At 7:30pm Jack is working on his History Fair project. He is building a website that presents the diplomatic process leading up to Operation Desert Storm in January 1991. He is very lucky, once again, to have a live-in research librarian.
Tonight at seven thirty we were wrapping up the tree decoration, as shown here.
One side benefit of posting what I am doing at 7:30pm every night is that I am much more conscious of how lame most of our evenings are. I’ve started trying to think of interesting things that we could be doing, instead of veg-ing on the couch. Who knows what adventures we may get involved in…
Pizza for dinner from arguably the best place in town. Also watched Roxanne with Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah. Jack is reading Cyrano de Bergerac in school, so it was fun to watch him identify the character equivalents.
December photo project day two. What we are doing at 7:30pm every night in December.
Trying again this year. The theme? What is happening at 7:30pm every night…
Tonight. River and Ellen on the couch.
Two days into the new job, so I figure it is time for an update. Training was over at 2:30 today, mercifully! I love how much training we have received so far, especially considering my last post, but nine hours of it in a row yesterday was kind of overwhelming. Better too much than not enough. Today was only 5 hours plus a long lunch break.
Before I get to any details, I need to let you know that there won’t be any work specific ones on the subject of the work I do or details about the company. That was the subject of one of our training videos this morning. And there won’t be any pictures, either. Totally forbidden, even just to document how a part was put together before you take it apart. So there is my disclaimer…
HOW it has been going is definately OK to talk about, because it has been great so far. Yesterday the COO came to meet us at lunch and took the time to individually greet us before his pep talk. Very impressive. At my last job I didn’t even know who the boss was for three months.
We have had about half a dozen trainers in the process and they have all been very knowledgeable and respectful. The lectures have been a little tedious of course, policy and procedure are not exciting topics. What has been nice is the sense that the presenters all take a great deal of pride in the company.
Tomorrow we start shadowing our toolboxes, which is a way of doing tool inventories so that if a tool goes missing, it is obvious right away. That is a huge part of the job because if a tool gets lost, a plane could go down. Very serious business. The shadowing task will take most of the rest of the week.
The next two weeks is sheet metal refresher training. It has been two years since my class at school, so I am looking forward to getting into it full scale. I’m also looking forward to using those tools that I just bought and that are my Christmas and birthday presents for the next five years. At the end of our class we will receive team and shift assignments. Please pray for good ones! Wherever I wind up will be ok, but day shift would really ne nice.
I have been very impressed with the company over the last couple of days and I’m excited to get my assignment. So the story so far is so far, so good…
Right now I am “between jobs”, but not in the vague and scary sense of self denial following a firing. I am in the space between what was generally a crumby job and what I hope will be a great job.
The last job wasn’t really all that crumby, just the work environment. Now that I’ve been off for a month (thanks, sweetie for some serious understanding) I feel like I have a little more perspective. Instead of seeing my last boss as a crabby jerk, I can better see the rotten position he is in. Specifically being in the crossing point between labor and management. His bosses are terribly short sighted when it comes to profit, generally treating the labor like tools in a drawer. If a tool breaks or doesn’t quite do the job right, just replace it.
In plain English, they saw no point in training or grooming an employee for success with a career at the facility. Like it or lump it. There are plenty of folks who will take your job if you don’t like it.
Apparently the original founder of the company was an investor in human capitol. And you can tell the people who worked back in the good old days, too. There are two groups of folks at my old job. Those that have been there for 20 or more years and those who have been hired in the last 2 or 3. What does that tell us? Since the new guys took over eight years ago, they have a turnover problem. A big one, too.
To be fair, it doesnt help that there is a Goliath of an aviation company in Waco. This is the company where I am going next. It is also the company that has hired away about eight percent of the workforce at my old place in the last year. Is it simply that they pay better? No. Not even close.
The pay raise is nice, to be sure. But there is more behind that than just money. The money is an expression of the value given to the laborer. The new place has fat government contracts, true. But they could pay more to their shareholders and less to their employees. The old place has a smaller customer base, but is one of the only firms in the world that does what they do. And they send a very large bill that comes with the work.
The bottom line is that they do not value the relationship between laborer and company. And that lack of value comes out in non-monetary ways as well.
But what about the poor man in the middle I began to tell you about? He’s an old timer who worked his way up to middle management. He’s a gifted mechanic, but a lousy manager. That is a direct result of the non-training environment. He became floor manager about the same time the new bosses bought the company. I used to think he was just a lousy people person, but he really isn’t. He is always good with a joke and when not stressed out is a pretty good teacher, too.
The stress is the thing, though. Here he is dealing with high turnover of new employees and the looming retirement of his most experienced guys. On top of that, he deals with a sales team that makes ridiculous promises to get customers and management that won’t create an environment that creates career employees.
Honestly, I would have liked to stay at the company longer. I was learning tons of valuable things. The money could have been better, for sure, but for me the real deal killer was the lack of respect for the workers. Good training, a way to earn paid sick days and a real sense of investment in their human resources would have kept me there indefinitely. And some management training for my boss could have made me a career guy.
Let’s hope the new place is as good as I hope it is… I’ll let you know how it goes.
Ellen says I am making this stuff up, but I am not nearly creative enough for that.
SO last night we had another visit from subconscious Ellen, this time pranking me in her sleep. It went like this…
Kelly: (Rolls over and adjusts pillow to better suit the new sleep position)
Ellen: (Totally yanks Kelly’s pillow out from under his head as he is laying down on it)
K: (Managing to grab the case, but not the pillow, thus peeling the pillow from the case) Hey! That’s my pillow!! Give me that back. (takes pillow back and attempts to stuff it back in the case)
E: But my hand was on it…
A few minutes later she mumbled something and then it occurred to me that the whole thing was probably more sleep activity. This was confirmed in the morning when I asked if she remembered the event. She was semi-horrified that she pranked me in my sleep, but I fell into hysterical laughter at the thought.
Now I just have to wonder, since we’ve gone from mumbling to goosing me to stealing my pillow, how far this is going to go before it gets too silly. I fear that the next thing might be a bucket of water over my head rigged to turn over when I do the same.
I’ll let you know when that happens…
Latest work related headache.
(actually I am playing with the WordPress app in my phone. Hopefully I will blog more if it is easier to do in the moment.)
More sleeptalking again lately! With two unique variations, no less. Without further ado…
EPISODE 3
E: (something unintelligible and really really fast)
K: What was that, love?
E: (silence)
EPISODE 4
E: We need to move that..
K: What, babe?
E: (sitting one-third the way up and pointing into the sun room) We need to move… need to move… never mind, I’m too tired.
K: Oh, ok.
E: (totally gooses K on the behind)
K: HEY! That tickles!
E: (self satisfied half snicker followed by silence)
Seriously, she goosed me in her sleep and then acted all smug in a sleepy kind of way about it. Crazy Ellen!