The Workplace Thread

Maddox

Maddox

Protestant
Heritage
Post your daily dealings with bosses, clients, employees, and office politics.

As the owner of my own business, I have to occasionally work with others to please clients. And if there's one thing that ticks me off, it's when someone else screws up and I have to pay the consequences. My current situation does not deal with an employee or a co-worker but someone from another company who we are teamed up with to get a job done. And just as it's happened before, it happened again today due to a miscommunication. And I have very little recourse here because the other person acts as a liaison and deals directly with the client. It just drives me nuts every time this occurs.
 
I do field work so I rarely interact with coworkers. My direct superior lives out of state, I've only met him in person twice and talk to him over the phone about once a week if at all. I'm essentially unsupervised with a schedule of tasks to perform at various customers sites. I get everything assigned to me completed and on time so no one has to bother me. I'll work with another coworker on occasion and they're generally cool dudes, some easier to work with than others. Same with customers, some are easier to work with than others. Overall it's a sweet gig, no one on my back, I can self manage, company vehicle, paid commute time and customers are usually happy to see me.
 
I work on an all male crew, working outside with my hands and operating machinery. My days are much more enjoyable working in environments like this.

Most office jobs are boring and full of feminine energy. I did work with structural engineers as a drafter for a while, and the women engineers were nice to work with. The energy in the office was good too, but I hated sitting down and looking at a computer all day. Engineers are some of the best office workers.
 
I often use a freelancing site to find some of my new clients. Well 4 years ago I talked to a guy on there who approached me about some work he'd like me to do for his company. So I asked him for his site URL so I could see what type of business he had. Today he finally sent me the URL to his site with no explanation as to his absence...as if we had just talked yesterday.
 
I'm really getting tired of working with women as they are constantly making my job more difficult. Some of them, especially the younger ones, are so bone-headed, it's a wonder they can do anything right.

It would be one thing if they were screwing up a job that affected only them. But they're not; most of the time, it seems to affect me too somehow because I rely on them to do things right. So when they mess up, I also look bad.
 
Maddox said:
It would be one thing if they were screwing up a job that affected only them.
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A lot of women actually have negative workplace productivity because not only are they not getting meaningful work done, they force competent men to have to babysit them and thus reduces the productivity and output of highly productive men. At that point as a man you would rather just have less employees and take on a little additional workload yourself but know its going to get done right.
 
I’m a tradesman and run a crew of newbies and it sucks. I can see why so many guys hate training now.
From the obviously lazy one who don’t have any interest in doing work, to the incompetent ones, to the worst offender: the self-sabotage because I’m mad guy. The city I live in has a really poor talent pool to choose from.
Which throws all the stress and workload onto my shoulders. They’ve been promising to find more experienced help with no luck.
 
I'm sure a lot of new employees are pretty awful and hard to train. But to be fair, a lot of companies are terrible at training too. If it's not some moody, miserable bastard that has the temperament of a toddler, it's some guy that doesn't even want to help train. It's like these guys forget that they were young once too and made the same mistakes (I'm talking reasonable mistakes) that new employees are bound to make. A lot of younger generations did not grow up using tools either, so it takes a while to learn how to use them.

The trades are very hit or miss. You can get a great journeyman that wants to help, or a completely horrible person that wants everyone else to be as miserable as he is. The work itself is much more enjoyable than most jobs, but a lot of the people can be awful to work with.

I was always happy to he paired with the younger journeyman or superintendents.
 
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Australia Sucks said:
I am going to take a wild stab in the dark and guess that they pay poorly and hence they cannot get experienced help. Its very simple if you want good employees you need to pay well.
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You get paid what you're worth.
If I own a machine shop, and I hire you on as an apprentice with zero experience, I have to train you. I also have to make sure you don't get hurt. In other words I am investing time into your development. You aren't making the company money.
If you are a good worker, show up everyday with a good attitude, and willing to learn, you will progress. Now you are making the company money, and now you are making more money.
4 years later you are a Journeyman Machinist making top dollar.
Simple.
 
One of the great things about apprenticeships for a licensed trade (electrical, plumbing, hvac) is guaranteed raises. They're usually every 6 months to a year and there's a minimum you make at each step throughout the apprenticeship. And at least for non-union, you can get paid more than the minimum if the contractor wants to.

Then journeymen have a guaranteed minimum they make as well, but the companies usually pay them more from what I've seen.
 
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Australia Sucks said:
I am going to take a wild stab in the dark and guess that they pay poorly and hence they cannot get experienced help. Its very simple if you want good employees you need to pay well.
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They actually pay quite well, the city where the company is based in is a craphole with a low pool of skilled labor. Management also seems to burn bridges a lot.
 
TheSurveyor said:
Management also seems to burn bridges a lot.
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So management treats employees like dirt? 99% of the time when a company cannot get good employees they either pay badly or they treat workers badly. Its always one of the two. No company that treats employees well and also pays them well has a scarcity of quality employees. Companies that are good to work for are so rare that the will never be wanting for good workers.
 
Australia Sucks said:
So management treats employees like dirt? 99% of the time when a company cannot get good employees they either pay badly or they treat workers badly. Its always one of the two. No company that treats employees well and also pays them well has a scarcity of quality employees. Companies that are good to work for are so rare that the will never be wanting for good workers.
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Agreed, if weren’t for larger companies importing trained immigrants for cheap labor and the working class being generally dumb on average. Skilled tradesmen could cut out all the nonsense and demand better pay and working conditions.

Unfortunately, your average tradesmen is a mindless consumer and gets too caught up in work politics that they usually don’t have enough money put away nor the insight of working together to get an overall better outcome.

It usually goes like this: “wut chu mean u make $1/hour mor den me? Im gon try to get chu fired and blow all mer money on me neew F-150”. I swear the working class are their own worst enemies.
 
Funny enough, I heard of some these small mom and pop companies talk about only wanting to hire married men with children or immigrants. Because they “work harder” (I.e. easier to exploit).

Let’s face it, your average small business is probably not much more moral than some mega corporation. Sometimes they’re even worst and run shadier business practices.
 
TheSurveyor said:
Let’s face it, your average small business is probably not much more moral than some mega corporation. Sometimes they’re even worst and run shadier business practices.
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Most of the time small businesses are worse. They typically pay their employees 10 - 25% less than a large corporation and load them up with additional responsibilities. In addition they don't want to train anybody they want to hire people with years of experience in the exact job (while paying peanuts). Its hard to find a small business owner who isn't a moron. There is a reason why the small business failure rate is so high.
 
Getting caught up in lots of workplace drama lately. The sad reality is that if you have the attitude of keeping your head down and keeping your nose in your own business then it makes you an easy target for others who promulgate the tattletale culture. Management loves tattletale culture: See something, say something, because it makes them privy to what everybody on the team is doing. The dynamic is either the team vs the management or everyone for himself with each one kissing up to management.
 
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