You know what even though I work alone now, after reading all these posts I guess I'll rant and rave about my old job. It was working for the Army as contract mechanics with Sikorsky up in Ft. Belvoir in DC. I literally don't know where to start with this list. lol I guess lets talk about my boss: BIG Puerto Rican guy who was the test pilot. Someone thought it would be a fine idea to put a Pilot in charge of mechanics. At some point he got the name Coco (as in the gorilla) because he had the stature of a standing gorilla, and honestly, it was terribly hard to understand him while talking face to face, and IMPOSSIBLE while on the phone. Due to the mission we were supporting, we were stuck on 4 10 hour shifts, and most days we sat in the break room and counted ceiling tiles for 9 out of 10 hours. It was enough to drive you mad. Coco would just kind of drop by from time to time and micromanage. He would just walk in the office, check out the hangar floor and send us all out with brooms. He loved doing that as "punishment" for us. Times like that he would say that we use the hangar (the helicopters weren't ours, they were the armys and we worked on them) and that we should keep it clean. Great. Fine. That works, but then when we want to do something to make our life easier, i.e. park the helis differently, or move things around then suddenly it's the Army's hangar and we can't do that. So which is it? If it's the Armys hangar then they can keep it looking good. They used it as well for their blackhawks and made a mess. BTW the army guys sat around just as much as us. They were just down the hallway. Lets not think that they were on the range or on maneuvers or anything. They're on autotrader and youtube just like us. I know it sounds petty on here im sure, but in the moment, when you're being micromanaged and held to double standards it's quite frustrating.
Now lets move on to the biggest PITA: A man we called "The Worlds Ugliest Man." He sure was. We had an EH&S guy named Steve. Great guy. He was about to leave for a new job and his EH&S Duty was gonna open up. I put my vote in for taking over his duty. I wanted it to fluff up the old resume you know?
On to TWUMan. His name is Manny. Also Puerto Rican guy. Now Manny used to work at our site a while ago, and him and one or two other guys who are no longer around are friends with Coco. They abused that fact to no end. They would never work and Coco would do squat. Eventually they all left, or in Manny's case went to another base of operations in the company. I believe it was Corpus Christi. That base was going to close so he had no choice but to volunteer for a station on Kwajalein Island in the pacific if he wanted to stay with our company. Our company at great expense moved him out there, and after a week the guy QUIT. (One of our guys actually left his family for 3 months to help cover for that guy leaving.) Heres the kicker: Coco took it upon himself to re-hire this guy at our base. He didn't tell his boss, he didn't tell our supervisor. The guy just showed up one day. A month later is when Steve was leaving us. As I said I applied. Coco decided to put his friend Manny in the position. EH&S was an additional duty on top of you being a mechanic. That's how it was for Steve, that's how it is for all of our other additional duties. Can you see where I'm going with this?
Environmental Health and Safety became Manny's main job. He milked it for 39 out of 40 hours a week. Literally shuffled papers all day long. Needless to say I wasn't happy. It was a slap in the face, so Coco and I had words. I was vocal at my displeasure and everyone thought it was complete stupidity on our boss's part. The boss went so far as to lie to my face about how Manny had great experience and how STEVE was doing a bad job. He wasn't. He got an A on his EH&S eval. The man in charge of EH&S for the company even hated Manny and had no idea why he was given the job. I might add that the HR guy from Corpus Christi stuck a note in Manny's file (which was sent straight to our HR guy) that said: "Haha got you back." We sent him Manny the first time and now he's back lol. What does that tell you about the man? To wrap it up: We all hated him, and tortured him until the very end. The program shut down, we all moved on, and I think he's still unemployed.
I profoundly apologize for the length and seeming incoherence of this post. It just all came streaming back lol.
