Good Workers - Fact or Fiction
Blogbrother, Contagion of Miasmatic Review had a post up asking "Where did all the good workers go" laminating on the fact that at times he feels like the only worker in his company with a good work ethic.
I might assume that every company has it's fair share of problems with lazy workers, but I think some more than others have it worse. And I work at one of the "worse" companies.
I work as an Engineer in a manufacturing plant, we make parts for the automotive industry, so we are talking mundane assembly line type jobs. One doesn't need to be a rocket scientist to work these jobs, just "up right and breathing" will do.
I see that about half of the people will use their lack of higher education as an excuse to not work hard. They have no work ethic at all and go to great lengths to get out of working hard. I think ones education status should have no bearing on how hard one works, or use it an excuse not to work hard and if they put as much effort into their jobs as they put into not working they would be great workers.
I have a problem with operators thinking they know better than the people who actually create the work instructions on how to make the part. They take a lot of short cuts, either doing something incorrectly or not doing it at all. I have explained time and time again that the instructions are to be followed for a specific purpose and they are getting paid to follow them how we have them set-up.
I will be out on the floor watching the operators and they are not following the instructions, I go up to them and tell them why we have them do things a specific way and can they please do it that way and I also tell their supervisor that they are not following the instructions. I can go back out onto the floor only 1 hour later and those same people are not following the instructions again, repeat process. It does not change and they don't get fired. Why? Because the supervisor refuses to write the people up saying they can't be expected to be perfect all the time.
I call bullshit on that. And not just because I am a Quality Freak, it's because I was taught growing up that hard work, giving all that you can give, doing the best job you can reflects on the kind of person you are. There are no such things as free rides and hard work is what gets you to where you want to be.
On Friday we had a huge problem that actually made me question my longevity at my job. The week before we had a minor problem at a plant, easily corrected by the operators using a Go/No-Go gage to measure the part, which they should have been using in the first place because it was stated as such in their work instructions. The operators and supervisor decided to ignore me, thinking that they knew better.
Shit meet Mr Fan - yep, this past Friday all hell broke loose and we ended up scraping 80% of everything in house plus 90% of everything at the assembly plant. All because the operators didn't want to expend energy on doing the extra step, that they were suppose to be doing. Nobody got fired, the supervisor got yelled at but not put on warning.
This isn't something new either, this happens way to much. And the operators feel no guilt over the problem, no remorse. They are actually mad because they are now being forced to do the "extra" step.
Pride - where the hell has it gone?
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