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After years of working in EMS (seemingly a very stressful environment), I decided it was time to do something more 'grown up' for a living. I quit my job and spent all of my retirement money going to school to obtain a computer science degree. I entered corporate life working for a major computer manufacturer. I enjoyed it well enough, I started off configuring servers and for the most part, since I was of above average competence, nobody bothered me. Unfortunately, being of above average competence, I soon attracted the attention of management, who decided to bump me up the corporate ladder. I moved to a different department, where my job was to help manufacturing flow efficiently. Chasing down parts, systems, checking orders for correctness. I began to see that the sales department had no idea what they were doing. They would put together orders that were physically impossible to complete, due to hardware restrictions, etc. Of course these problems were never their fault, always someone else's (ours). The orders would have to be put on hold until resolved, or canceled altogether, much to the ire of upper management, who had even less of an idea of hardware compatibility, availability, etc than the sales people did. Slowly, my goal at work changed from 'do a good job,' to 'try to avoid being yelled at today.' The stress was unbelievable. When I pulled into the parking lot, my back and neck would tighten up, and I would feel the beginnings of the low intensity, throbbing headache that would stay with me until I left work again. Again, being of above average competence, management rewarded me with a promotion to a supervisory position in my department. Now even more people had reasons to yell at me, and I realized that middle management gets it from both sides. We were a mix of temp and full time workers. The temps, although they worked side by side with full time people, made significantly less, not to mention having no benefits. Management was always trying to drive a wedge between us, either by giving the full time folks gifts, or providing meals for only full timers. Needless to say, the temps were pissed and often intentionally screwed orders up out of spite. In any case, they were drat near impossible to manage. One of my most important duties, my TPS report, if you will, was the nightly manufacturing report. It broke down orders in different stages of manufacturing, shipping, and those that were on hold or canceled. It was mindless copy-and-pasting of information that was easily available elsewhere, and I soon began to dread it most of all. One night, out of sheer, mindless boredom, I just made up the numbers on the report, and nobody noticed. Soon that became the norm, and for the last six months I worked there, I made up every single report I sent out. I just didn't care. No one ever questioned my numbers. Finally, I understood the movie. So I decided to go back to being a paramedic. If I'm going to be poo poo on, I'd rather it be literal than figurative poo poo.
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Apr 21, 2010 14:26
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 22:52 |
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