The Work Thread..

I had a bit of a conundrum solved for me this week. I can only thank my own personal deity.

I walked into an orientation class Monday morning and I was instantly stunned by the presence of a transitional person. Dunno to what, did not ask. He/her insisted on being called Billy Joe even though the legal name was Richard. Anyways, Billy Joe instantly had a rest room problem. We do not have private bathrooms anywhere in the DC. So I had to use an LP agent to clear the rest room of choice. Three times, one of which may have been a turd dump. Then the individual NCNS for three days, which is automatic termination. Turns out the individual got locked up for shooting a kid. Problem solved.

I am still going to strangle my recruiter though.
 
boozeman said:
I had a bit of a conundrum solved for me this week. I can only thank my own personal deity.

I walked into an orientation class Monday morning and I was instantly stunned by the presence of a transitional person. Dunno to what, did not ask. He/her insisted on being called Billy Joe even though the legal name was Richard. Anyways, Billy Joe instantly had a rest room problem. We do not have private bathrooms anywhere in the DC. So I had to use an LP agent to clear the rest room of choice. Three times, one of which may have been a turd dump. Then the individual NCNS for three days, which is automatic termination. Turns out the individual got locked up for shooting a kid. Problem solved.

I am still going to strangle my recruiter though.
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Holy shit. It's almost like it's... a mental illness.
 
boozeman said:
I had a bit of a conundrum solved for me this week. I can only thank my own personal deity.

I walked into an orientation class Monday morning and I was instantly stunned by the presence of a transitional person. Dunno to what, did not ask. He/her insisted on being called Billy Joe even though the legal name was Richard. Anyways, Billy Joe instantly had a rest room problem. We do not have private bathrooms anywhere in the DC. So I had to use an LP agent to clear the rest room of choice. Three times, one of which may have been a turd dump. Then the individual NCNS for three days, which is automatic termination. Turns out the individual got locked up for shooting a kid. Problem solved.

I am still going to strangle my recruiter though.
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Hr nightmares ftw. Always good when they settle themselves.
 
shoop said:
Hr nightmares ftw. Always good when they settle themselves.
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That is always my best practice.

When you see someone is a train wreck, let them wreck.

This one was an extreme case, but it worked out.

Say that reminds me, since it is Pride Month coming up and all, there is a corporate initiative to address with a "playbook" (which amazingly, someone got paid to do) that is expected to be executed. Set up Pride celebrations all over the DC, etc, put it up on TikTok and Workplace, plan a Pride-themed cookout! Have a rainbow day where everyone dresses in bright colors and shows their pride!

I am sorry, I am not doing that. I know my audience. These simple yet hard-working salt-of-the-earth types would struggle with it. If were down at the DC in Atlanta? Or the four in Florida, yeah. I could see that. But not here.

That is one thing that bothers me is that there is a growing trend for this kind of push, which is very short-sighted. Not everybody is equipped to handle that. But it is the corporate mentality now too I guess.

Once they sent a Corporate Fixer down here after my first GM got fired and it was right around the time of George Floyd.

He actually got in front of a whole shift of 300 people and said "BLACK LIVES MATTER" and it was a very tense situation.

I cringed inside. And sure as shit, in the days afterward, it blew up on Facebook and it cost a couple of people their jobs.

That stupid ass guy got his in the end too. My HR Deity is good.
 
I started with Frito-Lay a couple of years ago, small local distribution center near me.

As far as DCs go, it's a logistical nightmare and while I didn't realize it at the time, the parent company PepsiCo is as draconian as they get. I'm not a huge union guy and they like Indiana because it's a right to work state but I have worked one other job that I thought "This site needs a union." That was back in the 90s, a smaller family owned company in NJ.

The local crew is great, particularly the operations manager but the processes and corporate bureaucracy are a nightmare.
 
DLK150 said:
I started with Frito-Lay a couple of years ago, small local distribution center near me.

As far as DCs go, it's a logistical nightmare and while I didn't realize it at the time, the parent company PepsiCo is as draconian as they get. I'm not a huge union guy and they like Indiana because it's a right to work state but I have worked one other job that I thought "This site needs a union." That was back in the 90s, a smaller family owned company in NJ.

The local crew is great, particularly the operations manager but the processes and corporate bureaucracy are a nightmare.
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I am pleased to say I have never been in a Unionized facility.
 
I've been a union member twice and don't gravitate towards them. One was completely pointless, a retail textile union in the late 80s/early 90s that was there when I was hired. I paid paltry dues but otherwise didn't know it existed.

The other was several years later, a factory that unionized while I was there. I was a dissenting voice but in the minority. It was a joke because the union was in bed with the ownership. However, that place didn't offer vacation time, raises based on anything, no benefits at all and were complete slave drivers in awful conditions.

It wasn't long after the government started setting work discrimination rules though and afterward, private unions became less of a thing except for ones like The Teamsters, AFL-CIO, UAW, etc.

Not long before I was hired, there was a strike at a location in KC. One person was fired where I'm at just for mentioning a local warehouser branch of the teamsters afterward that was overheard by the front office. Just for saying the words.
 
DLK150 said:
I've been a union member twice and don't gravitate towards them. One was completely pointless, a retail textile union in the late 80s/early 90s that was there when I was hired. I paid paltry dues but otherwise didn't know it existed.

The other was several years later, a factory that unionized while I was there. I was a dissenting voice but in the minority. It was a joke because the union was in bed with the ownership. However, that place didn't offer vacation time, raises based on anything, no benefits at all and were complete slave drivers in awful conditions.

It wasn't long after the government started setting work discrimination rules though and afterward, private unions became less of a thing except for ones like The Teamsters, AFL-CIO, UAW, etc.

Not long before I was hired, there was a strike at a location in KC. One person was fired where I'm at just for mentioning a local warehouser branch of the teamsters afterward that was overheard by the front office. Just for saying the words.
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Not sure when that was but now he could sue for a lot of money. That is completely illegal.
 
boozeman said:
Say that reminds me, since it is Pride Month coming up and all, there is a corporate initiative to address with a "playbook" (which amazingly, someone got paid to do) that is expected to be executed. Set up Pride celebrations all over the DC, etc, put it up on TikTok and Workplace, plan a Pride-themed cookout! Have a rainbow day where everyone dresses in bright colors and shows their pride!
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That's absurd. Did you do all that for pacific islander month?
 
DLK150 said:
I've been a union member twice and don't gravitate towards them. One was completely pointless, a retail textile union in the late 80s/early 90s that was there when I was hired. I paid paltry dues but otherwise didn't know it existed.

The other was several years later, a factory that unionized while I was there. I was a dissenting voice but in the minority. It was a joke because the union was in bed with the ownership. However, that place didn't offer vacation time, raises based on anything, no benefits at all and were complete slave drivers in awful conditions.

It wasn't long after the government started setting work discrimination rules though and afterward, private unions became less of a thing except for ones like The Teamsters, AFL-CIO, UAW, etc.

Not long before I was hired, there was a strike at a location in KC. One person was fired where I'm at just for mentioning a local warehouser branch of the teamsters afterward that was overheard by the front office. Just for saying the words.
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Welcome back, brother.
 
shoop said:
Not sure when that was but now he could sue for a lot of money. That is completely illegal.
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Officially, he pointed out. He actually had enough attendance points to be fired long before but they kept him around because he was a good worker that knew his stuff. Everyone that worked there knew the truth though.

They did the same thing with two people that were there when I started, both had been there for over three years. Early that winter, they both were informed they had pointed out and were upset about it. They kept them around a couple of months(They thought they were safe), long enough to train their replacements then whack. It's all within the very lengthy Pepsico terms of employment that everyone is supposed to read upon being hired.

The facility operations manager does not have the final say if someone is fired, she often doesn't find out until after the fact. She doesn't have control over who is hired either. People apply online, go through the process and if a current employee's numbers aren't cutting it, they throw another body in there and she decides what position they're assigned to. She doesn't even see the applications or resumes of people that are hired.

The stories I could tell about that place after two years...Frito-Lay isn't bad but the parent company Pepsico pulls all the strings.
 
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