Literally Pushing His Button
I was in filling in for the second shift production manager. I was in the production office doing the production paperwork when the phone rang. It was a guy who came to the company to deliver a bulk tanker of soy sauce. He said that I needed to call Ned from Receiving to unload it.
I told the driver that Ned was on day shift and had just left. He said that Ned always unloads it. I went back to see if I could avoid bothering Ned by doing something myself about it. I asked him what was involved with unloading it. He said that he hooked the hose up and all that I had to do was check the connection and push the button to the pump.
So I checked the connection and pushed the button. The deliveryman gave me a strange look.
"That's it?" I asked, since the driver made me wonder.
"That's it."
Okay. That's overly simple, I thought, so I went back to the paperwork.
A little while later Ned broke my concentration by screaming and cussing at me at the top of his lungs. "Why are you doing my job?"
"What? Because I pushed one button?"
He was still throwing a world class tantrum. Obviously to try and intimidate and bully me. He was the Chief Union Steward and no doubt felt that it was his place to be the tough guy.
I realized that this deliveryman knew about the smelly arrangement. Ned could have "unloaded" the soy sauce on his regular shift. He just wanted call back pay to come back and do nothing.
I stood my ground. I told him, "We are not going to call you in and give you four hours of pay just to push one button." He obviously knew the tanker was coming in so he could have stayed over and done some real work for an hour until the tanker arrived.
Ned stormed out of the office with determination. He headed down the hall. No doubt he went to cry to one of the big dogs about how he was going to file a grievance. I thought that maybe my stand would only confirm to upper management that I would not yield to such tactics and they would see that as a plus.
I readied myself for a battle that I had no intention whatsoever of losing. Strangely enough, I never heard one word of this again. Ned may have had a deal with management on this. In which case, I should have ratted his arrangement to his rank and file members. Maybe he realized his stance would not be acceptable and he would not prevail. On top of that, I would write him up for his screaming and cussing at me.
One of the few regrets I have from those days is that I did not more aggressively pursue writing him up. I was a Union Steward once. I knew that pasting Ned with a write-up that stuck would be a big torpedo to the hull of his big battleship sized ego. On the other hand, I did not feel that I had firm backing from a wavering management.
Years later after this occurrence, I related this story to another guy at a different company. He threw a big fit saying that I took this guy's job. Perhaps you as the reader agree that I was in the wrong. "Nuts" to you.
I maintain that this evil practice of featherbedding is nothing short of legalized extortion and jeopardized the health and longevity of the company.
Lock Out Tag Out: The sanitation supervisor wanted to find who had the lock on the panel that was for the big mixer across the room so she could start it. The owner of the lock was nowhere to be found so she went and got the big bolt cutters and cut the lock. Then the guy who was cleaning the mixer hopped out of it a couple of seconds before she got it started. We were still worried there might be a fatality.