What Were They Thinking?

Last week at work we had a couple of incidents.

Incident# 1

One of the guys on nights took it upon himself to throw away a dumpster full of shipping blankets. The day shift janitor found them and reported it to a supervisor just like he’s supposed to. He pulled them out of the trash compactor and counted 30 blankets. Now, we do throw away old, torn and extremely dirty blankets. We use them to protect the produce from freezing in the back of our trucks on cold days. These blankets were in good to excellent condition so there was no cause to throw them away. You can imagine the management was less than happy at 2 to 3 hundred dollars worth of blankets in the trash. The guy who threw them away says he was told to. There are somewhere around 70 cameras at work. The video of the incident shows him dump the dumpster and return later to see if they are hidden by more trash yet. My question is this, if he was told  to throw them away by a supervisor why was he worried about hiding them in more trash? He received a 10 day suspension and was almost fired. He is now angry at the day shift janitor for ” Ratting him out”. The day shift guy did nothing wrong. The guy on nights shouldn’t have been  doing something wrong and he would not be in trouble now. He has no one to blame but himself.

Incedent # 2

A friend of mine I’ve known since 1982 decided to try and take an $80 dollar case of meat. The company was trying to determine when another employee had left and noticed my friend walking out with a 30lb case of meat. The management then reviewed the videos and they saw where he picked it up, threw it on his forklift, drove it to the door, and walked out to his truck an hour before he was supposed to leave{ like I said there are 70 cameras}. He came back in 10 minutes later and finished his shift. He of course was fired. After he was fired the company posted a notice on the bulletin board  that talks about how they understand that times are tough but stealing is wrong. It also talks about an employee assistance program and how they are there for us if we have problems. I seriously doubt he was having hard times. I think he was just stocking up his freezer.

We make, with our pension and health insurance, easily in excess of 50,000 a year and I know his wife has a good job. So for the price of $80 dollars he gave up a 50,000 dollar job that is very recession proof. Like I said before there are cameras everywhere in and around the building. How did he think he wasn’t going to get noticed? How do you go home and tell your wife that you were fired for being stupid? The company is missing 6 cases of the same meat. They think there is more than one thief now.

The sad part about this is that these are not new employees. The first guy has been there about 15 years, the second was there 19. They know what is expected of them. They know how to keep their job. Oh! and one more thing they were both Union stewards. They represent me to the company.  When I was steward I felt I needed to be an example of a good employee and did my best to act accordingly. Maybe they should have tried to do that to.  The people on their shift elected them to their position. Those two let them down.

P.S. People were unhappy about how I did my job as steward and were putting me to a vote of confidence, I did nothing wrong, and I didn’t want to fight for a job that I wasn’t getting paid to do. I resigned. I still don’t get what I did to make people want to remove me from the position. Too honest for them I guess.