3.15.1997

Dave got hired in here at Bill and Dave's. So did Barney, but he's a temp for now. It's cool they've made the leap here from TDS. Barney will be working in stores on dayshift and Dave doesn't know what product line he's going to end up on yet. I guess a week before Dave quit TDS, he mistakenly told some of the engineers we worked with there that he was going to be making close to twenty three dollars an hour in a technician position here at Bill and Dave's company. So the engineers were pissed off at TDS management because Dave would be making much more loot than they do and he's in a lower level job compared to them. TDS isn't very competative when it comes to industry wages.

I thought it was hilarious their engineers were angry about Dave's starting wage here and the fact that they brought the issue up with TDS managament. It's not like they can really do anything about it because TDS corporate is keeping tightwad control of their spending. Nobody at TDS can ever be eligible for more than a 4% wage increase once a year, and that doesn't mean anyone would ever actually get that whopping 4%. Most of the time they give totally weak 1%-2% raises. That's why I quit. Working in some sectors of the Defense Industry (even if it is high end electronics) doesn't mean you're going to be paid well. In reality, Dave is going to be making about fourteen bucks an hour to start as a tech with us here at Bill and Dave's. Somehow he got confused between his hourly starting rate of pay and his monthly gross salary. Geek.

Work has been a continued disappointment for me. In addition to all the personality problems with my coworkers and political junk with managers, my new supervisor has turned out to be another lemon. The Drunk has been moved to some R&D lab position to bring out a new VXI technology product so the rumor she was leaving turned out to be accurate. Good riddance. Her replacement is Squirmy. Myself and a technician on the line I call Supertech refer to our boss as Squirmy because that's what he does. He squirms his way out of dealing with problem situations and constantly shifts his responsibilities to others around him any way he can. He's adept at skirting line issues. I know more about what Squirmy occupies himself with outside of work than what he really is supposed to be doing here on the job. He's constantly wandering through the production area running his mouth about his personal life. A good amount of that time is spent yapping about golf. I hate golf. Sometimes I call Squirmy the Golf Pro.

Supertech is pretty cool. He was on the Spokane transfer but I never saw him the whole three and a half months I was there. He worked on one of the other product lines that we never had any day to day dealings with. Funny thing is, his product was obsoleted less than two weeks after they de-transfered it to California. All of the employees that trained up on that product line were left holding the bag and had to be shuffled off to other areas practically overnight. We got Supertech and a wingnut assembler by the name of Dan. Supertech seems like he really knows what he's doing. He's got years of experience from working as an electronic technician in the US Navy, and he's been working in the industry for a long time. I get the feeling he's very sharp and I like his personality alot. We've been kidding around on swingshift and having a good time. It's been a nice change from what I've been used to lately.

Our product line was moved on the floor of our building again. I swear this place is like musical chairs. Every time you turn your back it seems some area has been ordered by managers to move someplace else in the building, or someplace else in the factory campus. I don't get it. The latest move put us on the other side of the hallway from where we were before, which was like 20 feet away. We had to stop production, power down all our test racks, and pack everything up just to move the entire line right across the hall. Stupid. Next to us they've moved in the Precision Instruments Group and the only thing separating our two groups is a tall section of cubicle wall. I'd like to put the razor wire on top of that wall and keep those fools away from us.

I don't know many of the people on that line but I've heard nothing but bad stuff about their people since the Spokane gig. Some of their folks turned their line into a Dayshift vs. Swingshift war zone and even managed to turn it into a California employee vs. Washington employee war zone on top of that while we were up there. I was glad to not have been involved in that shit. Ironically, the Precision instruments they build were supposed to replace the ones I currently work on but they have never really matched the performance specs of these older boxes. It's a testament to how impressive this box still is after all this time. It originally came out of the R&D labs in the 1970s and the replacement product line for it came out in the early 1980s. We keep selling these old monsters though, and from what I hear they are a cash cow for the company.