forgive my grammar as I'm on mobile. I don't often post unless I've got some mental rant going on and I'm looking to the community for advice haha. anyways this week has had a heat advisory in a Pacific northwest. specifically Portland. we do tree work. we are arborists. and this time last year we're all pretty happy with the company we were working for and things seemed good. relationships were good. boss had promised us merit-based bonuses in a formal morning meeting. except then Christmas came around and no one got anything. well haha unless you were born with the right parts. if you know what I'm saying. anyways that's not what I'm talking about right now. here we are in the present and we are getting fed up with always doing so much work. we get the jobs for the day done and he just wants to add more and so it kind of removes the incentive to work efficiently. we'd be better off just taking our time and having a boatload of breaks and stretch things out and just get out at a normal time. it's like when is enough enough. not trying to get out at noon or anything but 12-hour days consecutively are just too much. we are made of meat. meat needs rest and recovery. he's been open to talking about incentives. because to start a new job at like 2:30 could mean that some of us are getting home at 8:00 and then have to wake up at 5:00 a.m. or earlier to be ready for the next day. it's just unnecessary and there's plenty of tool maintenance to be done at the end of the day. but so far it seems to just be something he's dodging right now. don't really need incentives I just don't want to get packed on with more and more work. like let me go home. when is enough enough. daily we are crushing the quota like bosses. so now we got this triple digit temperature week. Oregon passed some laws in May about the Heat and working. they did this because people died last year setting irrigation lines and crap like that. even though it's a law, it's really just a bunch of literature that employers should pay attention to but it's sort of vague who backs you when the employer is vaguely but obviously not getting a shit. he told us we could clock out for 10 hour day when we got our work done. our work was getting done fairly early and he kind of maybe panicked or whatever and tried to get us to do more work but the heat was already excessive at that point. but he says it's not that bad. which sure it's not that bad like a stove is hot. but like I said we are made of meat and the meat is cooking long after we are done working and heat like this. there's only so much you can do while doing tree work to save yourself from the heat. he wrote and made notes in his work log that he accidentally left open on his desk ( right where we have to leave our paperwork at the end of the day mind you) and was making notes of how one of us was complaining about the heat. which it wasn't complaining it was hey let's have a discussion about the Heat because some of your employees are not smart enough to bring water to work. we had to fill up the vehicle with fuel and there was ice being sold right there so we bought some. our boss got pissed and also wrote that in his notebook. basically writing his notes as if we are being insubordinate. we had a very frustrating conversation with him about the Heat and he just doesn't seem to want to take it serious. and then at the end of the week one of the guys fell out of a tree and hit branches on the way down. he hasn't gone to the hospital because of”toughness” or some outdated man logic. this happened the same day he was pissed we got ice. he's been like this before when it came to extreme cold temperatures or when the wildfires were going on and breathing outside was just toxic. his comment is always, “oh it's not so bad.”
all it is is this dumb mindset from the 80s where people were tough and beat women and drank Budweiser or whatever. like I get that if it's really that bad I can just go work for someone else. and it's pretty much coming to that. but we were happy last year and we feel like we're dealing with a totally different person. at first we felt this company and the camaraderie is worth salvaging and maintaining a good name for this company. I mean we were all proud to be working here. but now I just feel like the ice thing is just too far and I think I want to make a formal OSHA complaint. like he's cool with sending out to practically die or be seriously injured from stuff that the news in the state is warning about. he's a crap person.