Spokane WA, Pasta USA

July 11, 2008

Well. The job my husband has kept since before he met me, nearly 14 years, is in the past. The new owners have twisted the working environment from merely physically punishing to mentally and emotionally impossible. They have changed everything that was practical, refused to repair machines, fired or forced to quit everyone who knew how things worked and actually did the job they were hired for, made him do three people's tasks without paying him any increase, and put him in charge of the whole shift without giving him the title or the pay scale to compensate for being the one they blame when things go wrong. Every time he trains a new person who can work up to standard, they take that person to another shift, and replace that person with a temp, meanwhile cursing and berating him if his production numbers fall. Finally, after 18 months of horrendous mismanagement, increased work loads, loss of material to work with and people who can work, he has had enough, and today will be his last day. He has not found a job yet, and in this town, in this economic setting, it is not easy to find a decent job, let alone a job that will pay what we are used to him being paid. But he will at last be able to walk without pain in his feet and legs, get up in the morning without dread of the miasma and disaster that awaits him at work every single day, and hold his head up with pride in the work he has accomplished. The proof of his worth is that they are going to have to hire THREE people to do the jobs he used to cover by himself, and at such a remarkable level of competency that despite the hardships they inflicted on him, he still surpassed the other shifts in production levels 9 times out of 10, when they had more people, and more experienced people, on their shifts. I have always been proud of my husband, knowing how hard-working, how knowledgeable, how totally competent he is, but the proof is there: three people to replace my one, abused but undefeated and unbowed, my one in a million wonderful man. I know that he will not be unemployed for long, and his skilled management of our finances has allowed us enough of a cushion that we are in no danger while he looks for a new job. The popularity of Dilbert cartoons has proved that no workplace is without its idiots and incompetents, its ludicrous rules and pointless rituals, its bosses that know next to nothing and workers that do next to nothing. But at least a new job will give him a new chance to show that he is worth every penny he is paid, and probably twice or even three times that. Not all change is necessarily bad change. We await the future.