Hiring Frenzy

Bodies, bodies, and more bodies. In recent weeks we've had a flood of new hires show up and begin their training on the instrument production lines. The bulk of these new people are going to be assemblers, but we've also received technicians and some engineers. More are on the way.

I'm somewhat concerned about the new people in assembly. I've been making small talk with them trying to find out what work experience they've got and so far the majority of them have never been in a manufacturing environment. None of them have worked with high-end electronics, either. In most cases no previous experience doing this kind of work is okay, assembly jobs are for the most part considered entry-level positions with training provided on the line. However there are a couple of critical areas here that new people need to stay away from.

Management has made a rather ignorant blanket statement which really demonstrates how out of touch with reality they are. "Anybody can do these jobs" they say. That's not true. Take MI/EI (Button Up) for example. Mechanical Inspection/Electrical Inspection is the last stop on the shop floor before calibrated boxes ship out to customers. Those employees working in MI/EI are veteran assemblers that know their products backwards and forwards. All of them started out as assemblers years ago and then worked their way to a Button Up position. The idea is, their experienced eyes and hands are tuned in to rapidly discovering every possible flaw or problem in the units. Having your best assemblers with years of product knowledge under their belts isn't something you can simply teach to rookie people who come in off the street. You must have experience. Managers haven't figured this out though, and they've placed new people into Button Up jobs. I predict bad things are going to happen as a result.

I've already caught one new guy in Area 51's final assembly station over-torquing front panel screws on the boxes to the point of snapping the heads clean off. If that wasn't bad enough, he was trying to conceal the broken hardware by super gluing the screw heads back on. I blew my stack when I found out what he was doing. Hanging from overhead booms at his workstation are a number of pneumatic and electric torque drivers to use for properly installing hardware. It's not like he didn't have tools available, he knew better. That's what makes me real angry. Almost laughing about it, he mentioned to me that he's been busting screw heads off and gluing them back on over the past couple of weeks. I traced every box on the shop floor that the asshole touched and found some broken hardware. Fixing them was easy, I used a power drill to remove the broken hardware and then I re-threaded the frame holes with a tap. Worst part of all this is a few boxes already shipped out to customers, most likely with one or two superglued screws in them. I want this loser to be fired.

Seems like our guys must be hard up for love. We now have two or three females in the area who are in their mid 20s and the guys keep drooling over them. It's starting to affect their work. None of these girls are all that attractive, and I keep pointing that out to the guys. One of these women is particularly annoying. She's dumb as a fence post and she's been playing that to the hilt to get attention and have the guys do her work for her. Every day when she comes in to start her shift she's made sure to parade herself through the department. Her low-cut skin tight clothes raises eyebrows and causes the men to go bug-eyed and stupid over her. I would too, if she wasn't so damn ugly.

Super Shopper is up to no good. She's pulling her usual tricks on new hires. Super Shopper's boss has given her a handful of people to train. If she doesn't jive with the new employees, if she doesn't like a person for whatever petty reason, Super Shopper runs to management and sabotages the individual to get them thrown out. I've seen her do this before in the past when she was in other departments. It's sad, but that's what she is doing again just like a bad re-run of a syndicated TV show. Super Shopper bungled a couple of boxes badly last week and then didn't admit to making some mistakes. Instead, she blamed the poor workmanship on a trainee in an attempt to save herself from reprimand. The new hire was told by Super Shopper's boss to not come back. It's so fucking frustrating because I can clearly see shit like this happening but I'm powerless to stop it. Supervisors never listen to me around here.