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Trenches comic: Tues. Aug.30, 2011
Bogey
I'm back, baby!Santa Monica, CAModerator mod
I'm back, baby!Santa Monica, CAModerator mod
Blood, Sweat, and Tears
08/30/2011 - Anonymous
I spent 4 years with an electronic refurbishing company with the majority of that time spent on video game consoles. A number of you reading this may actually own a console that we repaired, because over those four years we were able to sell hundreds of thousands of units.
But here’s the thing. The company was profitable because of people like me. Guys who were willing to pull over time off the clock to make shipping deadlines. Guys who kept silent when they were promised a raise every few months, but never saw a penny. We may have made more than minimum wage, but not by much. We had student loans to pay, families to provide for and kids on the way. Many employees moved in together because they couldn’t make rent or house payments on their own.
Management didn’t understand the gaming industry. They came from manufacturing backgrounds and saw dollar signs, but they didn’t know the ebb and flow like the employees did. Instead of listening to feedback, they ran the company into the ground and laid everyone off twice a year. Each time, less and less people came back.
I got lucky. I was a department head and almost untouchable. As was my wife. They needed both of us to keep our departments running, but this last lay off, we went with everyone else.
The company was full of OSHA violations and was miserable to work in. The air conditioning frequently failed because it’s old and can’t handle the space, so we frequently worked in a warehouse that was simply dangerous to our health. During the winter, the heat couldn’t keep the place warm enough so we’d end up wearing several pairs of jeans, two hoodies, and jackets while struggling to fix handheld devices in winter gloves.
But we kept coming in because they promised “it’ll get better.” We laughed and joked about it, but it didn’t matter because we loved what we did. We loved the products. We were taken for granted, and treated as less then human.
I’m not from China, or Taiwan, or another country you would expect these conditions in. I’m from the Midwest. The United States of America. If you bought a refurbished product at any major U.S. retailers, that’s a console I bled for. Check for that warranty sticker on the back. It’s one of ours. It’s a console that one of my friends, covered in sweat, worked on in 110 degree temperatures in the middle of July just before being laid off.
Respect that console. We gave everything we had every day to bring that to you.
A duck! on
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re: trenches: I do think three panels is a very minimalistic approach given the ammount of exposition we're being treated to.
it just feels so very slow in it's progress at this point.
I remember back in High School when minimum wage was 3 something I was proud of the fact I was getting $ 4.25 a hour to stamp and mail catalogs. hundreds of them a day. to be stuck in that tiny room and do that robotic job. Well it was not really a room but a corner they opened up behind a bunch of cardboard boxes.
Yeah, seriously. This is taking forever to take off.
Regarding the tale: That shit pisses me off. Not that companies do it. It's the people who sit back and Mickey Mouse around about how things will get better. You have to be ASSERTIVE about that shit, or it isn't going to change. My current job had a lot of violations against some laws that protect workers, as well as violations the board of health would've flipped their shit about, and my boss didn't listen to me and the few others I convinced to say something until two new-hires walked out due to those issues as well as my threatening to leave (I was putting in the most time out of non-management types, and was responsible for training new-hires).
But it's like bwanie said.
-AD Times Weekly Standard
Yeah I want to like it more, but it seems like it's taking forever for anything to actually happen. As someone said above, I wish it was more than three panels - if only for the initial exposition part.
Do like all the stories though!
This is what I was thinking
This is exactly what I was thinking as I read the story.
Oh, you had OSHA violations and you're a department head? Document that shit and report it. Because that's how you change conditions.
And uh, he was a manager?
Wii: 4521 1146 5179 1333 Pearl: 3394 4642 8367 HG: 1849 3913 3132
Get out.
if you choose not to interpret that as whining from someone who dismisses this comic out of hand, it's actually somewhat clever.
gumm'int needs to get off big business's back!
picking lettuce in the hot sun for $1 a day? LUXURY! we had to get up half an hour before we went to bed, and LICK the street clean with our tongues! so STFU you liberal socialist Obammunist mexican lovers!!
Because endangering the lives of others needlessly in the pursuit of a larger profit margin is just STUPID AS FUCK.
...say what now?
Those big commercial compactors - you climb inside to pack stuff down or un-stick something. Well, you shouldn't, but it's been done.
Seriously. A 24 hour store produces a lot of trash, and the pressures of that tend to make those in charge tempted to take shortcuts like getting someone to fix a glitch who isn't even aware he is being asked to do something illegal, rather than call and wait for a proper technician or company to fix the problem.
And if that wasn't enough, image what those things look & smell like anywhere that has food. I was all too happy to deal with the box baler over the compactor.
Count how many safety violations this guy does!
maybe I have been spoilt working in australia. Apparantly we have good unions(?), but I have never participated in one, but having their clout "around" sort of prevents the worse stuff from happening.
Actually, my bar job wasn't very good. 11pm - 8 am, on a busy thoroughfare in the city did get pretty hairy in the wee hours when the clubs emptied. That was without a bouncer and I was the only one on.
The work around was to give police officers free coffee, so there was always a drip and drab of uniformed officers visiting me, and most often one within shouting distance. (hopefully)
Oh, but hearing the stories of the police officers was scary though. I had one regular guy who came in at the middle of his shift (12pm) and at the end of his shift (7am) for coffee which he claimed "saves his life". I thought he was joking, until he told me that he had come off his bike on the highway twice after falling asleep at the wheel.
Yeah I climb in ours all the time when people don't run it after they load it up too full and it gets jammed and the only way to get it unstuck is climbing in the chute and pulling stuff out until it wants to fall in completely.
If I don't do it it'll just get backed up more and everyone will look around for someone else to blame but themselves when they can't throw any more in.
It's really not THAT dangerous, what I do, considering I never stand in an area where the compactor compacts. I at MOST end up reaching into that area with a stick (usually a mop handle) to dislodge stuff.
Also that baler in the video is a tiny bitch baler compared to ours.
Hope you wear cut-resistant gloves because I know a lot of broken glass gets thrown into our compactor and I sure as hell wouldn't go in there.
I mean, there's a phone number and everything for a reason!
These things are not fun when those wires snap. I used to work graveyard shift at Target and I would get stuck clearing it out two to three times a night. If I recall correctly there is a yellow line that tells you when you need to empty it but everybody just packed the cardboard in until it stopped workin. Not to mention the place they stored the pallets of cardboard was on a fucking hill.
Ha, worked at Target stocking too. Yeah, the trick was to tie it just tight enough that it held for your shift.
I was a certified class 1-5 trainer years ago, so at WF I just grabbed one of the power lifters to move a pallet one day. Everyone was freaking out, but I was fine until I knocked the cooler door off its hinges.
We have a full forklift, a powered jack, and a walkie-stacker.
Also a stock picker but that's obviously not useful for bale transport.
here's a scenario:
Grunt: "Hey, you can't have us working on top of an incinerator, that's an OSHA violation!"
Evil Boss: "Hey, you're right. Oh well, here's your pink slip. Don't let the door hit you on the way out."
Grunt: "Bbbbbbbut that's not right! I'LL SUE!"
Evil Boss: "Yeah, sure you will. Good luck finding a lawyer with the now $0.00 you're makin!"
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
Do you not have employment tribunals or an equivalent in America?
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/ResolvingWorkplaceDisputes/Employmenttribunals/DG_10028122
shrug
Capitalism brings out the worst in people
Come to think of it, working in America sounds a bit like working in Norway in the beginning of the industrial revolution, before unions
At least from these tales of expendable employees with no rights