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So... It happened (warning this is a bit of a read)
2 years ago
General
As of 4:30pm this last Wednesday, I put myself on someone's shit list in a big way.
Truthfully this whole ordeal started when my father started getting serious about getting a new vehicle to replace one that the frame is rotting out from under. After about three months of searching—and being something of a middleman for several weeks via facebook marketplace—a vehicle was found.
MY mother and I drove out to where the owner lived (about an hour away) and took it for a test drive, and gave it the once over. Everything about the vehicle met our collective requirements, however while on the test drive, the transmission took a shit. Well, it didn't seem too bad, and the guy selling it knew immediately what had happened, and—being a mechanic—how to fix it, so we said we'd buy it if he could get it fixed.
Now, as a professional courtesy, I kept my boss in the loop on the situation, as much as I needed to for my part. This meant giving him the forewarning that I would likely need to leave midweek the following week (which didn't happen by the way) to pick the "new" vehicle up. To which he responded, "well you always have the weekends," meaning that I wasn't going to be able to take the day off if I needed to.
Okay, fair enough. It's the employer's right to deny leave without adequate lead time, I was fine with that. What I was not fine with, was the implication.
In not so many words—and no uncertain terms—my boss had just implied that he had the right to control my time. Again, fair; while one is at work or scheduled to work, they should, and they should devote that time to their respective duties, baring any unforeseen circumstances.
What struck me with this dismissal of my professional courtesy, and the implication that he made, was that because my schedule was built around my job, and my immediate family (mother, father, brother) have to plan their schedules around mine so that I can help them (as I'm the only person in my family that does jack shit (with mom as the sole exception) for anyone but themselves) with their dealings—in this case, it was helping my mother find and purchase a vehicle that met the family's needs—he (my boss) also controlled their time, and the time of the guy selling the vehicle by extension as well.
Well, in full disclosure, I had been toying with the idea of trying to go part time at my job until SFS picked up, which would keep me from being completely reliant on my father, who has more than once expressed his extreme displeasure at my being anything more than a cum stained Kleenex 34 years ago (I'm 33 btw) and by extension wouldn't be a burden on my family, which I now am, despite working to earn my keep. But that didn't happen.
When my boss decided to claim lordship over my time, and the time of no less than four other people who he had nothing to do with, part time went out the window, and the clock started ticking. That was three weeks ago; the start of October.
Now, I've voiced my displeasure a great number of times at the conditions that I was working, to those in the know. Now for those who aren't, you soon will be. From low pay (less than half of a competitive wage within the industry) and dealing with a dog that had aggression issues so severe that FedEx sued my boss after one of their drivers was bitten, to blatant and severe OSHA, and EPA violations I had been fed up with my boss for a while when all this went down.
When I started planning on quitting at the end of this year, back in the trouble was only really getting started; back then it was just the dog, and the pay that bothered me. The other stuff was... is... bad, but not intolerable. However, between July, and October we had three things happen. 1: the shop lost an employee (that was a good thing because production in the shop sped up after he left) 2: the overall cleanliness of the shop (which at best could make a tornado stricken trailer park look like a five star resort in Miami) degraded to the point of having to actively avoid stepping in dog shit while working. And 3: the machines I was working on (CNC mills and lathes) began to fail repeatedly in ways that made them increasingly dangerous to operate.
Combine all of that with my boss's refusal to properly repair, or maintain those very same machines—doing little more than cobbling them together, or putting in temporary measures (such as a hardware store tarp (if you think I'm joking or exaggerating, I'll post a screencap of a video I took of one of the machines to prove my point)) to regain functionality, with no intention of actually repairing them, and you have a recipe for this last Tuesday...
The day started off spectacularly! *cough* sarcasm *cough* The first thing my boss did for the day was to reprimand me for not drilling and reaming an order of parts that I was running off a CNC lathe, while the lathe was running (common practice to save time since it needed to be done on a separate machine anyway.)
Now, this is a conversation we have on a very regular basis; any time I needed to have a second machine set up to do part of a job, but didn't know how to set it up, he would have to set it up; but he would only set it up the next day, or about half way through the order, which ever came first, then proceed to reprimand me for not doing what I needed the other machine set up to do. (Is it really the employee's job to tell, remind, or ask the employer to do theirs?)
Anyway, Immediately after this played out, I ran out of material to run the parts—another of my boss's ineptitudes... not being willing to order the material until the day it's needed because he can't budget well enough to afford it and keep the lights on in the same week, but I digress...
After informing him that I was out of material, which I hadn't known (thinking that I still had a few parts worth in the machine when I left Monday) I was further reprimanded, as he walked out the door to take his grandson to school (that's a long convoluted story in and of itself, which I won't get into here, but the reason his mother isn't in the picture is because she died a year or so ago.)
Now, within about ten minutes of him leaving to take his grandson to school, I hear the only other running (for the day) machine fail. Knowing it'll be down for the next hour, I pay no mind to the 2ic (the only other employee in the shop besides me) starting up the one—yeah, that's one... as in singular, less than two, no others in any way, shape, or form, ONE—fully functional machine in the entire shop (which is only so because it's using parts from another machine...) to set it up for another op on a run of parts I did the day before.
In total it took my about half an hour (boss still isn't back, he's usually gone for 1.5 to 2 hours in the morning) to get caught up on the parts I was reprimanded over earlier. Guess it was such a massive problem after all, huh? So now I have nothing to do, and have to pile in right along side the 2ic on the machine he just started up to help him (so that if the walks back in, it at least looks like I'm doing something.) So now there's two people, on one... as in singular, less than two, no others in any way, shape, or form, ONE machine. OUT OF NINE!!! that were running when I started this job eight years ago!
(see why I so heavily emphasized "one?" all of them have completely failed in some way or another in that time...)
Well, when my boss finally got back (around nine-ish in the morning, after leaving at seven) I was running again, because I and the other guy had to unload 300 pounds of material off the truck by hand (again... boss's job as he won't train anyone on the forklift.) I went until noon, when I normally break for 30 minutes (out of a ten hour day... remember OSHA? It used to be 15 minutes... remember the pay issue? Yeah...) When I came back, I found that my machine had gone down while I was on the other side of the shop. Why? The air compressor that my boss cobbled back together after it burst a line into the tank (which tore a lot of shit up) failed... again.
So I told my boss, just as he was sitting down to his lunch, oh well...
Anyway, he comes storming out goes grabs a pipe wrench, beats on the compressor a bit after shutting it off, digs out another air line, splices it into a machine that hasn't run for 4 years because the spindle is rusted solid so that my machine can run. He then proceeds to (and I'm sure he didn't know that I saw this) threaten to throw the wrench (probably at me) as he storms off throwing a hissy fit about how he can't even eat his lunch in peace.
I was done. I finished out the day and went home.
I would have handed my boss my time card then, but as I told him, it would have caused more trouble than it was worth to hand him my time card while he was enjoying a conversation with the 2ic when I clocked out Tuesday. So I came back Wednesday. I spoke to no one unless spoken to, did my work, took my break, and when I clocked out, I handed my boss the time card and told him I wasn't putting up with this shit anymore, and that I wouldn't be coming back, to which he simply replied, "okay."
Now I still have to go back to get my last check, but as of 4:30pm CST Wednesday afternoon, I am now a full time employee to my mother, helping her maintain the farm I live on (it's her property, I just live on it) and get it ready to be an income generating entity.
Now for the good part.
This means that I am now also dedicating a metric fuck-ton of time to SFS! I have a lot of stuff on the way, and in the works. I probably won't be taking many commissions this year for work, however, for those interested parties who've watched this page and keep up with the goings on here, (or are simply spying on me for people I no longer wish to associate with) that's not a bad thing, as I am currently making sample pieces of a new line of products that I'm going to start rolling out, probably after Christmas, and I'm also going to be opening up a patreon page for folks who want some stupid good discounts!
My commission info here is going to be changing to reflect the products and services I offer, and the website will FINALLY begetting updated (after 2 years...) I'll be restructuring my gallery as well, and if there's enough interest in certain things that I'm going to be offering (like my published work) I'll be cross posting that here as well!
Guys the end of this year is a major turning point, and I hope you all get to come along for the ride! I'm truly excited to finally have the time I need to get this ball rolling, and with my plans for this business outside FA (i.e. in the world at large) it's honestly starting to look like SycoFox Studios will be what I've been trying to make it since day one!
Thank you all, and I genuinely hope you'll join me in this new chapter of my life!
Good luck to you all, and God bless!
Casey.
Truthfully this whole ordeal started when my father started getting serious about getting a new vehicle to replace one that the frame is rotting out from under. After about three months of searching—and being something of a middleman for several weeks via facebook marketplace—a vehicle was found.
MY mother and I drove out to where the owner lived (about an hour away) and took it for a test drive, and gave it the once over. Everything about the vehicle met our collective requirements, however while on the test drive, the transmission took a shit. Well, it didn't seem too bad, and the guy selling it knew immediately what had happened, and—being a mechanic—how to fix it, so we said we'd buy it if he could get it fixed.
Now, as a professional courtesy, I kept my boss in the loop on the situation, as much as I needed to for my part. This meant giving him the forewarning that I would likely need to leave midweek the following week (which didn't happen by the way) to pick the "new" vehicle up. To which he responded, "well you always have the weekends," meaning that I wasn't going to be able to take the day off if I needed to.
Okay, fair enough. It's the employer's right to deny leave without adequate lead time, I was fine with that. What I was not fine with, was the implication.
In not so many words—and no uncertain terms—my boss had just implied that he had the right to control my time. Again, fair; while one is at work or scheduled to work, they should, and they should devote that time to their respective duties, baring any unforeseen circumstances.
What struck me with this dismissal of my professional courtesy, and the implication that he made, was that because my schedule was built around my job, and my immediate family (mother, father, brother) have to plan their schedules around mine so that I can help them (as I'm the only person in my family that does jack shit (with mom as the sole exception) for anyone but themselves) with their dealings—in this case, it was helping my mother find and purchase a vehicle that met the family's needs—he (my boss) also controlled their time, and the time of the guy selling the vehicle by extension as well.
Well, in full disclosure, I had been toying with the idea of trying to go part time at my job until SFS picked up, which would keep me from being completely reliant on my father, who has more than once expressed his extreme displeasure at my being anything more than a cum stained Kleenex 34 years ago (I'm 33 btw) and by extension wouldn't be a burden on my family, which I now am, despite working to earn my keep. But that didn't happen.
When my boss decided to claim lordship over my time, and the time of no less than four other people who he had nothing to do with, part time went out the window, and the clock started ticking. That was three weeks ago; the start of October.
Now, I've voiced my displeasure a great number of times at the conditions that I was working, to those in the know. Now for those who aren't, you soon will be. From low pay (less than half of a competitive wage within the industry) and dealing with a dog that had aggression issues so severe that FedEx sued my boss after one of their drivers was bitten, to blatant and severe OSHA, and EPA violations I had been fed up with my boss for a while when all this went down.
When I started planning on quitting at the end of this year, back in the trouble was only really getting started; back then it was just the dog, and the pay that bothered me. The other stuff was... is... bad, but not intolerable. However, between July, and October we had three things happen. 1: the shop lost an employee (that was a good thing because production in the shop sped up after he left) 2: the overall cleanliness of the shop (which at best could make a tornado stricken trailer park look like a five star resort in Miami) degraded to the point of having to actively avoid stepping in dog shit while working. And 3: the machines I was working on (CNC mills and lathes) began to fail repeatedly in ways that made them increasingly dangerous to operate.
Combine all of that with my boss's refusal to properly repair, or maintain those very same machines—doing little more than cobbling them together, or putting in temporary measures (such as a hardware store tarp (if you think I'm joking or exaggerating, I'll post a screencap of a video I took of one of the machines to prove my point)) to regain functionality, with no intention of actually repairing them, and you have a recipe for this last Tuesday...
The day started off spectacularly! *cough* sarcasm *cough* The first thing my boss did for the day was to reprimand me for not drilling and reaming an order of parts that I was running off a CNC lathe, while the lathe was running (common practice to save time since it needed to be done on a separate machine anyway.)
Now, this is a conversation we have on a very regular basis; any time I needed to have a second machine set up to do part of a job, but didn't know how to set it up, he would have to set it up; but he would only set it up the next day, or about half way through the order, which ever came first, then proceed to reprimand me for not doing what I needed the other machine set up to do. (Is it really the employee's job to tell, remind, or ask the employer to do theirs?)
Anyway, Immediately after this played out, I ran out of material to run the parts—another of my boss's ineptitudes... not being willing to order the material until the day it's needed because he can't budget well enough to afford it and keep the lights on in the same week, but I digress...
After informing him that I was out of material, which I hadn't known (thinking that I still had a few parts worth in the machine when I left Monday) I was further reprimanded, as he walked out the door to take his grandson to school (that's a long convoluted story in and of itself, which I won't get into here, but the reason his mother isn't in the picture is because she died a year or so ago.)
Now, within about ten minutes of him leaving to take his grandson to school, I hear the only other running (for the day) machine fail. Knowing it'll be down for the next hour, I pay no mind to the 2ic (the only other employee in the shop besides me) starting up the one—yeah, that's one... as in singular, less than two, no others in any way, shape, or form, ONE—fully functional machine in the entire shop (which is only so because it's using parts from another machine...) to set it up for another op on a run of parts I did the day before.
In total it took my about half an hour (boss still isn't back, he's usually gone for 1.5 to 2 hours in the morning) to get caught up on the parts I was reprimanded over earlier. Guess it was such a massive problem after all, huh? So now I have nothing to do, and have to pile in right along side the 2ic on the machine he just started up to help him (so that if the walks back in, it at least looks like I'm doing something.) So now there's two people, on one... as in singular, less than two, no others in any way, shape, or form, ONE machine. OUT OF NINE!!! that were running when I started this job eight years ago!
(see why I so heavily emphasized "one?" all of them have completely failed in some way or another in that time...)
Well, when my boss finally got back (around nine-ish in the morning, after leaving at seven) I was running again, because I and the other guy had to unload 300 pounds of material off the truck by hand (again... boss's job as he won't train anyone on the forklift.) I went until noon, when I normally break for 30 minutes (out of a ten hour day... remember OSHA? It used to be 15 minutes... remember the pay issue? Yeah...) When I came back, I found that my machine had gone down while I was on the other side of the shop. Why? The air compressor that my boss cobbled back together after it burst a line into the tank (which tore a lot of shit up) failed... again.
So I told my boss, just as he was sitting down to his lunch, oh well...
Anyway, he comes storming out goes grabs a pipe wrench, beats on the compressor a bit after shutting it off, digs out another air line, splices it into a machine that hasn't run for 4 years because the spindle is rusted solid so that my machine can run. He then proceeds to (and I'm sure he didn't know that I saw this) threaten to throw the wrench (probably at me) as he storms off throwing a hissy fit about how he can't even eat his lunch in peace.
I was done. I finished out the day and went home.
I would have handed my boss my time card then, but as I told him, it would have caused more trouble than it was worth to hand him my time card while he was enjoying a conversation with the 2ic when I clocked out Tuesday. So I came back Wednesday. I spoke to no one unless spoken to, did my work, took my break, and when I clocked out, I handed my boss the time card and told him I wasn't putting up with this shit anymore, and that I wouldn't be coming back, to which he simply replied, "okay."
Now I still have to go back to get my last check, but as of 4:30pm CST Wednesday afternoon, I am now a full time employee to my mother, helping her maintain the farm I live on (it's her property, I just live on it) and get it ready to be an income generating entity.
Now for the good part.
This means that I am now also dedicating a metric fuck-ton of time to SFS! I have a lot of stuff on the way, and in the works. I probably won't be taking many commissions this year for work, however, for those interested parties who've watched this page and keep up with the goings on here, (or are simply spying on me for people I no longer wish to associate with) that's not a bad thing, as I am currently making sample pieces of a new line of products that I'm going to start rolling out, probably after Christmas, and I'm also going to be opening up a patreon page for folks who want some stupid good discounts!
My commission info here is going to be changing to reflect the products and services I offer, and the website will FINALLY begetting updated (after 2 years...) I'll be restructuring my gallery as well, and if there's enough interest in certain things that I'm going to be offering (like my published work) I'll be cross posting that here as well!
Guys the end of this year is a major turning point, and I hope you all get to come along for the ride! I'm truly excited to finally have the time I need to get this ball rolling, and with my plans for this business outside FA (i.e. in the world at large) it's honestly starting to look like SycoFox Studios will be what I've been trying to make it since day one!
Thank you all, and I genuinely hope you'll join me in this new chapter of my life!
Good luck to you all, and God bless!
Casey.
