It ain't so bad!

[Mitch Cronin]

.. ya know... Working for AC really isn't so bad as some of us have been making it sound...

Take me for instance (the best I can do since I can see through my own eyes )...

I may work a shift that's slowly killing me, but I work with a lot of really good people. The supervisor on our crew is a hell of a good guy. Our managers even try to smile when they come in in the morning... They're having a rough go, but they've gotta try to make it work somehow...

They've been handed the proverbial sow's ear and somehow they're supposed to turn it into a silk purse. It can't happen of course, but neither can they tell their superiors it won't work. Milton and company handed out a bunch of square pegs and said, "by golly you guys make them fit in them round holes!"

The numbers are written in stone for the creditors, the investors and the monitors and judges and all their dogs to look at, so going back to them now and saying, "Uhhh, these numbers don't work." apparently isn't an option...

In the case of line maintenance, the numbers are based on a bit of a farce, but don't tell anyone. You see, they counted on a bunch of savings from laying people off... thinking they could cover the manpower losses with un-paid overtime. Great idea! Schedule overtime to get the work done, don't pay for the overtime, but give it to them in time... so, for every 2 days of overtime a guy works, he'll get 3 days off (after he's accumulated 200 hours in his "time bank" - and they'll give us time off in blocks of a week or two at a time)...

Except that, in line maintenance, as opposed to heavy maintenance, there isn't any slow periods that people can be sent home... So if it were to work as they'd envisioned, after a while they'd have all of us maxed out in that time bank, but wouldn't be able to send anyone home... and they still wouldn't have enough people to get all the work done. A deficit labour situation.

I'm thinking the minds at work there must have figured it wouldn't matter, since they probably hoped that by the time we all had our time banks filled, we'd be out of CCAA, and nobody could crap in their cornflakes for recalling those laid off any more... it wouldn't matter by that point whether the numbers they'd engraved in stone were false.

One of the troubles with that line of thought, is that it presumes the folks you've got working for you will happily go along with it. The Orkish hordes will do as they're told with the click of a mouse button. hmmmm... It all depends on people being as productive as they had been... which, when they're a trifle annoyed at the situation, doesn't seem to be happening quite as well as was hoped.

Never mind, it must be right, it's written in stone.

Anyway... in the face of all that, we've got a lot of confused and somewhat frazzled people showing up for work every day, trying to hammer those square pegs in those round holes. It's a credit to their dedication and loyalty to their bosses! They really are trying. That sow's ear isn't likely to look anything like a silk purse anytime soon, but it might look better than my wallet.

I reckon if all these square pegs haven't flown off in all directions by the time we emerge from bankruptcy protection, Milton's gonna owe a lot of beer to all these dazed and confused managers. But they'll be busy trying to find some of the folks they've laid off...

In the mean time, if you guys find some things that make you go "hmmmm?", just file it in the to-be-puzzled-out-later pile.

Crisis management, putting out fires, and stumbling blind are our managers specialties at the moment, and it's really something to see them at work! If only they'd had the courage to tell their bosses it wouldn't work, so they could direct their energies into more productive things... but never mind. I'm sure they're all just as gratified to know the head honcho's are to be heavily rewarded after it's all done. And AC doesn't seem to work like that. When a manager tells one of his underlings to make something happen, he's supposed to make it happen, not explain why it can't.

But wait a second... I started off saying things aren't that bad, right? Well, they aren't. We're not having grenades lobbed in our homes, and we don't have to worry about car bombs and snipers on the rooftops... Most of us still find our way home at the end of our day, and the people we work with are still great people... just a little frazzled, that's all.

Maybe I'll buy them all a virtual beer with the virtual money I'll be making for all the virtual overtime I'll be working? .... Bob and Cal could probably dip into their petty cash to fix all this, but I don't suppose that'd be as much fun.

Oh to be King for a day.... or a week, or a couple of months even... Life sure does get interesting while you're busy making other plans.

....And the good thing about being down in the bottom of a pit is that you can't fall any lower. (unless the buggers fire me for speaking my mind, as I seem to be inclined to do... but then they'd hear from me!)

Anyway, in seriousness, many cudos to all the lower managers who are struggling like hell to put out all these fires... but next time maybe you could tell the man what won't work before it's written in stone?

Cheers,