Make sure he doesn't steal anything - huh??

Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share (MPSIMS)
#1

Tomorrow, my husband turns in his keys and work uniforms as he has accepted a new job. For the last 6 months, he’s been trying to be the maintenance and engineering manager at a wire mill in Baltimore. I say trying, because he’s gotten little in the way of support or guidance from his boss-type persons.

Shortly after he was hired, his boss was fired. No one was ever designated as a replacement - they just had occasional visits from one of the VPs from Corp headquarters. Hubby used his best psychic powers to figure out what the heck he was supposed to be doing, all the while taking on such challenging tasks as counting how many bandaids they’d used over the previous year. He also took a few minutes one day to free a worker whose clothing got caught in a machine, and he directed the production guys to fetch the fire extinguishers when there was an in-plant fire. You know - piddly stuff.

He got training in PLC programming and managed to reduce the scrap rate on one of the machines by 84% - one would think this would impress the corporate weenies, but apparently not. They cut his pay by 10%. So, he hit Monster and other sites and eventually landed himself the position of Facility/Engineering Manager for a manufacturing firm in Havre de Grace, MD (Hi, Ginger and Dave!!) He gave notice to the VP weenie and the CEO. He heard nary a word from either of them. He took his maintenance crew out to lunch today as a thank you.

Yesterday, the VP weenie showed up. He decided it was time to appoint an interim plant manager. He asked hubby to train a couple of guys to do the PLC programming (sure, that’s something you can do in a passdown) Today, said VP weenie went around to all the employees instructing them to watch hubby and make sure he doesn’t steal anything as he leaves. His computer access was denied after lunch today. He’s worried now that they won’t deposit his last paycheck, which was due tonight anyway.

I thought about making this a pit-worthy rant, but the weenies aren’t worth it. My sweetie is going to a professional environment where he’ll have several engineers and the entire maintenance department working for him. He’s getting a pay raise and a real office. He’ll have a budget and projects and stuff to do. He’ll also be really busy for a while, but I think it’ll be a good kind of stress on him rather than the frustrations of the last 4 months.

So, weenieVP, thanks for the vote of confidence. :rolleyes: You’ve squandered the talents of a hard-working, knowledgeable man, and you insulted him by suggesting that he’d steal anything from your raggedy company. You go on the list as the second-worst boss he’s ever had. Congratulations. We’re betting on the date you wind up in bankruptcy. Have a nice life.
Oh, did I mention my husband has a great new job??
:smiley:

#2

Tell Steve I said congrats on the career move!!

Can’t believe the old place treated him so shoddily - both all along, and at the end.

Just a warning, though: Havre de Grace is a loooooong commute from southern Maryland, if he plans to continue working there after you guys move to the new homestead!

#3

Forget about the weenies. If they can’t recognize a quality job/manager, then they don’t deserve your husband. Congratulations on the new job!

#4

Dude, I think he should steal a band-aid and run like hell.

Seriously, though, congrats to him! Will this get you two any closer together geographically (pardon me for being unfamiliar with MD)?

#5

RTF - we’re aware of the distance between our lot and his new job. That will be one of the topics of discussion when I get up there this weekend. We’re going to come up with several contingency plans. First on the list is hitting the lottery…

auntie em, your suggestion cracked me up!! Alas, I’ll be stuck here in Florida till my rotten brat, er, Perfect Child[sup]TM[/sup] graduates from high school in May of '04. He’ll continue to live aboard our boat in the Inner Harbor of Baltimore until I move, depending upon where I get a job.

JP - my thought exactly! They’ve treated him like doody for far too long. I’m not so blind as to think he’s the ultimate engineer/manager, but I know he’s good at what he does and he deserved better than they gave him.

#6

If it makes you feel any better, FCM, it seems like a lot of places treat their outgoing employees like crap as they go, especially if they were fired or laid off. A very good friend of mine (elsewhere, not where I work) just got laid off yesterday along with some of his coworkers; like the others he was called into the office, told about the layoff, and told to clean out his desk and go. He was a very loyal and hardworking employee, like the others, but they just got shoved out the door. At least he didn’t have someone standing there watching him pack, like I’ve heard about at other places - to prevent stealing or file deletion on the computer.

I’m a sucker - when I was laid off with about a week and a half notice at my last job, I stayed and worked hard through my last day. They had a going-away party for me too. (And no, I didn’t cause damage or anything.)

Congrats on your husband’s Great New Job though - I got one of those myself, a couple months ago, and I’m wishing for the same for my friend.

#7

Ferret Herder - Luckily, last week, he took the time to purge his computer of his personal software and personal documents. Good thing he didn’t wait till the last day!

Let me tell you about when his original boss was fired. The VPweenie had sent the boss out of town for training. Two days into the four day training class, boss was summoned back. He took the redeye from CA to MD and was met at the airport by VPweenie who presented him with the personal items from his desk and office. He was fired on the concourse. Nice. It was shortly after that when hubby began his search.

#8

wow!!!

i’m glad chatdad was able to get a new job. that company sounds daft! firing someone at the airport is very low. he is way better off leaving on his terms.

#9

Yeah, that sounds familiar. Kind of like the treatment I received in my previous job after handing in my notice.

To be honest, I don’t think they would sincerely be worrying about whether or not your hubby was going to steal as much as he could before finishing. My guess is that it was simply their reaction to the fact that he had found somewhere else to work. Some bosses take umbrage at the thought of an employee leaving to work somewhere better, almost as if it’s a personal insult. So, they feel the need to insult you right back by putting your integrity into question.

That’s just a guess, maybe I’m just being cynical as usual. Best of luck to your husband in his new job :).

#10

So that forklift I’ve been wanting? Ain’t gonna happen now that everyone’s got their eye on him, huh? How’s about a nice spool of wire? You never know when you’ll need a nice spool of wire.

Sheesh and double sheesh.

At least he’s out.

#11

Yeah, Rue, he’s all but free. And I just checked - his final pay was deposited, so that’s good.

Sorry about the forklift. Can I offer you a fork instead?
[sub]oooo, that sounds naughty!![/sub]:eek:

#12

If your husband had been working in Nashville, I would’ve thought it was the same company mine worked at. Backstabbing, safety short-cuts, bad working conditions…
They suspended him for a week. Then called him in for a meeting, told him he was fired. He wasn’t allowed to respond, and when he tried to get his tools, they called the cops to escort him off the property.
I’m glad your hubby was able to see how they were early on.

#13

Rat fink bastard employers. When Dread Pirate Jimbo was fired unexpectedly one month before our wedding last summer (which his boss, an ex-friend, knew about), they forced him to work out his two-week notice period. Of course, it was their legal right to make him work for his pay, but a smarter company would have realized this is the perfect time for an outgoing employee to wreak supreme havoc (not to mention how incredibly motivated a fired employee is to turn in a splendid job performance for those last two weeks).

To Jim’s credit, he managed to take the high road and not sabotage this company in his last two weeks - he very easily could have turned all their computers into paperweights since no one else on staff there knew how to turn them off and on with any reliability. He took the road of passive resistance - he did absolutely nothing he didn’t have to do, and taught his replacement absolutely nothing. All those great files that he will need to do his job - well, good luck finding which directory they’re under. Or even that they exist.

#14

Glad to hear everything is going to work out OK, FCM. Tell your hubby not to take it too personally though. I’m in an workplace right now that that has laid off 1000’s of people in the last 2 years. One of my jobs is to pick up their old computers and copy the data to the network. I can’t tell you how many formatted computers I’ve had to try and unformat.

Most people are very honest, but it’s the very small percentage of slime that forces employers to treat everyone like a risk.

#15

I echo congrats to your husband on breaking out of a bad situation. I’ve left 3 jobs in the past 3 years (2 my choice, 1 not), and got a pretty wide spread of treatment. I was taken out to dinner by my boss at one; gave notice, worked my final 2 weeks and quietly disappeared at another; and was handed a box while someone watched me pack my desk at the final one. I’m hoping not to repeat any of these once I find a job. MD’s economy isn’t that great at the moment.

#16

Well, FCM, this is just another instance of one of my favorite bits of employment advice: “Start stealing your office supplies early. You never know what’ll happen.”

But for the most important question, is the job change going to cause a move of the boat?

#17

Billdo, I like your advice - I’ll pass it on! But, no, the boat isn’t moving. The commute is about 37 miles, almost all on I-95. He did check out the big marina at Havre de Grace, but it had fixed docks and a fairly wide tidal range. In the Inner Harbor, he’s got floaters, so the tide change doesn’t matter. He did consider splitting the distance and going to Middle River, but he worried about getting stuck in there if it snowed - the marina is off the beaten path. And besides, at Harborview, he’s about a mile from the light rail, which makes getting to and from BWI very easy and cheap.

And he’s now officially free! He turned in his keys and his work shirts. And the only thing he plans to steal is, perhaps, one or two of the maintenance mechs if they want to escape that place.

#18

Hm.

It would seem that FairyChatDad knows where his towel is, so to speak, and that his former bosses are a buncha arrogant chumps.

And re: the maintenance techs: you can’t steal a willing escapee.

#19

Dang, I’m too late with my special PLC programming tip: last thing you do, turn all the keyswitches to RUN, then break them off inside the lock.

#20

Speaking of bad firing practices… the company I used to work for once fired a sales rep at a conference. She was on the convention floor, working the prospects, demo-ing software, etc. They called her on her cell phone, while she was with a group of customers and prospects, to tell her she was being laid off, effective immediately. I wasn’t there, but one of my co-workers who was there said she managed it with grace. Excused herself from the group and managed to wait til she was back at her hotel before getting upset. Luckily they didn’t cut off her access to corporate travel, so she was able to get her return flight changed without paying a fee out of pocket and could come home.

This is the same company which once refused to pay to fly home the body of a sales rep who died while on the road. They made the family pay the expenses. Cheap bastards.