The Work Saga…

Gather ’round my children and you will hear… (Opps wrong mental channel. Click. Click.)

I’ve mentioned the work situation a couple of times, I figured I’d elaborate on it a bit.

Four years ago I joined the Military Industrial Complex. I did this after having diligently avoided Government / DOD entanglements for my entire professional career.

The draft had ended when I came of age. I registered, but never did military service. I didn’t volunteer because I knew I didn’t take orders well and would probably have spent my term of service in a brig somewhere.

Had I chosen a service it would have been the Marines or the Navy.

I went to work for a government contractor.

I was proud of this decision especially in light of 9/11, our ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and that I could have a chance to contribute to the safety of our troops and by extension our country.

I was even dedicated enough that I took a hefty pay cut, figuring that I was embarking on a career with a company that I’d be able to retire from. Biting the bullet in the short term meant an opportunity for some security, a decent pension, and great healthcare. In short, it was a worthwhile tradeoff given my longer term goals.

At my age I’m looking at the whole retirement thing. I don’t want to be eating cat food and pushing a grocery cart.

A lot of the businesses I’ve worked for in the recent past have not only off-shored much if not all of their work. They’ve used off shoring as a threat to engender fear in the remaining employees about loosing their jobs.

At the same time these companies have systematically reduced benefits, and essentially told the employee suck it!

That’s another story for another time. I will say this… I think off-shoring is tantamount to treason and should be punishable.

If you can fling your business across the fucking Pacific Ocean, you can fling that business to the heartland of America and put our out of work Citizens BACK TO WORK.

At the same time we’d  reduce pollution and our dependency on oil by eliminating commuting.

Apparently this simple logic escapes most of the extremely well educated elite who control government and industry. They’d rather see us all driving Priuses which cost as much as my “Luxury”  German Auto and aren’t nearly as nice or fun to drive.

I digress…

So I bit the bullet and I was good with it. I went to work in a slightly different environment than I was used to. I’ve spent a large part of my career testing software, the difference here was the official nature of the testing.

Things move along pretty well during year one. I even managed to take a vacation! Wow been a while since I had the time or the money to do that.

Years 2, 3, & 4 Just as summer begins, we have all hands meetings. In each of these meetings Management starts ringing this layoff bell. Each year the layoff warning bell gets rung a little earlier.

Each year the employees are asked to take vacation time. The managers explain that by doing this we’ll be protecting each others jobs because vacation pay comes out of a different budget.

The first couple of years people did as requested. After all, it was a team effort and in general we all want to protect each other. The last year we were asked if we could take unpaid time to help out. It was during this time that upper management saw fit to hire an intern.

So lets review, Management says our project is having funding issues and people are going to be laid off. They ask employees to take vacation time and unpaid time off, AND THEY HIRE AN INTERN! WTF?

Needless to say we all said NO Fucking way and all of us stopped pissing our vacations away and taking unpaid furlough days.

Strangely, no layoffs happened. But managers did get their bonuses managers always got their bonuses…which seemed odd.

This year, the layoff bell started ringing very early.

As I mentioned in a previous post this year it was for real, in fact the project that I was working on was effectively terminated. With no other projects to move to… So was I.

The signs of impending doom were all around. Most of the time they were written in flashing neon on the walls.

During the tail end of the project, we were asked to choose between furlough (unpaid) and outright layoff. The higher-ups  wanted us to take the furlough because they thought there might be another project waiting in the wings. I took the furlough because I was hoping for that new project and by doing so I would have medical insurance until Oct 1. 
By the time they finally admitted that there was in fact no new project and that we were really being laid off, management had 3 months to plan for the day. They had time to collect all the information that was necessary to process us all out smoothly and efficiently and yet… They were mostly un-prepared.
This was consistent with the way management had behaved for the entire four years I worked for the company.  While I was hoping that at the end they would have at least done us the courtesy of planning the day, I wasn’t terribly surprised to learn that no-one had bothered to train the person handling the exit process.
I no longer have any illusions about why we have 200,000.00 toilet seats, or how more expensive airframes that are still on the drawing board are selected for our military over airframes that are in fact ready and have already been test flown. 
Equally I’ve had a glimpse into the workings and mentality of the military industrial complex, and by extension the government.
For those of you wondering why the government is as much of a mess as it is, I suggest that you rent the movies Pentagon Wars it’s a comedy. 
Unfortunately it is far truer than anyone would like to admit. In particular the descriptions of the characters careers at the end of the movie is worth reading.

I once remarked that if what I was seeing at the company was occurring anywhere outside aerospace/defense industry there would have been heads rolling down the halls.

Of course I was told “this is how we do things…”

My retort was “Doesn’t make it right. “

I’ve learned my lesson, If something doesn’t seem right regardless of assurances like “We’ve always done it this way” I should stick to my guns… attempt to change the process or procedure for the better, and failing that… immediately look for a new job.

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