Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Forklift Fury

I'm kind of disappointed in how the whole concept of business plays out sometimes.  It all makes sense when you look at the bottom line and profit margin, etc... but a lot of times, business lacks heart.  Lacks compassion. Lacks... well just lacks.

I have a great team overall.  I have a couple of guys on power jacks, one on a reach truck, one is my new lead/QA guys...blah blah blah.  Well, recently there was talk of pulling one of my guys off of the jack and putting him on the forklift.  He worked on the forklift a few days last week and then up until yesterday.  He did a phenomenal job.  Didn't dump any pallets unlike my current reach truck guy, AND my previous reach truck guy who is now on a jack....

Well this morning I had to pull him off the forklift and put this other guy who is technically a part of my team, but who effing knows everything (and nothing) all at the same time, butts heads with me all the time and who I want gone but who somehow manages to keep staying in the building on the forklift because all last week he talked a bunch of shit about being a pro and "how he could do so much better than the other ugys" he could show them a thing or two, etc etc etc

What it boils down to is that now I have a great guy who was better than anyone else being pulled off of equipment and made to think he did something wrong when I have other guys that dump shit on the regular still on equipment.  It's business.  Money. Bottom lines.

He asked his boss about getting more money for using equipment which he was entitled to do.  Equipment operators are paid more than regular workers.  Everyone knows this.  Rather than give him that extra 50 cent or dolllar (this company pays next to nothing to their workers) they pulled him off equipment and put this other guy who they already paid more money to do QA things on the equipment.

He looked heartbroken.  He looks like a hispanic kung fu panda (to be honest that's what the guys at work call him is panda for that very reason)... I had to get my guy jose who speaks english as a primary language translate some stuff so that nothing would be lost in translation.  I wanted him to know that he hadn't done anything wrong and that he did a great job, but that it was the big guys decisions and not mine.

Luckily by 8 am I had him smiling again.  He and the other guys were taking turns wearing my purple american eagle hoodie (it's amaryllis season so we are working in the coolers now)... they were rocking it to... looking like big damn purple teletubbies... it didn't matter.  They were having fun.

I dunno. I hate the cold side of business.  I like to think it's not like that everywhere and that maybe it's only pissing me off because I'm unhappy where I'm at.  I dunno.  I often think that I'm just entirely too soft to make it in the world of business.  Then other days I'm a typical corporate bitch.  I dunno.  Makes no sense.

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