SoapZone Community Message Board

In retrospect, I'm not sorry I quit but I think I should've maybe hung around another month or so just for the pay. But then again, the LEAN process might've really screwed me up physically. This might be a bit hard to visualize but...prior to LEAN, the line I worked on was an actual LINE. There were four work stations--gluing, welding, labelling/o-ringing and testing/bagging/packing. Each station was individually manned, though on nights when someone called off or someone was needed elsewhere, we could run the line with three or even two people. Nights with three were hard--inevitably somebody (usually me) would get stuck working two stations while the other two people only worked one instead of trying to divide the work more equally--but nights with two people weren't bad. We used to have big boxes on wheels that we'd put the finished cartridges in; the boxes were in between stations so the next person could just reach in and grab the cartridges they'd not done yet. There was also room on the tables for when everyone was pretty much keeping up with everyone and nobody was more than 2-3 pieces behind. This was all working just fine...and then first they implemented a system where after the first cartridge of the night went down the line, every one after that was handed directly to the next person. Management thought that sped up the process (it didn't really) and reduced the amount of handling of the cartridge (it did but it wasn't detrimental to the cartridge to be handled often). And finally, they moved the stations into a rough sideways U shape. Now everyone but the gluer were bumping butts...but that didn't last because eventually it became that the gluer glued and set the cartridge in the welder, then the welder welded (it was just a matter of pressing buttons), labelled, o-ringed, tested, bagged and packed the cartridge. Of course those last three stations took just slightly more time so sometimes you'd have the gluer just standing around waiting for the second worker to finish packing and the second worker busting tail to do all that work. And that's what finally did me in...by the end, it was me and "N" on the line. N was a delight to work with; he was (at the time) 21 and very respectful and in total awe that I could do the physical stuff and just about keep up, and he was happy to help out where he could. But for a long time now, I've been prone to vertigo and literally spinning around from welder to o-ringer to tester/bagger would make me dizzy some nights, especially when it was 90 degrees INSIDE the building.

Oh my goodness, YES. I used to tell people that it took me 20 years to learn 70% of the jobs at the bindery but I'd probably done 75% of the jobs at my second workplace after just two years. There's been studies done on workers' mindsets, how some are content doing the exact same thing day after day, year after year while others need the challenge of bouncing around. I fall somewhere in between...yes, I get bored doing the same thing every day* but I also hate learning a new job every few weeks.

* at the bindery, I did the same thing every day--checking trim--but I was constantly looking at new books and finding new things to do (folding back foldouts so they wouldn't get trimmed off or pulling out material to go in a back pocket, for example) so it didn't feel so repetitious.

But my last workplace didn't care about what you wanted to do. You were expected to learn everything and do everything, and if you didn't like something or wasn't good at it, that didn't matter. I still can't get over how I was forced to learn how to test K-5 units, a job I both hated and sucked at. It was a long, complicated process and when a unit failed one of the multiple tests, I was expected to a) know why and b) fix it, even though I a) had no idea how the bloody units worked and b) had only ever built part of them (they went down a line too, just like cartridges). And then one night, after months of not testing the K-5 units and totally forgetting how to, I was asked to spend the night testing K-5 units *sigh*.

Honestly not trying to toot my own horn here but yes, unless they went strictly on seniority (which they didn't for the layoffs), I wasn't going anywhere. I was there every day, on time (never late once, in over 2 years), pleasant to everyone and (outwardly) willing to move around, doing different jobs. Plus there was a guy--"G"--who was the head of the entire operation at our location (it was a global company with branches in six countries and several locations in the US). For some reason, he was present at my interview and really took a liking to me. We talked for a while afterwards in the parking lot, mostly about family (we both had relatives in NC) and states we'd traveled to. On the rare occasions G visited our building during our shift, he'd give a perfunctory greeting to my supervisor and make a point of stopping to talk with me for a while, ignoring everyone else. Yeah...I likely wouldn't have been so lucky as to be laid off. I even volunteered myself to be laid off when the first layoffs happened just before I left. I told them to let me go, since I was going to quit anyways, and keep "S", a sweet young woman who could do most of the jobs I did and was both younger than me and needed the job more than I did. I was told no, "it doesn't work that way". They might've let S go because she missed an occasional day due to health issues she couldn't control.

Regarding your second point...YES! Though at times I struggle to understand how SOME people say it's "impossible" to live on $100,000/year. I understand there are areas of the country where the cost of living is higher and that amount of money won't go as far. But surely it can go far enough to cover rent and basic living expenses?

This brings to mind two stories...the first was a story I saw several years ago about a couple living in NYC complaining that they "couldn't" live on $1 million dollars a year. Again, I realize that NYC is an expensive city to live in but this couple lost me when they started talking about the cost of sending their only child to private school and how they "had" to have a summer home outside of the city.

The second story is more recent...a young woman was on TikTok complaining about her lack of money. According to her, she made $2000/month and was living by herself in a 2 bedroom apartment that cost her $1600/month. I thought to myself yes, she's lacking money...but I could immediately think of three ways to help with that. A) either find a better paying job or get a side hustle. B) Get a roommate to share the cost of rent. C) If you HAVE to live alone, look for a smaller place with lower rent. I've not seen any kind of update from this woman (and probably won't since the only time I see a TikTok video is when it's embedded in a story on my phone or on YouTube), but I hope she's figured out a way to have more than $400/month after rent to live off of.

Now THAT'S something I think I will never understand. How can nursing homes charge so much and yet pay their hard-working CNAs and STNAs so little? I have much respect for Granny (and everyone else who works in that field)...the stories she told me about being cursed out by patients, being struck by patients (not their fault--it was the dementia causing the violence), being verbally abused by family members (TOTALLY their fault), having to stay over or pick up extra shifts because of co-workers calling off or just plain not showing up, having to do all the work when she was paired with a lazy co-worker who just wanted to sit and stare at her phone all night, etc. THESE are the folks who should be making $100,000/year.