Just venting
I haven't posted in a very long time so I doubt anyone will read this, but I feel like the Goose Girl talking to the head of her dead horse (Falala?). I've just got to get it out.
I'm so tired of working. At least, I need a different job. I am too old for this and my body is showing more wear and tear on a daily basis. I spend my weekends trying to recover from the work week, and that's not restful.
When I interviewed for the job, they said I got X number of holidays a year. They never said I had to work on those holidays. They never said the fab does not close - ever. If Thanksgiving and Christmas are your shift, you work them. You get holiday pay, but that does not make up for missing the last Thanksgiving with elderly parents or the first Christmas with a new baby.
Actually, the fab does close once a year for maintenance. It closes at an odd time, which is not announced very far in advance, which does not coincide with any holiday or schedule where maybe your kids are out of school, and which may change on a moment's notice. The past two years we closed in July. The year before it was Holy Week (April), which worked out fine for me, since I'm a church musician and want to spend that week mostly in church. Of course, they changed their mind and said they would be open on Easter, making a shorter shut down than planned. They did allow that those of us who had plans did not have to change our plans. Oy.
I work 12-hour shifts which, again, is not what I signed up for. I work an alternating 3-day/4-day work week. The short weeks are generally doable (although I am exhausted by the third day) and the long weeks are a nightmare. I am a zombie and so is pretty much every one else. Yet I can't relax on my days off because my boss expects me to have my phone on and be available to come in to work if needed: if my counterpart is sick or if there is some crisis which needs extra staff. I'm not sure this is even legal, requiring this with no compensation.
I get vacation time. I have a hard time taking my vacation time - for me to take time off means someone else is working for me, and we don't have extra people. Most of my vacation time goes for the yearly shut down. I have over 200 hours extra.
And the fab operators have it worse. They generally don't have any leftover vacation time because the company, to save money, tells them to take so many vacation days during a quarter, and that has to fit in with the schedules. So they wind up taking a forced day in the middle of their work week. Vacation time is supposed to be an employee benefit, not a corporate tool for money management.
Not to mention that we had a lay-off a month ago. I don't think we had enough people to begin with, and they laid off a bunch of the fab operators. Then they told the remaining ones that there was mandatory overtime. Sixty-hour work weeks. How is this legal?
The wafer fab is a stressful environment all by itself. It's very loud. You have machines with pumps and alarms and other noises. You have idiots paging too loudly over a loud speaker. You have people yelling in all sorts of languages because they don't want to walk over. They are increasing the number of wafers in the boxes and they are heavy. You are on your feet much of the time. I wear a step counter at work. I am on my feet a lot less than the fab operators, but I go home with usually between 12,000 and 15,000 steps - 4 miles.
And it's not just us getting scr*wed. I'm non-exempt, an engineering tech. The exempt engineers no longer have vacation time. They can only take vacation at their managers' discretion. So if you've got a bad manager, you may not be able to take a vacation. How is this legal?
There is supposed to be another lay-off at the end of the year for engineering staff. Boy, at this point, I'm ready to go. I can't imagine who they could possibly cut. Everyone I work with works constantly. My boss says he's available until midnight every night. I start getting email from engineers at 6 in the morning - I swear, some of them must roll out of bed and jump on the computer right away to see what is being held for them. They don't have to come in on holidays, but if something important goes on hold for them, they get called.
My area is a collection of inspection tools. We inspect every device on a wafer (at the end of the line, wafers get chopped up and become magnetic heads for computer hard drives), on every wafer, at about ten points in the process, marking the ones which are bad and cannot be sold. We get sent wafers with scratches on them that we have to write new recipes on to block out the scratch damage. We get engineering requests for wafers with other problems which need special recipes. (That's what I mostly do, write these recipes and make sure the machines keep running - minor maintenance, working with the vendors, run the special recipes, etc.) And when there is a problem in another area in the fab, every one of their wafers comes to me and they need it right now. And if there are two areas with problems, I get all their wafers, too. It's an insane amount of stress and a heavy workload.
This is no way to live. We don't have more people because, not only are the requisitions to get people not available, we have found that a lot of people do not want to do this once they find out what the job it. It is too much work.
If anyone's still here, thank. If you know me IRL, obviously, I'm going to be job hunting. I don't know if there are any options any more since so much high tech has gone off-shore and I do not want to work nights, weekends, or 12-hour shifts any more.
I'm so tired of working. At least, I need a different job. I am too old for this and my body is showing more wear and tear on a daily basis. I spend my weekends trying to recover from the work week, and that's not restful.
When I interviewed for the job, they said I got X number of holidays a year. They never said I had to work on those holidays. They never said the fab does not close - ever. If Thanksgiving and Christmas are your shift, you work them. You get holiday pay, but that does not make up for missing the last Thanksgiving with elderly parents or the first Christmas with a new baby.
Actually, the fab does close once a year for maintenance. It closes at an odd time, which is not announced very far in advance, which does not coincide with any holiday or schedule where maybe your kids are out of school, and which may change on a moment's notice. The past two years we closed in July. The year before it was Holy Week (April), which worked out fine for me, since I'm a church musician and want to spend that week mostly in church. Of course, they changed their mind and said they would be open on Easter, making a shorter shut down than planned. They did allow that those of us who had plans did not have to change our plans. Oy.
I work 12-hour shifts which, again, is not what I signed up for. I work an alternating 3-day/4-day work week. The short weeks are generally doable (although I am exhausted by the third day) and the long weeks are a nightmare. I am a zombie and so is pretty much every one else. Yet I can't relax on my days off because my boss expects me to have my phone on and be available to come in to work if needed: if my counterpart is sick or if there is some crisis which needs extra staff. I'm not sure this is even legal, requiring this with no compensation.
I get vacation time. I have a hard time taking my vacation time - for me to take time off means someone else is working for me, and we don't have extra people. Most of my vacation time goes for the yearly shut down. I have over 200 hours extra.
And the fab operators have it worse. They generally don't have any leftover vacation time because the company, to save money, tells them to take so many vacation days during a quarter, and that has to fit in with the schedules. So they wind up taking a forced day in the middle of their work week. Vacation time is supposed to be an employee benefit, not a corporate tool for money management.
Not to mention that we had a lay-off a month ago. I don't think we had enough people to begin with, and they laid off a bunch of the fab operators. Then they told the remaining ones that there was mandatory overtime. Sixty-hour work weeks. How is this legal?
The wafer fab is a stressful environment all by itself. It's very loud. You have machines with pumps and alarms and other noises. You have idiots paging too loudly over a loud speaker. You have people yelling in all sorts of languages because they don't want to walk over. They are increasing the number of wafers in the boxes and they are heavy. You are on your feet much of the time. I wear a step counter at work. I am on my feet a lot less than the fab operators, but I go home with usually between 12,000 and 15,000 steps - 4 miles.
And it's not just us getting scr*wed. I'm non-exempt, an engineering tech. The exempt engineers no longer have vacation time. They can only take vacation at their managers' discretion. So if you've got a bad manager, you may not be able to take a vacation. How is this legal?
There is supposed to be another lay-off at the end of the year for engineering staff. Boy, at this point, I'm ready to go. I can't imagine who they could possibly cut. Everyone I work with works constantly. My boss says he's available until midnight every night. I start getting email from engineers at 6 in the morning - I swear, some of them must roll out of bed and jump on the computer right away to see what is being held for them. They don't have to come in on holidays, but if something important goes on hold for them, they get called.
My area is a collection of inspection tools. We inspect every device on a wafer (at the end of the line, wafers get chopped up and become magnetic heads for computer hard drives), on every wafer, at about ten points in the process, marking the ones which are bad and cannot be sold. We get sent wafers with scratches on them that we have to write new recipes on to block out the scratch damage. We get engineering requests for wafers with other problems which need special recipes. (That's what I mostly do, write these recipes and make sure the machines keep running - minor maintenance, working with the vendors, run the special recipes, etc.) And when there is a problem in another area in the fab, every one of their wafers comes to me and they need it right now. And if there are two areas with problems, I get all their wafers, too. It's an insane amount of stress and a heavy workload.
This is no way to live. We don't have more people because, not only are the requisitions to get people not available, we have found that a lot of people do not want to do this once they find out what the job it. It is too much work.
If anyone's still here, thank. If you know me IRL, obviously, I'm going to be job hunting. I don't know if there are any options any more since so much high tech has gone off-shore and I do not want to work nights, weekends, or 12-hour shifts any more.