"Update and "Really?".." Topic

Disclaimer: No goth chicks, nor anything else was harmed, traded, sold, murdered, bartered, or sent to work in coal mines in West Virginia….

Prior readers will know that I was the IT Support Manager and Representative for a large privately owned bottling company for their Midwest Region. My region consisted of four plants, and one warehouse in three different states, with support for approx. 500 people on site, a varying number offsite, and total assets worth a little over a quarter billion dollars.

So to catch up.
In Sept 2018 I resigned.
My Indiana plant expanded to include not only the 400K sq ft production facility and five production lines, but an additional 150K sq ft warehouse.
I was also given an additional production line for Kenosha and my Gahanna Ohio facility.
I was also notified that I was to be supporting the new 2 line burner facility down in Jeffersonville.
Then I was notified that I would also be given the facility that was being built in Kansas City….
And then the one in Detroit.

I was already working 12-16 hour days,(as well as taking weekend calls); my 25% travel was pushing 75%, and my OT was so much that my pay put me into a higher tax bracket.
I was told in one of my meetings that "the course of the team was changing" and we were needing to be more mobile now, and that it would be "increased travel".

And things were changing at "Corporate"…

1: In the spring of 2017, the actual founder and president of the company, (We'll call him "Senior"), announced he was stepping down totally and his son (We'll call him "Junior"), would be taking over entirely. Senior was off to live a life of well deserved retirement and riches on his large mega yacht he had recent bought, and travel all over the world…etc…etc…yada yada…

2: Junior took over, and in spring of 2018, the announcement was made that Corporate had purchased a shiny brand new office tower building…five or six stories tall I think. So they moved into their shiny new corp hq and became the corporate suits that they wanted to be.

3: Flash forward to the info above this where I was told of all the new facilities. My travel was going to be close to 90%…Essentially coming home on Fridays, doing my laundry and packing again for leaving out on Monday….
Sorry I am not 20-30 years old anymore, and I have a life other than work.
The job was started to affect my health and well being, so at the end of Sept of 2018. I resigned.

4: Flash forward to Spring of 2019…approx. 6 mos later, (March 2019), Corp realizes how much money has been spent, and goes into panic mode, (the office thing really cost) and they are trying to figure out what to do.
And then they get ideas.

5: April 2019, 7 mos. after I am out…Corp goes on a "murder spree"…One morning a lot of suits show up and go to each department with a list of everyone in each department. They then tell the managers who is to be let go. The managers have no say so. The Team I was on was 12 people…they are cut down to 4. IT operations, help desk, and support, (other than us), was cut by over 50%. Naturally the upper directors and managers stayed. Had I stayed on, I would've been told to either pack up and move to Virginia or Phoenix, or lose my job.

6: Late Summer 2019…CW, the director of my plant in Indy, is then forced my Junior to take on "An assistant director", despite him saying that it's a job position that isn't needed as he and the production manager do what the assistant would be doing. The assistant that is brought in happens to be the assistant plant director of the Connecticut facility (We'll call him JW) who was known for being abusive, foul mouthed, and problematic, but was well liked by Junior. CW gets wind that "something is up".
Within two months, CW. who I enjoyed working with, is let go. Despite running the plant to an almost 100% efficiency, increasing safety record, and making plant of the year 3 years in a row, (including the one where they refused to give it to them as they said that it wouldn't be fair), they let him go. The official reason was that "he wasn't making the numbers", (despite evidence proving otherwise). The REAL reason was that he wasn't in Juniors clique and JW was…and now…guess who is the new Plant Director for the Indy plant?….You guessed JW, you have it right.

7: Meanwhile the Conn. Plant Director is termed for having sexual relations with a couple of his employees.

8: Meanwhile "the man who wouldn't listen", (see my previous posts on him), transferred to Houston, and did something really REALLY stupid down there and was let go.

9: Meanwhile the four guys remaining on my team each now have over a dozen facilities nationwide that they have to handle. My inner source still working there says that they only see their IT guy there once a quarter for 2-3 days at the most.

10: From then until recently, JW has run the facility into the ground. Refusing maintenance downtime, trying to force production on systems that cannot handle the load without maintenance, changing employee schedules, cussing at people, etc… Numbers and work production go do. Finished product goes down, equipment breaks down. JW simply screams at people to "Get it done". For those of you that watched ST TNG, thing of the episode "Chain of Command" and picture Captain Jellico, and have him literally yelling at people and cursing and you get an idea of what they are dealing with.

11: Employee morale is low, and turnover shoots through the roof. It got so bad that even contract staffing and temp agencies refuse to work the them.

12: Corporate finally gets to noticing what is going on…They have a few meetings about getting back on track. It doesn't happen.

13: Finally Corp Head Suits have conference with JW. They offered him a choice: Accept a job at corporate in California, or be terminated. So JW moves to California…Takes a corp suit job with better pay and leaves behind a formerly excellent production facility and team that has been crushed and destroyed by management style and personality. Yes the old saying is true "Eff up, move up"….

I'm happy I got out in time. I no longer want to be a corporate workaholic. I'm enjoying time with my wife, our house, the new game room, and paint room, and just living life in small town Indiana, and am finally catching up on all those tv shows that I have missed.
Recently during this time and the time of my accident, and recovery and our move to our new house, I've been doing some private consulting and contract work. As part of this, I've been overseeing an extensive project with Conagra. The first part of the project please them greatly as I brought it in under budget and 2 of the three facilities were 100% while the third (the largest) was 95% complete, (the remaining five per cent being hardware and equipment failure needing to be shipped back to the manufacturer for repair), as well as having them up and running ahead of schedule, and keeping not only the plant management team informed of the progress but the support staff also. This was so well received that the second part of the expansion project for the large facility they contacted my staff recruiter and asked for me personally. I feel good that they were appreciative. I enjoyed working with them, and since it's only 3.5 miles from my house…not a hard drive.

More will be coming as right now, I waiting for the second project to take off, and am angling a few short term temp contract positions.

Murphy

Eventually, you reap what you sow.

Glad you were able to get out in time.

Jim

Had 30 + years in management, part of that as a
'suit'. Was pretty successful in management by
following the basic rules:

Find people good at the jobs you need done, hire them
provide clear directions and GET OUT OF THEIR WAY !

Communicate up down and laterally CLEARLY AND WITHOUT
PREVARICATON.

When obstacles to progress come up whether for you
or your people, figure out ways around the obstacles
and do what's necessary (AKA 'Rules ????')

And always always talk to your employees every
day to keep them as informed as you can and make
sure they know when you can't tell them something.

Same anywhere, just more so it seems in IT. I retired in 2018 after a national very large health insurance company decided that it would consolidate its nationwide locally staffed IT support services to Richmond, VA and Atlanta, GA. Most of the nearly 2k IT members were not offered the move, or were offered the move at their expense and no one given a guarantee of a position going forward if they moved. Oddly, it seemed that it was the longest employed or highest costing employees let go.

Prior to that in 2010 I took a position as the senior Telecom IT position at the largest temp agency company in the US, responsible for the national HQ telecom systems, dozens of aging telecom systems nation wide and in overseas systems on all continents. In 2015 entire corporate HQ IT staff given 90 days to train their replacements in India (refuse to train them and no severance). People of 36 years let go without warning.

Prior to that took a position as Senior Telecom IT in 1994 for world's largest paper/sanitation products/supply products company. Sixteen (16) of us as peers to build out entire new linked telecom systems involving over 500 sites. Company bought and sold 2 times in 4 years, finally by a well known pirate that buys, strips and kills their victims. No training provided last 8 years I was their, limited pay raises, no promotions, no replacement of peers quitting or let go, back stabbing and throat cutting as teams fell apart, finally at one point was trying to manage, maintain, build/replace systems for every site west of Columbus, OH. Let go at end to be replaced on a nice guy who had no training, did not know what to do other than set up phones, etc. Entire staff of telecom IT for a national company down to 2 people. None of that includes the years of watching vendor kick-backs and bribes that the favored few in middle management get from vendors as senior management did not know its ass from a hole in the ground when complains were sent to them, a HR department that silently faded away over the years, a number of sexual harassment complaints buried if it involved certain managers, etc.

It is the American way. I love retirement, get to stay home with my pup, lowered my blood sugar and enjoy life.

I retired from the USAF in 2003 just ahead of getting med boarded out for knees (now both replaced). I kicked around education until this June. I have never seen management as poor as infects education. I was a poor fit in urban schools since I had the gall to expect homework and effort from kids taking physics. I ended at a great school with an awesome concept. 6 years starting in 9th grade, end up with an associates in IT or advanced manufacturing. Kids were good if more than a little lazy. Rural kids who mostly played dungeons and dragons etc. Staffing a small school with a lot of requirements meant that most of the staff was multi faceted. I taught physics, earth science and was a SPED teacher. Upper management kept parachuting in and canning teachers. One science teacher was officially let go since she gave saline eyedrops to a kid. Another was bounced 2019-2020 since he was the union rep and objected to the science teacher's firing. He taught English and computer programming. You start screwing around with a team and you lose huge gaps. We were thankfully in person all last year, but had to wear masks the whole time.
Retirement has not really hit yet since this is still the summer vacation. We moved south to get out of NY. We are less than an hour from my daughter and her kids. I don't miss it.