Fired!
Yes sir, for the first time in my life, I've had my contract terminated before its due date, but I hardly mind. I was working in a cold, damp environment, pulling ten to twelve hour days, my back aching, my arms aching, and becoming more and more convinced that I am taking part in a fraud.
I am not saying this to soothe my own ego either. When you have a meatpacking plant with failing equipment that the owners have no intention of having repaired, you start to question things. When a quarter of the day's production is returned due to faulty packaging and the owners just shrug it away, you really get suspicious. People had been fired in the past, and not replaced. None of the foremen had worked there for longer than a couple of years, so there was no sense of history, no perspective.
It was starting to get to me, this obvious downward spiral the plant was in, and I was fairly vocal about it with other employees. Not something you do if you are interested in keeping your contract I know, but then again, I wasn't. I just have a fairly low tolerance for hoaxes and the like, and my motivation kind of goes to hell when the workplace is falling to pieces around me. Others had noticed these things as well, but were a little more shy about discussing them.
An interesting piece of additional info landed in my lap from a friend who was working across the street in a frozen veg packing facility. The older workers there had been talking a bit, and it appears that several of the industrial lots in the area are owned by the same bunch of guys, this including the meatpacking plant. They also switch the lots around every few months, for the purposes of a cute little tax fraud. The controlled crash-landing of the plant started to make a whole lot more sense.
Most likely the owners were, and are, in the process of driving the company to bankruptcy, for whatever reason. Not having worked computers or new media, I am not as familiar with fraud as others might be, but I figure there's probably something to be won in disposing of a company like this.
But so, last Friday, the head of production invites me over for a 'talk', which was basically about me being 'too smart for the job'. There were several wonderful turns of phrase in the vein of 'you are a really smart guy; I can see you at work, and your hands are working, but your mind, your mind is on bigger things'. Great stuff really, basically adding up to me being a great, smart guy, who has to be fired for those very reasons.
As said, I am not going to miss this gig. I spent some of that last day cutting open returned packages of meat, some of it pretty rank, so it could be ground up into pizza ham. Pizza ham is that lowest of the low, the last rung on the ladder, the one below 'send this to Russia, preferably tomorrow'. Doesn't stop me from eating the damned thing though. It is heated during the process, to a point where it is 'microbiologically safe'. It is still grade-Z stuff, but you get what you expect with cheap-ass pizza.
That's that for that job anyway. I would have hung onto it if possible since the money was good, but I am sleeping easier now that I do not have to worry about not being paid thanks to the owners having escaped to Estonia with the company funds.
As an amusing final anecdote, the foreman I was working with these last weeks, said he would resign next week. Rats, sinking ships, you know how it goes.
I am not saying this to soothe my own ego either. When you have a meatpacking plant with failing equipment that the owners have no intention of having repaired, you start to question things. When a quarter of the day's production is returned due to faulty packaging and the owners just shrug it away, you really get suspicious. People had been fired in the past, and not replaced. None of the foremen had worked there for longer than a couple of years, so there was no sense of history, no perspective.
It was starting to get to me, this obvious downward spiral the plant was in, and I was fairly vocal about it with other employees. Not something you do if you are interested in keeping your contract I know, but then again, I wasn't. I just have a fairly low tolerance for hoaxes and the like, and my motivation kind of goes to hell when the workplace is falling to pieces around me. Others had noticed these things as well, but were a little more shy about discussing them.
An interesting piece of additional info landed in my lap from a friend who was working across the street in a frozen veg packing facility. The older workers there had been talking a bit, and it appears that several of the industrial lots in the area are owned by the same bunch of guys, this including the meatpacking plant. They also switch the lots around every few months, for the purposes of a cute little tax fraud. The controlled crash-landing of the plant started to make a whole lot more sense.
Most likely the owners were, and are, in the process of driving the company to bankruptcy, for whatever reason. Not having worked computers or new media, I am not as familiar with fraud as others might be, but I figure there's probably something to be won in disposing of a company like this.
But so, last Friday, the head of production invites me over for a 'talk', which was basically about me being 'too smart for the job'. There were several wonderful turns of phrase in the vein of 'you are a really smart guy; I can see you at work, and your hands are working, but your mind, your mind is on bigger things'. Great stuff really, basically adding up to me being a great, smart guy, who has to be fired for those very reasons.
As said, I am not going to miss this gig. I spent some of that last day cutting open returned packages of meat, some of it pretty rank, so it could be ground up into pizza ham. Pizza ham is that lowest of the low, the last rung on the ladder, the one below 'send this to Russia, preferably tomorrow'. Doesn't stop me from eating the damned thing though. It is heated during the process, to a point where it is 'microbiologically safe'. It is still grade-Z stuff, but you get what you expect with cheap-ass pizza.
That's that for that job anyway. I would have hung onto it if possible since the money was good, but I am sleeping easier now that I do not have to worry about not being paid thanks to the owners having escaped to Estonia with the company funds.
As an amusing final anecdote, the foreman I was working with these last weeks, said he would resign next week. Rats, sinking ships, you know how it goes.