Asleep at the Wheel

Today at the shape-up meeting at the start of our shift, Starner, my supervisor, told the crew that we were “in the red” for hours expended on our job. They had just held the 50 percent progress review, we were nowhere near finished, but we had already used up all the hours allotted to the job. Now every week they have progress meetings where they go over the job item by item. The progress in work completion is supposed to match or better the calendar. That is to say, when we have used up, say, 10 percent of the days allotted for the job in the contract they are supposed to be able to report the work as 10 percent completed. Likewise, each supervisor makes out time sheets each day showing the number of man hours spent by each worker on each work item worked that day. They also have printouts showing the hours budgeted overall to each work item. So how is it possible that they suddenly discover at the halfway point that we are “out of hours?”
Even more astounding, Starner blamed it on us for “messin’ off.” “Now we got no hours, there ain’t no messin’ off,” he declared. Those were his exact words. “You gonna have everybody and their momma walkin’ the ship,” he said. Then Ronnie Wilson, who is over Starner had his say. “You can’t come here every day and expect to steal money from the man,” he told us. “You’re putting his job on the line,” he said, referring to Starner. “You’re putting my job on the line.”
Now how can it be that these supervisors have just now discovered that we’ve been “messing off” and stealing the man’s money for over two months without their knowing it? Either this whole thing about being out of hours is bullshit (the general opinion) or they have been asleep at the wheel. Or both. I vote for both. But I do know where a lot of lost hours have gone. On Friday we all spent the last two hours of the day pulling back lines – extension cords, air hoses, and welding lines – this was to impress somebody – and then we had to run them again this morning in order to do any work. And then there’s all the hours wasted on these bullshit meetings.