I'm a fabricator and welder in a shop. We got two basic groups here, the fabricators and the machine operators. The latter have an extremely easy job as they simply place the pieces in the right places and let the machine to all the work while myself and the other fabricators need fabricate whole products based on blueprints and our pay represents that.
There are these two brothers, one of them recently brought their son into the company, who are all machine operators, and they are just always at 100, running all over the place, rarely shit on company time, they've been known to snitch on people, and for some reason they cur their own breaks short to get back to work quicker.
It seems like they plan on succeeding by standing out as much as possible through their dedication to being the best workers on the job. The thing is, all they're really doing is being the best of the lowest-paid employees. The base pay for welders here is $23/hr and machine operators top out at about $24 and most dont stay in the company long enough to hit $20/hr+ because it takes years considering our company's raise structure for machine operators.
Other machine operators resent them and us welders think they're dumb but to them this is how they plan on succeeding and it's not going to work because no amount of brown nosing is going to replace skill. I've seen these types before, low-skilled and low-paid bootlickers who will do anything to move up the ladder EXCEPT do the work to get better paying skills and I find them sad and desperate. If you want better pay get better skills and education otherwise you become one of these cringey types.