I'm Done.

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This post will be one of my longest and most vexed piece of writing i have done to date.
This morning as I woke up to my 05:25 am alarm and through on my work uniform while stumbling down to fill up the kettle, I felt no emotion about what the day had installed for me.
"It's just another work day I must endure," I said to myself as I lit the first cigarette of the day.
man, was I wrong!
I got to work still feeling that sense of how bad can it be and remembered that I may get a talking to as to why yesterday I managed to break a machine and cost the company time and money. But I was still not phased at this point as things like this happen often and I had a reasonable statement to counteract the argument as to why I was not entirely to blame.

Walking through the doors of the factory I fell into my role (as I always do) and listened to what the next 12 hours had in store for me. This was the first point that I felt the stress gauge flicker.

Well, what was I to do? I had 12 hours and ok it's a bad start but the day will get better.
yep, you guessed it! wrong again!

With the lack of equipment, adequate skill levels, incorrect information, and no leadership guidance, I was in an impossible situation but instead of carrying that burden I informed my supervisor that I was struggling and she did nothing. In order for me to achieve what I was told only 10 minutes prior to starting work, I needed a miracle.
The mercury in my thermometer was reaching boiling point
But there was at least a silver lining as after only on hour the production had finished and we had 121 hours to clean the factory which would normally only take 8. So at least the rest of the day would give me time to relax a little.

Yeah right!!

As a company that promotes Health and safety as their number one Priority, to go into a week-long scheduled clean down of the factory and not have any PPE (Personal protective equipment) available to its workers was a complete and utter example of poor management.

So after informing the right wrong people, I took it upon myself to inform the staff that they could not start cleaning the factory until the correct measures were put in place. This of course soon got my supervisors attention and she finally decided to grace me with her presence.
This was most likely the best decision she has made all year as I vent my frustration at the poor management across the business and told her point blank that unless she or her manager do something to make our jobs less stressful then I'm fucking off.
Turns out I was not the only person who felt this way this day so in a true supervisors fashion her answer was to inform the shift manager that we were not happy and he came over and decided to get us all together in a room and tackle the issues as a team, in a meeting that strangely felt like an AA group.
I sat across the room while others gathered around the boss like a scene from the last supper.

The problem I saw with this picture was if you dont feed the wolfs now and then, then the wolfs will find a way to eat. So I envisaged a blood bath and feared I would be the main instigator so I sat back.
While the rest seem to take this moment to request better equipment and better reliability I sat quiet and if anyone knows me that is when I am most dangerous. The last thing anyone wanted was...

STEPHEN?!
Do you have anything you want to get off your chest?

uh oh, he is not calling on me now, is he?

Gif source

Ok so I did not smash things up but the rage was clear in my voice as I laid into the pure lack of decent managerial skills that we have to endure every dam day while they sit behind their desk and think that they know how to carve us into a what they believe is a productive workforce.
I swore that much and the voice must have hit 200db's. It was that bad that I had to apologise to the people that were not part of our group counseling session.
My main point though was ** why does a simple job have to be so complicated?**
This reminded me of a story I was once told whilst training for the Union and felt like it was the perfect way to describe the way I feel about all that my job.

ant motivational story

Every day, a small ant arrives at work very early and starts work immediately. She produces a lot and she was happy.
The Chief, a lion,
was surprised to see that the ant was working without supervision.
He thought if the ant can produce so much without supervision, wouldn’t she produce even more if she had a supervisor!
So he recruited a cockroach
who had extensive experience as a supervisor and who was famous for writing excellent reports.
The cockroach’s first decision was to set up a clocking in the attendance system.
He also needed a secretary to help him write and type his reports and …
... he recruited a spider, who managed the archives and monitored all phone calls.
The lion was delighted with the cockroach's reports
and asked him to produce graphs to describe production rates and to analyze trends, so that he could use them for presentations at
Board‘s meetings.
So the cockroach had to buy a new computer and a laser printer and ...
... recruited a fly to manage the IT department.
The ant, who had once been so productive and relaxed, hated this new plethora of paperwork and meetings which used up most of her time…!
The lion came to the conclusion that it was high time to nominate a person in charge of the department where the ant worked.
The position was given to a beetle, whose first decision was to buy a carpet and an ergonomic chair for his office.
The new person in charge, the Beetle, also needed a computer and a personal assistant, who he brought from his previous department, to help him prepare a Work and Budget Control Strategic Optimisation Plan …
The Department where the ant works is now a sad place, where nobody laughs anymore and everybody has become upset...
It was at that time that the beetle convinced the boss, the lion, of the absolute necessity to start a climatic study of the environment.
Having reviewed the charges for running the ant’s department, the lion found out that the production was much less than before.
So he recruited the owl, a prestigious and renowned consultant to carry out an audit and suggest solutions.
The owl spent three months in the department and came up with an enormous report, in several volumes,
that concluded :
“ The department is overstaffed ...”
Guess who the lion fires first?
The ant, of course, because she
“showed a lack of motivation and had a negative attitude".

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This story is used in management and union training and has been copied from this source I bet that a good percentage of you can relate to what is being said here in this story and for the ones who can't relate then you must be a manager.

p.s Sorry for the click bait