact that we haven't had safety training or any of that fun stuff).
One of the most frustrating things about all of this is that the most obvious underlying problem is that we have too much work to do right now, because we accepted a job "as a favor" to a general contractor, which of course went awry, and in addition to the fact that we lost our asses on the job (we easily lost $250k), it was such low margin work, but so time consuming, that we lost the ability to do three months' worth of high margin work, and completely shot ourselves in the foot on delivery dates for our school jobs (which is most of our work). There is actually too much work in the marketplace right now, as all kinds of schools passed bond measures for building improvements, coupled with hospitals and health centers making massive improvements with their Affordable Care Act proceeds, and that doesn't even touch all of the municipal work we do. Right now we are actually trying to lose bids, and failing.
Unfortunately, the most obvious underlying problem is not the biggest or most serious underlying problem. No, that falls squarely on those co-owners and their purchase of a brand new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. The computer software we were using was out of date, and did need an upgrade - they get no argument from anyone on that point. However, what we didn't need was an outside contractor to lead the conversion. Especially not someone who was horrendously disorganized, relentlessly stubborn, and completely ignorant of how our industry worked. We paid $2M for a software suite that could have been tailored to our company's needs, and instead tried to tailor our company to its default configuration. Any time someone tried to bring up a (very valid) concern about how something wouldn't work, the answer we got was always either "real companies don't do things that way" or "your biggest competitors don't do things that way". No mention of the fact that our largest competitor west of the Appalachians might - might - be half of our size. And to top it all off, we provided no executive oversight to the transition team, so a lot of people were completely surprised when the whole thing went tits up on launch. Now we're $2M in the hole on a piece of software that has such horrendous system architecture that we can:
- Spend 30 minutes trying to determine how much of one specific material we have on hand, on order, and allocated to production, only to have the on hand amount be completely wrong, the on order amount fail to take into account the fact that we've already actually received that item (but not another item on the same purchase order), and the amount allocated to production completely ignore anything that was allocated to a job that we've already sent to the shop, but which hasn't reached the point of production at which that material is consumed. Oh, and half the time the search fails because the database structure is completely unwieldy (to the point of higgledy-pigglediness), and
- With one click of the mouse on any of 5 peoples' log-ins make one tiny change to a given field and suddenly set a default depth on all of our cabinets to, say, 9 inches (the normal depth for lowers is 24 and uppers is 18). Or the height of all components of all cabinets to 30 inches, so that a 3-drawer cabinet would suddenly be 30 inches tall and have three drawers that were also each 30 inches tall, as well as a 30 inch tall toe-kick. Or, we could change something so that all upper cabinets suddenly had one fixed shelf and no doors. And the system has no safeguards in place to stop any of that. And yes, all three of those things have been done. One of them was caught right away. The other two went on unnoticed for at least a month.
That tune is "Oh, we don't use the system for inventory management, purchasing, demand, stock control, payroll, accounts payable or accounts receivable, estimating, engineering, drafting, or anything other than the machine code, and we had to write our own software workarounds to make it work with our saws."
Now, I'm not really worried about my own job. I'm already looking for a new job and I'm quite certain that I'll land on my feet and can find a job that pays substantially more than what I'm making now. I've already had a couple of phone interviews, and I only started looking last week. My concern is all of the other people that work for us. All of the incredibly loyal employees that have been with us for 10, 15, 25+ years, who've put their hearts and souls into the company, only to have it fall apart around them and be led to believe that everything's going fine while Nero fiddles and Rome burns. The way I see it (and the way a lot of the smarter, more realistic managers see it), we only have three options to get out of this with our skin intact. We could sub out a lot of work - but our subs won't answer our calls because we haven't paid them for work they did for us last year. We could run three shifts - but we can't afford the material to keep the shop running that much or the labor. Or, and this is the least likely of the three, we could call a board meeting and call for a vote of no confidence on the current leadership, replace them with an experienced leader, and eat crow with a lot of very unhappy school districts.
Honestly, at this point, I'm hoping for a general strike this weekend, a vote of no confidence, a lot of lawsuits and penalties, and a bankruptcy to bail us out of our current financial position, that we could possibly recover from if we can find enough new customers that we haven't already pissed off. Oh, and did I mention that the co-owner/president is my brother-in-law? Yeah... family gatherings are so much fun right now.
That sucks and seems like a downright staggering series of bad decisions. The stress must be diamond-quality.
Enjoyed about 45 minutes in my in-ground pool this evening with the wife and daughter.
As I got out, I felt a little something something in my pocket, I pull out my iphone 5....
Currently in a huge ziplog bag filled with rice. Hoping it'll find some way to come back to me.
Either way, I was due for a new phone. I was looking at the new S6 Samsung Edge. I wonder how hard the leap from Apple to Android is.
As I got out, I felt a little something something in my pocket, I pull out my iphone 5....
Currently in a huge ziplog bag filled with rice. Hoping it'll find some way to come back to me.
Either way, I was due for a new phone. I was looking at the new S6 Samsung Edge. I wonder how hard the leap from Apple to Android is.
A
Anonymous
Anonymous
The amount of stress is monumental. It has hospitalized me twice and forced my doctor to put me on Zoloft (and to try to prescribe me weed, this being a recreationally legal state and all). One of my closest colleagues at work has been hospitalized three times and also put on Zoloft. Our sole remaining SPM carries so much stress in her back that she can barely walk most days, and she's only 30. Two of our senior engineers have had heart attacks. I don't even want to think about what it's doing to my brother-in-law, who was already wound tighter than any human I've ever met. He's at least trying to do the right thing, he's just in so far over his head that he can't see the big picture anymore, and his partner and other senior managers / executives aren't helping at all.
Everyone tries really hard to entice those people on the other side of the fence right now, so the most immediate thing you'll run into is probably app availability. Over the life of the device, the biggest thing you will probably run into is the deal with Android fragmentation, which is not a big deal if you end up with a version you like, but will be if you end up with one you don't.
--Patrick
fade
Staff member
I've been considering the same. Been an Apple fan for decades, but that company seems to have lost its innovation when it lost Jobs, unfortunately. The G4 looked pretty interesting, too.[DOUBLEPOST=1436448653,1436448525][/DOUBLEPOST]
People always make the joke that the last thing a company needs is more managers, but it seems like the thing your company needs is more managers.
Or better yet, get another job, and then quit.