Hourly workers are hired from off the street if they can pass a drug test. Having said that it is a standing joke that if there were a surprise drug test 40% would lose their jobs. House & grounds people who, when the subject came up would say something to the effect of "at lunch time you can walk through the parking lot and smell pot".
The saying "It is hard to fly like an eagle when you are surrounded by turkeys." certainly holds true and it goes up to lower level management at least. Management sometimes is by intimidation not encouragement. There is no "hey great job on that" at least in my department. I was hired to help keep the place running but found myself begging for equipment and simple parts like screws and files and an extra battery for the saw. One battery was shared between a power saw and a drill. We couldn't use both at same time. If you are a person driven to excellence, precision, efficiency, pre-planning and good project management like I was you will be intensely frustrated. I wanted to boost my less experienced supervisor into higher forms of thought such as continuous quality improvement, focusing on the 7 wastes in order to make him a star in the company. But alas my advice fell on deaf ears probably because "people that are paid less know less". I raise myself up by boosting up others. But it did not work here. Knowledge sharing. Reluctant or ignored. Cross-pollination nope. I asked to be cross-trained in another department. Nope. I was assigned PM's on machinery. "Hey let's work on creating a schedule." Nope, 2 years later no plan. I would volunteer for tasks. "Hey we don't have any MSD sheets in that binder hanging on the wall. I'll research our chemicals." Um ok. "Hey I finished printing out most everything but I need a hole punch now." Uh nope let's hold off on that for now. "You've run out of toilet paper and towel paper again? Listen that happened to me once at my other job and I ordered an extra case to keep on hand as a buffer. I know you are trying to do JIT here but that's the way you adjust your inventory." Nothing. So the MSDS sheets are still sitting in my outbox gathering dust. Let's talk about dust and air.
Nothing new about warehouses being hot in the summer. But there is this dark dust settling on everything even customer packages. The big green box you see on the website banner photo was one of two circulating unfiltered pollution on everything but they are gone now. Everyday I went home and washed my cloth would be a dingy gray/brown. Everyone is breathing this and everyone's station fans are sucking it off the floor and throwing it back into the air again. Settles on cubicles, computers everything and I didn't know what it was. However I do not think I have any short-term affects from it. Facilities had little responsive, active control over fans or anything when weather changed. There was not sensitivity to the comfort of others. One of my services was cleaning and repairing floor fans. I saved the company thousands and got no recognition. Nobody was doing this when I got there. I was extremely unique in my service to others with regard to facilities. Reluctantly new fans would slowly be purchased and handed out. There was resistance to being organized and thoughtful. All that needed was management to make a few announcements.
Finally, let me cover the hypocrisy aspect. Big talk about work/life balance. But supervisor painfully waits until last moment to approve vacation. Gives self preferential treatment. Employees deserve to be spoken to honestly like men and women. They deserve a look down the road as to what to expect after important meetings. They have put their investment too into the company, namely their lives. But trust was not in my corner of management. I was promised fork-lift certification and I received initial training. But it was never completed. Do you know I had to do maintenance to the forklift but I couldn't drive it? There are dozens upon dozens of security cameras installed to spy on employees. They have the right to protect their business but hiring people of better character would help too. Once a tool went missing for a long time. I looked everywhere for it. Finally I found out my supervisor had taken it to his home to use it. I could have had him fired but was merciful. See things went missing but only supervision requests surveillance review so he was safe. The primary directive of my department was to fix stuff. A multi-million dollar corporation should have a better tool crib than my garden shed. but it didn't. What we did have often got 'borrowed' and not returned. So when I needed something I had to walk 90,000sq. ft. looking for it! One time I confronted the supervisor from another dept. and told him that Facilities is not your supplier for tools you have to budget for your own at Harbor Freight. He told me "Hey you have to serve us."
Poor planning.
Limited vision/imagination
Intimidating management style
Brutal conditions
Insane parking lot arrangement
Whiny focus on superficiality. Major in minors and minor in majors.
Zero tolerance to being humans that have good days and bad days. Needs to hire robots.
No affordable housing in area. Everyone lives far away but are docked when late. I was lucky to live near.
