Happened a few years back. Working in a fab shop preparing for a shutdown at a nuclear plant. They had scheduled and needed 20 welders for the outage. Managed to test and fail close to 30. In the end of the testing there was 3 welders left including myself.
Great bunch of guys. We had a good time. Foreman was great. Crew was fun. Work was nice. Only problem. The superintendent thought he was the foreman. This causes frustration for obvious reasons.
Our foreman would give us our daily assignments and we would go about our day. Then this superintendent would walk in and tell us to do something completely different. We took the time to explain to him he needs to get the foreman and use the chain of command so we are on the same page. This went on for about 2 weeks with daily events. Everyone including the foreman was getting very frustrated.
The crew all talked and we agreed to ignore him completely. Tell him to see our foreman, Wayne.One of the other welders, Mike, got into a verbal conflict with the super after he refused to do what he said and told him to go pound sand. In the heat of the exchange he did say “we can settle this in the parking lot” which was taken as a threat. So the superintendent jitbag fired him.
I was welding in the bench under my hood. My fitter walked up to me and told me what just happened. So I put down my hood and walked up to the superintendent who was on the phone standing there like he had a huge cock. I interrupted his call very rude, abrasive and loud. “Hey did you just fire him?” He responded “yeah it’s non of your business get back to work!” To which I replied “fuck you if he is fired get my money to!”
I packed my bag and headed to the trailer compound. It’s was about 10 mins walk. I was going to collect my stuff and leave. So now instead of 20 welders for the outage they will have 1.
As soon as I walked into the trailer I was meet by several other supervision people begging me to stay. Told them if Mike was fired I was driving him home and I quit. Sat down and put my feet up.
This ordeal took about 15 mins to resolve from this point. All supervision was in a room with Mike and came out together. Mike had to attend an anger management class for the treat and he wasn’t fired. So we went back to work. Laughed the whole way down the hill to the fab shop. Got a hero welcome back from the foreman and the crew when we walked in.
I lasted a few more weeks before I quit. I knew it was only a matter of time before the superintendent would find a way to fire me. I didn’t give him the satisfaction.
Every once in awhile I run into guys from that job and we reminisce about that and laugh.