Toothless vs. Lia

Jennifer had to work another closing shift for a change instead of opening up the coffee shop early in the morning like she usually does all the time. I'm sitting here at home alone after work waiting for her to show up. I mixed up a drink of vodka and Minute Maid fruit punch because I'm out of beer here in the house and I'm too lazy to go to the store. This drink tastes like shit. Put too much booze in it.

Today was lousy at work. We had another line meeting and Dayshift decided to keep Lia on Swingshift with me. I was hoping to be rid of her. In the past couple of weeks I've done everything I can to get her work improved, but I can't seem to make it happen. What's worse is Dayshift wants me to re-train her from the ground up. I was looking forward to working alone again and now I have to continue babysitting the wench.

I already started the re-training sessions. I began by having Lia watch me build a board mod, then I made her build the exact same board mod while I watched. It makes for a tedious eight hour shift. The night wore on like an elderly turtle trying to cross a road. The re-training methods proposed by management and dayshift means I'm going to sit with Lia shoulder to shoulder at a workbench while she builds 20 or 30 complete sets of board mods. She's such a slow worker that this is going to take us many days to finish up.

Sitting with Lia I had to listen to her complain about how dayshift is being mean to her, in particular Lia suspects Toothless is out to get her. I agree with Lia to a point, but if Lia's workmanship was better that would leave Toothless with very little room to sabotage her. They would have to leave Lia alone no matter how much they personally hate her, if, and only if, her work was good. I tried to explain this to Lia and I used myself as an example. I said I always make damn sure that when I'm done building something I double or triple check it to make sure I did it properly. So, every time I build a part or a whole instrument there aren't any assembly errors when it makes it into test.

No matter how much Toothless or the rest of dayshift hates me (and believe me they do) there isn't much they can do to mess with me because my work is so flawless and consistent. I suggested to Lia she tries to be like that and that if she did, they would have to shut up about her. Lia didn't seem to listen to me though. When she was mad at Toothless a while back I advised Lia to be more self assertive and talk to Toothless directly about the personal friction between the two of them. Lia told me she'd do it, but she never did and their problems with each other have continued ever since. Now things have escalated. It didn't have to. That's the funny thing I've noticed about women in the factory. Unlike most guys, the women will be sickningly sweet to one another face to face but as soon as their backs are turned they try to covertly sabotage each other by any means necessary. It's stupid. Guys will simply take things off the line and maybe throw a couple of punches, but then the problem is overwith and they go back to work like nothing happened. I've seen it frequently here and it always plays out the same way.

I certainly don't have any love for Toothless. When Lia tells me she suspects Toothless is delibrately going out of her way to be difficult and mean to Lia I believe her. Toothless is vindictive and a manipulator of our supervisors. She's also a chronic nonperformer but for some reason management can't see it even though it's right under their noses. Shit. Toothless already dusted Chuck and then Pat. Had them both thrown off the transfer project coming back from Spokane. I think Toothless would absolutely love to get me thrown off the line too. Maybe even fired. My work is too good though so in a way that makes me untouchable. Plus, I'm wise to what Toothless is up to so I try to stay a couple of steps ahead of her at all times. I told Lia how Toothless tries to control other people in the production area and if she can't find a way to do that she finds a way to get rid of them. I also told Lia how Toothless tried fucking with me up in Spokane. The ironic thing of it all is Toothless makes worse assembly mistakes on a regular basis than Lia does, but for some unexplained reason Toothless gets away with it.