Well… I'm working in a lab that's too small. So small, that you're getting a lot of not so funny problems. On hot days and with ongoing tests, the indoor temperatur can reach 35 °C or more. Multiple times, I accidentaly pushed an emergency stop button, because there isn't enough room to maneauver. Measurement cables got ripped from test subjects, because I tripped over them. You get the picture.
On top of that: We three are all quite new in this field of work. I've got about 18 years of work experience (in a somewhat comparable, but different field), but the other two are new to lab work. Now the company had some really ambitious plans for new products and the plan alone screamed: Nope – Not realistic. We don't have the people, we don't have the space and even if all would work perfectly well… Not possible.
Time goes on. Everything is in pure chaos. My colleague gets stressed, because they push him to finish impossible work. He needs to finish test A and B, but tomorrow he needs to travel to a test in a external lab for test C. Normally, you would focus on test C and prepare everything, because it's not in house, but nope. Pushing and pushing so that everything gets done a bit, but not really good and not in a quality that's needed. At the same time, leadership is finally realizing that stuff goes wrong and they do the ultimate stupid thing: Getting involved.
The lab is a mess. It always was a mess and that's because of the damn space. Today I've seen an email, where our bosses boss complains about cleanliness. They push this damn impossible agenda, don't fix the space problem and think: Oh yeah, let's tell them to keep the lab more orderly! That will surely help and keep morale up.
It's just… Stupid. There's so much more that's going on, but why typing it? I've started my career as a electrician when I was 15 and since then, I've gone through multiple companies. I've studied energy-technics and I would say that I'm not perfect, but I'm not an idiot either. Of course I could look for another job… One of my colleagues has resigned a month ago and he will soon be gone. The other guy is still in his entry phase and could quit within a week or so.
The problem is this: I don't think another job will fix this. It's always cool and nice in the beginning, but all companies seem to move in the same downward-spiral way sooner or later. They want to do too much work, in not enough time, with not enough people. It's not the problem of my job, it's the problem of the whole damn industry.
Always wanted to be a technician / engineer because it seemed really cool as a kid. Science is awesome – It will always be – but the industry is just bad. I'm a technician now, working a job as an engineer, but I'm more and more losing my faith in the whole thing. All run around like apes to invent something, that another company has already invented. Or ten other companies. You just keep working on a variation that is just there, because someone will buy it. It doesn't move humanity forward an inch.
Just needed to get this out. I'm keeping up and try to keep going, but if this is all we are capable of as humans, it's damn miserable. I'm either losing all motivation and do my job day to day until I'm through, or I will at some point change to something smaller, but more useful. We have a janitor in the company who seems to be quite happy. Even if he's just emptying the bins, he's at least doing something with a clear, achievable goal and gets something done by the end of the day. Seems like a good job.