|
The Mature Viewpoint Page 4 |
|
Work, the Curse of the Drinking Class By JBo (JBohunk) Most senior citizens have completed or are wrapping up a long work history, and of course we all know without a doubt that our generation knew what dedication and hard work was all about. Heck, if the truth were known, I’d bet most of us spent more time on the job than doing anything else. That’s the way it was for me anyway, and I spent the second most amount of my time after work in a bar complaining about how tough my job was, and how dumb my boss was. My entire working career was always involved in some aspect of management. No, I wasn’t the owner’s son or nephew, it just happened that I decided to use my engineering background in manufacturing management, because when I got out of college in 1962, manufacturing was the backbone of our economy. If I graduated today with the same career goal, I would either have to move to India or China or if I stayed in the good ol’ USA I would have to carry Granny Clampett’s asafiddity bag around my neck to ward off the creditors. This story is about a boss I had about half way through my working life, when I was pretty sure I had learned just about everything there was to know about work related stuff, and had become expert at complaining about it. It was getting on to 8 o’clock at night and I was still at work. I was beat, out of ideas and desperately trying to think of a reasonable excuse to give to my employers’ newly promoted corporate VP of Production why we should call it a day. It was Wednesday, and the week started with a Monday morning “rah, rah, sis boom bah” session, where the new VP regaled our engineering and production team with a healthy serving of 100% BS regarding the reasons why he was there, and why our plant had been chosen to do the deed. The deed was a product startup with heavily financed and extensively modified equipment which had been installed over a period of several weeks, and was intended to allow us to produce enough product (double our old output levels) to meet our growing sales demand. Yes folks, there was a time when workers in America actually made stuff which was sold in the American market place. This particular facility was a chemical processing operation which was scheduled to run 24 hours a day. That initial Monday startup effort lasted 32 hours. I was there for the 32 hours, and our efforts ended in (gasp) failure. I ain’t saying I was hard at it for 32 hours, because I did take a 4 hour nap on a conference room table. Also, earlier in the evening I pretended to have supper by trying to bring life back into a hardened Entenmanns caramel nut twist sweet roll, by repeatedly dunking it into some black coffee. I knew it was an Entenmanns caramel nut twist sweet roll because I had purchased the entire coffee cake at 6 AM that day. One of the few things I did right that day was to hide a piece of that coffee cake in my desk. It actually wasn’t too bad even if I did have to fish some soggy chunks of it out of the bottom of my coffee cup. So here it was, Wednesday night and about 13 hours into our second effort which had also ended in failure and our VP had gathered us in the engineering office for a “barnstorming” session. For some reason, our VP always said “barnstorming” instead of “brainstorming”. I think he talked that way because he originally came from Iowa, and the affliction was genetic in nature causing the words barn and brain to become interchangeable. Hey, no offense intended toward any Hawkeyes among our ranks. I also started out as a Midwesterner and still get sexually excited when I drive past a corn field. Those of you from the Midwest who could afford motel rooms during your high school and college years won’t understand the libidinous cornfield connection. Anyway, it has always seemed to me that royalty and newly promoted VPs have a problem admitting they could possibly fail. I guess it has something to do with the “up and comer” tendency toward having an over abundance of delusional self importance. Most guys I knew that made it into the upper echelons of large companies shared this affliction. I never made it to the upper echelon level because the smell of excrement turned me off, although I did often brag that I had achieved the status of upper mid level middle manager. Huh??? As I sat there listening to my fellow “barnstormers” discuss our next plan of attack, I leaned back and stared up at the ceiling. The ceiling was at least 10 foot high, and right up there where I was looking, someone had scrawled, “Why are you looking up here?” It dawned on me that that query was the most intelligent question I had become aware of during the past hour. As anxious as I was to share my discovery, the funereal atmosphere of our meeting caused me to think such info might be considered rash and out of context. And so, with much effort I suppressed both my discovery and smile, although I have to admit that the effects of feeling beat accompanied by the sudden infusion of humor made me want to come out with a tension releasing guffaw. The meeting was becoming unfocused, with a few aside conversations developing, so I turned to a visiting engineer from the L.A. area, who happened to be an oriental chap who had been born in Taiwan. Me: “Tell me Mr. Chung, where did you go to school, U.C.R.A.?” Mr. Chung: “No, I attended Okrahoma”. Well, that plus the ceiling message caused me to lose it. After sharing Mr. Chung’s reply with the group, some jovial chaos ensued which caused our V.P to jump up on the conference room table in an effort to regain control of his minions, while castigating me for not taking our problem serious. Alas, our VP had lost it. The scene kind of reminded me of the time Nikita Khrushchev, trying to make a point at a United Nations general assembly meeting, took off his shoe and pounded it on his desk. After our fearless leader wiped the foam from his mouth, he regained control of himself, and in a very hang-dog manner decided to call it a day. . As I left the engineering office, where we had just finished our “barnstorming” session, I noticed a note posted on the bulletin board. It went like this; “They said it couldn’t be done. He tried it anyway, and sure enough it couldn’t be done”. I recall wondering if quite possibly, that statement was more truth than fiction with regards our current endeavors. The VP left the next day, on his way to inspire other lucky folks with his cheer leader enthusiasm, ambitious drive and polished leadership skills (read suave BS). As it turned out, it took about six more months to really get all the ongoing equipment changes 100% on stream, but more importantly I now had the Mother of all “how tough work is” stories to tell my fellow Happy Hour drinking companions.
|
|
A publication of the SCC Organization Publish Date: 6/15/2007
|