Basically, my employer for the past 9 months seems to have some sort of issue with me and I'm not sure why. It's just a basic blue collar production job. Which, mainly production or warehousing has been my main source of income ever since I started working. So, it's not a type of work I'm unfamiliar with.
It started about four months into the job. Now I had doctors appointments every two weeks and then eventually once a month. But my doctor decided to cut back on their hours and was only available during work hours. I explained to my supervisor and was told that it's no problem just come back after an appointment. I asked if they wanted a note to provide proof, they declined.
One day I'm pulled into the office and written up about attendance. Turns out they counted the doctors appointment against me and even said I never gave them notice and just left work and came back with no explanation. They also had counted if I was even one minute late clocking in as a full absence. News to me but whatever, I have bills to pay. At this point they didn't even have an attendance policy. All they said was to call one hour before the start if shift if you're calling out.
Then suddenly we have a new team lead type on our shift to help out management on our shift. Suddenly everything I'm doing is wrong. I explained that I hadn't really had any performance reviews or been given any feedback. The one review I did have they said nothing negative at all. I also explained that when I started, I had a few days of training and then my trainer called in sick for 3 weeks. Not once was I given another trainer or any guidance at all. Apparently, that doesn't matter or is somehow my fault. OK, fine, I'll try to do better.
We have a production goal of 20 jobs per hour by each employee. Which they were pretty relaxed about because no one had even been here for a year. Apparently turn around is quite high. Now, it's a huge issue that not one of us is able to make the goal. There isn't even enough work for everyone to hit that goal, even if we had the experience needed to do so. Sometimes, the machines or other departments make production errors, and the product needs to be rejected. They have decided we should only be rejecting one job per day. Even though it is not something we can control. And guess what? I got written up again. This time for not meeting a production goal and for rejecting one product per day. Even though that's apparently our goal. But, I've been getting trained on additional machines or been training new employees on other machines so it's unrealistic for me to meet those goals. I didn't even receive proper training on that either because my trainer for that also called in for a few weeks.
Now I've dealt with this at jobs before. Unrealistic production goals. No clear company policies. The thing is, I'm the only one being written up for these things. We have employees who walk around talking for hours at a time. People are taking 10 extra minutes on break. People are not doing the machine maintenance that we are supposed to do. But I forgot a maintenance task one time in nine months, and I got written up for that, too.
Now, I think they are trying to get me to quit. Why, I'm not sure. And I can't even go above my supervisor because last time it was my supervisor and a head of the production plant. HR is also weirdly involved with our production goals. They are often telling management to write us up for things like that. Which I've never experienced at a job. Usually, HR just kind of worries about protecting the company, like for harassment or EEO complaints or something.
Another shitty part about this job is if you call in sick, you are required to use PTO. We even had one week shortly after I started where there was no work to do. The machines were all being serviced by techs. And even then, we had to use PTO to be able to go home early. We do earn sick leave, which normally would be a plus. Except, we only earn 3 hours per month. We work 10 hour shifts.
In the past two months, we have had one person fired, three quit, and two supervisors quit.
Now, I get the solution for me is to find another job. Which sucks because I need it to pay for school. And I like the hours a lot and my coworkers. And I really can't find comparable pay. This is the bare minimum I'm willing to accept. It just sucks being singled out and for no apparent reason. (I actually almost cried driving home from work because nothing I do is right)
When will employers ever care that we have lives outside work? That we aren't robots?
Probably never.
Here's to hoping my eventual degree will land me something better.