"RogerN" wrote in message news:FGoje.4948$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net... | | In the plant where I work, when a machine goes down, production logs the job | into the computer system. The maintenance supervisor sets up maintenance | workers for the job and they go work on the machine. There is one | supervisor that will let the job set for an hour or more and then set | someone up for the job and page them 5 minutes before break time. Employees | have seen him set in the office doing nothing, then noticing it's almost | break time and scrambling to send people to jobs. This supervisor gets a | kick out of trying to make employees miss their breaks and will hammer some | people with jobs while he lets others set around. | | There is evidence, the time a job is logged into the system is recorded and | the time the employee is set up for the job is also recorded. For example, | the job might be logged in at 3:30 but no one set up for the job until
4:55 | (5 minutes before break time). | | I'm wondering if anyone here has any ideas on what to do about this A-hole | supervisor? If what he is doing is not against fair labor laws or anything | like that, how about some creative retaliation ideas! I was thinking since | he gets his thrills by picking on people, perhaps he should be the victim of | a few practical jokes. Any ideas? | | Thanks!
I've had similar bosses (we could jaw awhile talking about this guy!) who would do similar, and worse, things, and eventually we nailed him for theft. Story coming... Anyway, start asking around about how set in stone the break times are. If they aren't, perhaps it would be worth discretely making arrangements to rearrange your break times to be in a spot and time visible to upper management, and then no one must gripe, by any means, when the task is assigned as expected. If that doesn't work, take your break afterwards, but take it in a spot where everyone can see you taking a break. Helps to look as if you're really f'ing off, too. One guy I knew would park his truck where everyone that drove in the plant would see it, so they were always after him because he'd be napping on his tailgate during his irregularly scheduled breaks. Of course, he made damn sure his break times were precisely taken! Story about my boss: This guy, Mike, was the electrical maintenance foreman at a beef processing plant, and had been there a long time and had everyone in a pinch because he'd hoard the manuals and such in his desk, locked away, and got his power from that. Major control freak, and a Convenient Christian to define the very meaning of it. When I was under his thumb and not sitting easy there, the entire plant knew it. I was the electrician that everyone knew would hop right to solve their problem, and made good friends with most of the production workers. I had learned the machines well enough I didn't need the manuals so much, which drove him nuts. For years folks had suspected him of stealing from the company, but no one could prove it. It was common for us to cut up scrap aluminum conduit and box it up for him, so we knew he was making some money on the side with it. One time he bought a bunch of stuff with an order for a task that was clearly not for that task. One Saturday I noticed some of that stuff, plus some other items, including a large rheostat, in a box and I recall him making a comment about how it would work well for dimming the lights around his pool. I got a couple other folks, including the security guard who could barely spell her own name, and from various vantage points around the plant we watched him load the box in his car and drive home for the weekend. Using a copy of the purchase order, I wrote the report up for the guard, and come Monday _everyone_ knew I was part of it because nobody else in the plant knew how to spell "rheostat," much less what it was. Mike sat in his chair all day fuming, but being very quiet, when I came in Monday afternoon. I had given my two week notice earlier (before the theft) so come Tuesday afternoon they told me I should go ahead and leave. Didn't bother me a bit. Later I found out that the report went up and when it came down it had been whitewashed to state "angle iron" but he still lost his purchase order numbers, although the HR gal I spoke to had a copy of the original. A few months later he was gone. The morale of the story: Never f*ck with smart people! Guys like your supervisor think that everyone else around them thinks the same way they do. They think they're addressing some grievance by doing what they do, even if it isn't your fault. If he thinks he's getting screwed one way or the other, try to find out what it is. Let the word out when you know. Let him trip himself up and be there, ready, when it happens. Make sure you, and everyone else, give him plenty of rope, so that he can hang himself with little or no help. You have to be patient, but ready to jump when the time is right.