Wait, no. Because God wouldn’t make an ass out of himself in front of people like you did tonight, but you seem to want us to believe that you’re God, and quite frankly, the only way half the shit you want done around here is going to get done is if you are God and can change things like physics and human nature.
You call a meeting in our department and announce that you’ve been in the department for five weeks and you’re going to start making some changes. That’s great, but who the fuck are you? For all I know, you could be the Masked Ass-Bandit. I’ve only been with the company for three weeks, would you mind introducing yourself? Of course, you would.
The first goal of the meeting is to announce that you’re tired of getting your ass chewed out because second shift hasn’t been shipping out product that you think should be shipped out. Of course, you don’t know what it is that we do in this department (as evidenced by what comes out later in the meeting), so you naturally just assume that we’re a bunch of fuck-nuts. When it’s explained to you that if we get the product at 10 PM, there’s no way for us to get it on the FedEx truck that left at 6:30 PM, you declare that you’ll see to it we’ve got a FedEx truck here then. Uh, no you won’t. You see, FedEx trucks all the cartons from Nashville to Memphis where it’s sorted and then sent out. FedEx isn’t going to be able to get a box from our facility to Nashville, then to Memphis, and then to its final destination, if the truck its on doesn’t leave here until after 10 PM. You mutter what sounds like a threat to have our business pulled from FedEx if they don’t do what you want. Ha! Like you have the authority to do that, and even if you did, FedEx’d be more than happy to tell you to get bent. We’re small potatoes as far as they’re concerned.
Then you say you’re going to end all the bitching about the various shifts. You’re tired of first bitching about second and vise versa. Guess what, pal? No matter where you work, that always happens. Always. There’s not a damn thing you can do about it, unless you’re able to change human nature.
Next, you launch into a tirade about how second shift isn’t doing all the paperwork you think we should be doing. Dayshift immediately jumps in and points out that second shift doesn’t have the people to do the paperwork! Oops! My supervisor asks one of the day people if she could make up signs so we know where to put the paperwork that she does, she begins to argue with him and tell him, “I don’t have time to do that! Besides, I’ve sent e-mails out telling people where I want it!” This continues for several minutes and I begin to ease away from where I’m standing because this bitch is right next to me, and I can’t stand to hear people bitch about petty little bullshit. You’re response? You chew my ass out for being rude! Do you say anything to her about getting those signs up? Nope.
You also announce that we’re no longer going to be doing certain things that apparently we’ve been doing for years. Of course, if we don’t do them, nobody else will, but that’s okay, you’ll take care of that. Uh, yeah, based on your performance so far, I seriously doubt that.
Once the meeting breaks up, many of my co-workers go out of their way to tell me what an asshole they think you are. From them, I find out who you are (you’re the department head) and where you come from (the production department). That alone tells me volumes about you. There’s a sign in the production department showing the level of productivity in comparison to the goals set by the company. They’re roughly 25% below where they should be.
Let me give you some advice, assmunch. I’ve not been a supervisor, but I have been a team lead, so I know a thing or two about management. I ran the smallest, least experienced team with the highest rate of turnover for two years. This team also had the highest levels of productivity of any team in the facility I worked in. In fact, the sole reason our department hit its goals for those years was because of my team’s performance. Do you know how we did it? I’ll tell you, it’s a rather simple formula. I learned absolutely everything there was to know about all aspects of the job, and then I drilled that information into every one of my team members. Once they learned it, I got the fuck out of their way and let them do their job.
As fate would have it, they just announced on the radio that our company’s going to be laying off over 5000 people. I hope that you and I aren’t among them. Because I want to be there when you fuck up royally (as you surely will), and get reamed for it. I hope I’m the one who finds your fuck up, and I’ll tell you that I’m going to do everything I possibly can to find your mistakes. I’ve brought down supervisors before, and, hopefully, I’ll be able to do it again.
