Context, I work for a collectibles casing company, where customers will send in items to be graded and cases in clear acrylic cases. I'm in (officially) the QA department, however, no one calls it that. Even though “Quality Assurance” is in my job title, my department is known as only “Cleaning and Bagging” and that's when they remember our department exists at all.
At the last all-hands meeting, our Customer service rep/HR/office manager was listing off departments for smaller, more focused meetings, and our department was not listed. When we asked about us, she literally said, “Oh I forgot about you guys” and turned to the head grader/founder and asked if he wants to take us in one of his meetings, or should she. Right in front of us.
We're a small department, only 2 people, including myself, but we're expected to do the work of at least 5 people. Items go through our departments on industrial 5-tier metal carts, with order sizes varying from 1-2 items to 100-200+. We check every individual item for flaws and to make sure all information on the label is correct, so we're a bit slower than other departments. That causes carts to pile up outside of our room, because every other department rushes them through, just to be done with it.
The department right before mine is our flaming station, where a torch is taken to the acrylic cases to seal the edges and remove and scratches. At least, theoretically. They rush through flaming carts so quickly, we often have to re-flame nearly every item, because the edges aren't clear, or the case is scratched up. This also slows us down considerably.
Quite often, our concerns for quality on items is dismissed and sent back without change, despite myself and my coworker believing it to be a problem. We don't get final say on the quality of items, despite being QA.
Our concerns often fall on deaf ears, as our direct supervisor, who did do his best to help us, was let go months ago, with no word to anyone. The only way I knew about it was that he texted me directly. We still have no direct supervisor, so we have no one to help us with these issues.
And that's only issues with my department. My coworkers are a whole other issue. My department coworker, I have no problem with, she's my future SIL and we get along fantastically. The other departments, however, can be a struggle to deal with, especially when they send back items we've flagged for quality. There is no consistency on what they will actually take for recasing, as it changes depending on who you ask, what day it is, if mercury is in gatorade, whether they had chicken or pizza for dinner last night. I've literally taken an item out, had it returned, and then a few hours later take the same item to the same person, and had it accepted for recasing. It gets frustrating.
The graders and cases can also be incredibly toxic to work with, one of the graders believing he has all the power and authority of a manager, despite not being one. He used to text my direct supervisor when he thought I was leaving “too early”, and if someone wasn't working, he'd be texting one of the supervisors/managers. He was also involved in a department-wide bullying of a coworker, who had just lost a friend, and was struggling. His work, admittedly, had declined, but rather than pulling him aside and asking if he was okay, they not-so-subtley talked shit about him. He was being degraded, which only made his work suffer more, in a horrible cycle. He had to fully move departments and now works on the other side of the building. This coworker is also one of the sweetest guys, and really did not deserve that treatment.
This is getting long, and I'm sorry, but I really needed to get this off my chest. Thank you for reading, if you've made it this far. I should probably get back to work though, as I have 2 carts in my office and 5 more outside my door TT