So I work for a large logistics company where I spend most of my time training new hires to drive forklifts. It doesn’t offer higher pay than being a full time dockworker, but it’s pretty easy and I enjoy teaching people. Normally I train 2-3 people over the span of a month, and if someone is struggling I can usually give them an extra week of one-on-one attention to help round out the rough edges. However for the past couple months we’ve been hiring a lot more people than normal. Now I’m training 4-5 people at a time and my training schedule has been shortened by a week. On top of that, they’re no longer allowing me to spend extra time with new hires who are struggling.
This has led to a noticeable drop in the quality of work, and a noticeable increase in unsafe diving, by new hires at my job. Luckily, I’m on my job’s “Worker Safety Council” and I brought up my concerns at this months meeting. I said that I was concerned that increase in class sizes and the decrease in time set aside to train them has led to an unsafe work environment. Everyone at the meeting agreed with me, and the manager who runs the meeting said that he noticed the problem too and he would bring it to upper management.
Cut to today, and I get called into my Operations Managers’ office for a meeting. They told me to sit down and started grilling me about how the recent new hires have “not been up to snuff” and basically accused me of doing my job poorly and said they were going to demote from training duty. I was completely flabbergasted by this, and what followed almost gave me an aneurysm.
I asked “Where the hell his this coming from?”
“We’ve heard some complaints from people about new hires on your shift being unsafe.”
“Complaints from who?”
“They’re anonymous, but the it’s pretty apparent.”
When I heard “anonymous” I suddenly realized something and asked “Did this complaint come from the Workers Safety Council?”
Both of my OMs looked at each other in confusion and responded “Yeah”
The fucking dipshits didn’t realize that I was the one who made the complaint. After this I snapped and called them incompetent blame shifters that were going to get someone killed. I went through company channels to ask for more resources and time to do my job properly, and somehow that goes through the chain of command and results in me getting chewed and almost demoted out for not doing my job right? I stormed out of the office and immediately went the Terminal Manager (their boss) and told him what just happened.
Apparently earlier that day he chewed them out over this situation but didn’t mention that I had requested more time and resources, so they thought he was just complaining about my performance. This is the kind of bureaucratic fuck up that could lead to me getting fired or worse someone getting hurt or killed. I told him that he was either going to have to give me the time to train these people or find someone else to do this job because I absolutely refuse to be held responsibility for this. Thankfully he said he agrees with me, but it fucking infuriates me that this is how my job operates. Instead of “here’s the resources to do your job properly” we get shit rolling downhill until it lands on the rank and file worker. It’s bad enough that they’re forgoing safety standards just so they can flood the dock with bodies to work (whether they’re ready or not) but they almost demoted the person who brought up this issue because the dock is being run by snakes who will do anything but actually address the problem.
TL;DR: The geniuses who run my job almost demoted me because of a safety complaint that I originally filed.