I've already shared my biggest issue with my current company, but I had no idea what others were dealing with until recently. I just want to hammer in the fact that I LOVE this work, I could do it all day every day, but the company I work for is a circus, to put it very lightly.
This company is a smallish landscape & maintenance crew, has been for years and years. Averaging between 10 & 30 employees at a time. (Their turnover rate is bonkers, guys, it's a running joke that we don't learn the new guys' names until they've shown up for 3 shifts). It never made much sense as to why so many people would walk off site halfway through the day, or at least ghost the boss and not come in anymore, because it's honestly pretty tame, simple, straightforward labour work. Ya show up, mow some lawns, go home, so what's the deal??
WELL. The deal, is apparently the owner, Doug. Doug has a nasty little habit of forming grand visions of his company finally branching out & becoming a local staple, turning into him biting off way more than he can chew. I don't know enough about what happened the hundreds of times before this, but at the moment his grand vision includes “expanding” the company into scaffolding, glazing, and demolition. Except… when I say expand, I don't mean go the normal, legal route. Señor Smartypants decided to add on sub contractors in each trade, and simply put randomly-selected newbies in their trucks, without even letting them know what they're doing that day.
So, picture it this way. You're a 19 year old skid who just wants to make some good beer money and pay your rent, so you go to your landscaping job to (as your contract says) cut grass. You get there, get handed off to a dude you've never met, and are told “You ready to do some windows today??” Meanwhile you DO NOT have a hard hat, hi-vis vest, fall arrest ticket, CSTS training, any training in any of these trades, your contractor boss isn't even wearing steel toes, you're getting paid 2 measly dollars above min wage for all of this, and most importantly, YOUR CONTRACT IS ONLY FOR LAWN CARE. Oh, you wanna speak up about how unsafe this is?? Well you better get on home to find a new job, boy. We don't need pansies, we need hard (cough pushover cough) workers.
Because of this, and very similar fuckery, we've had 3 crew leads quit and 3 labourers give their notice in the last week, alone. My notice is going to be given in another week, I think, because this whole place is so deeply ingrained to operate this way, that there truly is no hope for change. And I just know everything will fall onto those of us who are left, so Imma head out while I only have resentment for the management.
I'll never understand how companies like this can pull this kind of shit, for years, and never face anything for it.