April 9, 2018, I walked into my supervisor’s office at work before the stat of my shift and told him I was quitting…now. No notice, here’s my badge……bye. I had been a solid employee there for more than seventeen years, knew my way around most of the machines on the factory floor, always has superior marks on my performance reviews…. all in all, a pretty solid and dependable crew member. He was somewhat confused and tried to calm me down and discuss the issues I was having and frankly, I had no interest in hearing anything he had too say. When he wanted an explanation, I simply said “I don’t even want to discuss it. It’s above your pay grade so even if you agree with me, all you can do is say ‘That’s policy.’ I threw away the best job I ever had because I couldn’t take the bullshit any more. To this day, I don’t regret quitting that job but I am sorry about the way I quit. Just walking away like that is unprofessional to say the least. I showed “Adam” (my supervisor) disrespect he didn’t deserve and for that, I am well and truly wrong.
My specific reasons for quitting are in the spoiler boxes for those who care but for now lets just agree on a few things. First, these are all fairly mundane issues that collectively just added up to more than I wanted to deal with at the time. Second, I’m not claiming to be innocent in all this and please don’t accuse me of trying to play the victim. I know better than that.
Reason #1 - My primary issue that was “above Adam’s pay grade” came from his supervisor “Trevor”. Trevor had decided that due to production requirements and “business needs”, I would be the only person assigned to operate my assembly machine. The other shifts would either not run that machine at all or they would assign some temp worker on as as needed basis. This created a massive, rat’s nest of problems for me.
If the other shifts assigned some random worker to run the machine then almost invariably, they would complete trash it. They would do a half-assed cleaning job while leaving parts and tools scattered around the area, settings would be changed with nothing recorded in the log, air volumes and jets changed in seemingly random ways. There was no ‘ownership’ of the machine on the other shifts so they just treated it like crap and created a huge mess for me to deal with when my shift started.
If the other shifts didn’t run the machine then it got even more annoying for me. We had several different assembly machines all feeding into the same packaging line. Each shift would run as many assemblers as needed to keep the packaging line supplied, pending crew availability. My machine was typically the first one shut off. This was good in that nobody had screwed with the settings. It was bad in that while my machine was down, the rest of the department had most certainly finished manufacturing one lot of product and had moved on to the next order of what was most likely a completely different product. Before I could start up, I had to track down the new work order, check all the component numbers against what was currently loaded in the machine, empty out all the feed hoppers that contained components not used by the new work order and perform a complete line clearance. All of this would have to be carefully documented and Adam would then have to be summoned to inspect and sign off on my changeover. We manufacture medical devices so believe it or not, the powers that be get kind of picky about procedures and documentation. This could easily be two hours worth of work before I could even start production and it happened almost every day.
Through all of this, it just amazed me how quickly anything and everything in my work area could grow legs and vanish. Anything not nailed down was gone. Clipboards flew away like a fart in a tornado. Calibrated testing devices which I was required to have, just…. gone. The amount of time I spent looking for my damn chair was just maddening.
I had spoke with both Adam and Trevor about this issue several times in the months leading up to this to no benefit. Adam had no control over the other shifts. He said that he had talked to the other shift supervisors and they said they would look into it. Trevor just blathered on about ‘business needs’ and would barely break stride to discuss it with me. My perspective and issues were just simply not relevant to him.
Reason #2 - I was having some personal conflicts with a few people on my shift, most notably, with the “Set-up” (technical support specialist) who performed that major servicing and repair to my machine that I couldn’t handle. I could do all the routine maintenance and a lot of the simpler repairs myself but much of it was either officially or legitimately beyond my skill level. I couldn’t get my set-up to care about the issues I was having, complaining to Adam just made it worse, the other shifts didn’t run the machine so their set-ups did nothing and through it all, I was getting more and more waste and downtime as my machine degraded. Enough was enough.
Reason #3 - I was dealing with issues outside of work as well, mainly dealing with the death of my father and closing his estate. His house really wasn’t sell worthy in the condition it was in. For two months before I quit, every day off I had, I was spending two hours each way driving down to perform repairs. I simply needed more time off than my employer could give me and with my depressing situation at work, I made the call I had to make. After I quit, I moved into my dad’s house and spent the next three months getting it ready. There was a lot of work to do but the major issue was the dangerous state of the basement walls. Nobody wants to buy a house when they go in the basement and see the concrete block walls bowed in by about a foot on three sides. A contractor friend of the family jacked up the house, I demoed the walls all the way down to the footings and did most of the block work to rebuild them. FUN TIMES! Yes, I probably would have been better off keeping my job and hiring out the work but I needed out of that place I was in and I do believe the work was therapeutic for me.
So, I’m unemployed, taking care of personal business, living off my savings after completely cashing out my 401K while I had a significant load against it. (Yeah, the IRS saw me coming.) and generally enjoying the life of a semi-responsible bum. Over the next several months, I gain several new jobs, none of which last very long. Between my physical limitations, the burdensome commutes with a fuel guzzling and unreliable truck and the poo-flinging, monkey ass, craptasms that a couple of the work environments turned out to be, I didn’t last.
During this time, a couple of news tidbit come to me through the grapevine about my old employer. First, Trevor is gone! No official word on what happened but it’s known that he was barred completely from the production floor and restricted to the front office area. Reliable scuttlebutt says he was given a choice of either quitting or being fired. I don’t know or care why he’s gone. I’ll just take the win. I don’t mind dealing with idiots and I can deal with assholes but when you combine them as effectively as Trevor did and place them in a position of authority, my ass hurts just thinking about it.
Second, the person who replaced me on my machine was generally pretty experienced and was able to run it as well as I could. She had an ace up her sleeve though. Her spouse was the lead tech on the shift, the person to whom all the set-ups report. Oddly enough, my old machine got completely rebuild in a big hurry. Ain’t it funny how that works?
In January of 2019, I hear my old employer is having a job fair due to their desperate need for more warm bodies. Just for a laugh, I figure I’ll apply. The worst thing they can do is ask if I’m familiar with the phrase “…. and the horse you rode in on!” If they try to send me back to my old shift, I’ll have to consider it but any other position and I’ll jump on it like a terrier on a gerbil. And ya know, they hire me…. briefly. Apparently after the offer was extended, someone in HR retracted it on the grounds that I’m ineligible for re-hire. “Job Abandonment” they say and they say try again a full year after the day I quit (Apr 9, 2018). (Nudge, nudge, wink, wink)
On April 22, I get a phone call from “Chuck”, Trevor’s replacement with a job offer. It’s an entry level position and only a temporary job but it’s a foot in the door. It’s a lot of tedious, mind numbing work but it’s a decent, reliable paycheck doing a job I can nearly do in my sleep at a job that’s five minutes from home. SOLD!
I start in early May and complete my “training” in record time. I was actually showing my trainer how to do several things. I reconnect with a lot of old friends and settle into a new routine of gainful employment. Life is good. I keep scanning the open positions to see if there’s anything that looks good to me. Right now I’m only on a temporary contract with no benefits to speak of. I want a full time, regular position but I’m gonna be picky about what openings I’ll pursue. During this time, I don’t miss a minute’s of work, I volunteer for an insane amount of overtime and, yes, I kiss a fair amount of booty. I also make a point of looking up Adam and personally apologizing to him. We part on good terms, I think.
Today “Brad”, my current supervisor called me into his office to offer me a permanent position. It’s for more money than I used to be making before I quit on a newer, more reliable machine that’s less physically demanding than my old one. It’s also one of our “high-priority” machines which means that if there’s a problem, it gets fixed quickly. I have a good relationship with the set-up that maintains it and I’m told he put in a good word for me.
Best of all, my service time carries forward from before I quit. Right off the bat, I’m accruing vacation time and benefits like a seventeen year veteran, not some wet-behind-the-ears rookie. I’m back in the game, baby!
Don’t get me wrong, I’m an idiot for quitting the way I did. When life favors the idiots though, that’s not always a bad thing is it?