Should be filed under r/mildlyinfuriating but I feel like it fits here better.
I've been irked all day because of this. I love MY job and the company but upper management is so FUCKIN STUPID. Thankfully, I'm just the facility and maintainenance manager. It's just a glorified title, I actually manage projects, grounds and vendors NOT people. Zero pull but I get along with everyone and 9/10 most people listen to what I have to say. Today was that 1/10 times.
We're understaffed by 10-15 people. Well… production is, every other department is fine. We have 5 members in Shipping and Receiving. 3 for south plant, 2 for north. I mostly deal with the North Plant guys. They're extremely competent dudes, to the point of they're practically left completely alone, while the south plant workers need constant supervision. Because of this, both supervisors NEVER come up to north plant.
Recently, a south plant employee had their baby so rather than keep it even at 2 and 2, management pulled 1 of the north plant dudes for south plant because again… competent to balance out incompetent. I've been doing my best to help the 1 guy up at North the past several weeks but it's only with the things I KNOW I can do and not what is his job. Everyone (management) is complaining that “surprisingly” both plants are falling behind and managements “fix” is to make the borrowed competent employee run back and forth to do both plants when the north one gets swamped, then they complain about north dude not doing EVERYTHING by himself fast enough.
Unsurprising, they are wanting to quit. They both keep getting in trouble, even though their efficiency is clocked at 115% and the two idiots down at South are at 65%. An email chain came down, complaining about a task nobody knew who's responsibility it was to do, so the warehouse supervisor VOLUNTOLD his two dudes to do it. Adding more responsibility and stretching them thinner.
I had casually gone into the office to talk about work related things and subtly brought up the email and politely asked to cut them some slack cuz they can't keep up and I had to help both of them. The response was, “so? It's what they were hired to do. That's why we put that bullet point in saying, 'to include any and all other job duties as assigned by so and so.'” I said yeah but you can't keep ADDING things just because we're stretched thin. It shouldn't be their responsibility to handle ALL the additional duties that come up if EVERYONE has that clause in their job description. They're going to end up quitting and they're you're two best employees and we're already short staffed.
The response was, “good. So what? Let'em quit.”
I cannot even begin to fathom the mindset of upper management. There's just ZERO logic behind ANY and ALL decisions they make. How can that possibly be the appropriate response to make? You're short staffed, the pregnant employee MIGHT not come back, you'd end up with 2 incompetent employees left, requiring the 2 supervisors and possibly manager to come out and do the job for who knows how long, leaving no one at North Plant to work and they don't exactly pay top dollar enough as is so they'll be hard pressed to find the replacements in a timely manner.
“nObOdY wAnTs To WoRk AnYmOrE” comes to mind. How about, “nobody wants to be treated like shit.” How are the most incompetent people, the ones in charge of EVERY company?