And I’m going to take OP at face value and accept the following as valid premises: 1) OP has been there for years, 2) they have coped and adapted up until this point, and 3) this has been an escalating problem with no resolution.
If I’ve read this correctly, fuck them. You’re talking as if OP if some kind of fucking child. And this has nothing to do with their “goals and concerns,” but rather the fact that OP is in a dysfunctional organization that does not appear to have any interest in changing.
If OP’s account is accurate, they should switch to a new job at the first possible opportunity.
I’m sorry if I came of as condescending. It wasn’t my intent. I was speaking from personal experience.
Sure, he can pack up and leave (and, perhaps he should, I don’t know much about his situation). BUT, in all likelihood, the next place will be the same, except he’ll be at the bottom of the totem pole; here he has several years seniority. While company loyalty doesn’t mean shit, seniority does. The situation he describes is ubiquitous among small companies, and large companies treat employees as fungible commodities, so he is pretty much damned if he stays and damned if he leaves.
However, if he stays, and makes it another 4 or 5 years, he will start to have nearly 10 years seniority. Sure, they could shut down and leave him in the cold, but he will still have the experience and stick-to-it-ness that employers are looking for. At 10 years, not only will he know how to keep the equipment running, the managers of the other departments will know that he does as well.
If he was just a hourly worker, responsible only for showing up on time and doing what his supervisor told him, getting the hell outta there would probably be the best choice. But, being part of management, things are different. You aren’t going to get ahead in management by thinking like an hourly worker. Most of the openings for management positions like his are in dysfunctional organizations (like the general manager position where he currently works). Those positions are available for a reason.
All I am saying is that to win, he can’t expect others to fix things for him (like he has already tried). He has to talk to the people who are causing him problems and figure out what to do about it (hint: HR is not causing his problems, neither are the corporate managers). Per the tone of the OP, his coming in 2 hours late wasn’t really a problem. OK, then, what was the problem? Perhaps is was just because the quality manager was being a shit. I have found, however, that talking to people who are being shits will often get them to be less shitty (or, at least, get them to be shitty to someone else). Bonus points if the quality manager tells him something like a piece of malfunctioning equipment is at the heart of it (whether it is or not) and he can show extra effort in improving that part of the situation. Showing the quality manager he is trying to help is much better than causing more problems. Even if the quality manager doesn’t appreciate it, others will notice.
Top management is in flux, now. That is not the time to leave. That is the time to stick it out, since you know things will be different. They may not be better, but they will be different. You have to wait to see what happens. If he leaves now, when interviewing for a new job, he can’t say he left this one “because they were all screwed-up” (not if he is interested in getting hired, that is). It is much better to say he left because a change in top management reorganized his position away. Double extra better if his track record indicates a history of working in management under trying conditions.
I’m not saying he shouldn’t look for another job, just that he shouldn’t just jump ship and take the first thing that comes along, since it isn’t likely to be any better.
Well I had a conference with the local HR and head of HR. I explained that a lot of the stuff they thought were problems was because I was simply continuing what the previous plant manager told me to do. He tried to say I should be more clear with the temporary guys they’re sending over here, but when I told him only one of them had even spoken more than one or two sentences to me, he didn’t have much to say. Anyway, he said with the newfound knowledge, he’d look back into it, but from the tone of the conversation, it sounds like they just want to shit all over me, so I’m getting out first chance I get. This place has had so many people come and go and I think it’s my turn.
By the way, I’m “management” because they consider engineers to be management. They also made me second shift maintenance supervisor against my wishes, told me it was temporary, and haven’t really made an effort to rep(ace me. I once thought this was the best job I’d ever had, but it’s gotten to the point I sometimes wake up and vomit at the thought of going to work. When the plant manager left, my world took a dive.
The plant manager quit. They are (supposedly) looking for another one though there’s no ETA on that. Basically what I’m most pissed off about is that I was just doing things the way they always had been with the previous manager, ie late on Fridays to close up but I would call in if it was any other day. They had to notice it was only Fridays and you’d think they’d be thoughtful enough to ask me rather than make assumptions since each of them has spent a week there and left. I’ve work up to 16 hours in a day to make sure things were ready for the next work day. There are two of us there that more or less built the place and they seem to forget that. It’s regrettable that starting January, things are going to slow down a lot for over a year, so even if we both quit, that’s just fewer people to pay during the slowdown.