It's been really, it's been fun, but it ain't been real fun.
My career as a rail car builder has just come to an end. While the work is a blast and co-workers all awesome, I walk into the shop each day knowing that nothing is going to get done because management hasn't got a clue.
Let me backtrack a bit.
We're hired through a temp company (of course, it's the thing to do with large companies these days) and after our "probation period" of 120 days the company decides if they want to keep us.
My roll date was 12/20. We laid off that afternoon for a two week plant shut down and the possibility of me rolling early was killed. So, it means my roll over date was held to 150 days of probation. No big deal, except for the fact that I'd worked every freakin' hour of overtime that I was asked, including coming in at 10 o'clock on a Friday night and working 'til 3:30 on a Saturday morning to take care of a few things on unit one while it was in test.
Then they expected me to work over the holiday break while showing me nothing for it except my paycheck. For the on the books employees working meant holiday pay, plus time and a half overtime pay. For me it meant straight time. Not worth the drive for only 18 hours each of those two weeks. It wasn't held against me for my roll over, but the new management got pissed.
Now, we're a month behind on unit three and the push come in to get it done. Fine, we were under the gun with the first two units, no big deal. Unit three is supposed to be in highpot test by the end of the day today. Yet, for the last two weeks parts have been trickling out and a lot of the parts were wrong, rejected by the customer when they were on unit one. No purge in the warehouse.
The new manager punted a lot of issues down the road, issues we brought to his attention before the break, issues which could have been taken care of during the break. Now, it's two weeks after the break and he's getting his nuts pinched in a vice and taking it out on the line workers.
I was asked to take lead on B-car. Which meant the entire B-car line was my responsibility to assemble. Fine. I was the one who was already on B-line and the senior who was there to train the new guys, keep track of parts, hunt down blueprints, get explanations for what we were doing if something changed, I might as well have it as a negotiation tool for when I rolled to sit down with HR and put my price on the table.
But then I was asked if I'd be willing to go second shift. I'd been wanting to go to second shift since I started. Then I found out that management was hiring on new guys and I was stuck with two employees who were going to be new to interiors. So, in the process of having to get my work done, I'd have to essentially babysit two guys and train all the new ones. When I haven't been rolled yet and saw no hourly rate increase.
But the straw that broke the camel's back came on Wednesday night. The new manager has, for all intents and purposes, been ignoring B-line. He's always over on the A-line mezzanine and spends a couple of hours a day on the C-car mezzanine just shooting the ****. We have mods which need to be done for the heaters on the cars. A-car was able to install their heaters while I was told not to put mine in because there was a snafu. Now, mind you, my heaters were already on the floor and ready to install, yet when I asked why I couldn't put them in, he just walked away, with no explanation. I got to work Wednesday afternoon and was told to put them in. The new boss said he never said I couldn't put them in, even though my trainee was standing right there and heard the whole conversation. So, he threw me under the bus to cover his own ass.
So, my plan on Wednesday night was to get the heaters and the sanders in. I spent most of the night trying to hunt down parts. Parts which the new boss new I needed and didn't get me. I had no grounds, no conduit connectors, no grounding hardware. These were installed in A-car and were a bulk house order, meaning they didn't come on the skid with the heaters. His slow of mind mental capacity didn't double up the order needed for the entire train, he just ordered them for A-car. (It's common sense, that if you lack them for one car, then you're going to lack them for both cars and if you need to order, then you order twice the amount to cover the entire train.)
Again, I'm getting thrown under the bus simply because this idiot has his nuts in a vice for punting a lot of this down the road.
It's been typical of this place. They hire people who have no general clue and then get their panties in a wad in things get delayed. Of course, a lot of this is coming on the heels of this article.
http://www.masstransitmag.com/news/11290472/metro-seeking-answers-to-railcar-delivery-delays
