INSIDE THE INSANITY FACTORY

Hello all you folks out in blogland, this is my first attempt at blogging. One of my pals who is an advid blogger suggested I take this endeavor up. He says it is good for your mental health and a lot of fun. I thought to myself: I am kind of a big mouth blow hard, so it would be right up my alley. In my blog I will muse about my job, things that rub me the wrong way, and any items of interest. One of my main themes will be the need for more common sense in the world, and my war against pretention and political correctness, how original, I know. The unending battle must be fought.

The title of my blog refers to the place I work. I work for an extremely large small package shipping company. I do not want to name it, to protect the guilty. I will give you one big hint; the company's main corporate colour is the same colour as Shite. The colour is also mentioned in their adverts and that is the main colour of their trucks. OOPs did I give too much away? Their colour should also give you some idea about the quality of the company and many of the people who work there.

I thought getting a job at a large multinational entity would be a good thing. You know, you think of the usual things: good pay and benefits, a lot of opportunity to move up and around the globe, an interesting challengeing work place. But NOOOO! Was I ever wrong! If I knew back then what I know now I would have never signed up. I originally signed up because one of my friends said he was cruising the Net and went to this company's website, They said they needed extra workers for the christmas rush. The ad also said things like "good pay", "bonues", "sugarplums", "exciting and meaningful work", and "world peace". I, being unemployed at the time, thought, Wow here is My chance to snag a real good job and help create peace in the middle east. So both me and my mate applied together. The funny thing is he did not even get an interview or so-sorry-card, the lucky sod. I recieved 3 interviews and all kinds of promises. Boy, my friend has a lot to answer for.

The place I work is really the insanity factory. It causes insanity in most of its employees and seems to be run by insane blind idiot gods. There is no such thing as common sense, up is down, black is white, and dogs sleep with cats. In a sense it is the physical incarnation of insanity. Most decisions are up to the whims of the day of the blind idiots. So something that is procedure one day will be totally different the next, due to how the idiot on duty is feeling. Being a large corporation there are all types of red tape and procedures written down to follow. I believe this is just done to protect against lawsuits, and give the employees the illusion that there is some order in their corporate universe. I know sometimes you have to ad-lib and adapt to day-to-day situations that arise in a busy day, especially in a business like shipping. What I am mainly writing about are basic things like how to treat people decently and not having double standards.

As you can infer from what I have said earlier, my employers do not treat people very well. They follow the philosophy of the Roman empire: people are just like beasts of burden who are to be used to further the interests of the empire and amuse the ruling classes. If they are mistreated or killed, so be it. I am not so naive as to believe that this is not the way business has always been done and has to be to a certain extent, but you should try to treat people with some modicum of respect. After all, it is due to this lowly people who do all the hard crap work, that they are able to make profits and live their good lives. Even some of the supervisors do not like their jobs, due to this hardass attitude of the company. I know this is nothing new in corporate North America unfortunately. I have many friends who work in insanity factories too, and have the same horror stories, as many of you most likely do too.

The main goal of my company is to get packages out and delivered as soon as possible. They present this image of vestal virgins with kid gloves gently handing your packages. The reality is much closer to a hardcore German porno movie, with a lot of rough banging and bumping around. They have only so much time to unload a truck, get the packages processed and load again to be delivered. So as a result, due to pressure from above, there are a lot of packages that literally go airborne out of the truck on to conveyer belt. Some of the packages are marked as air mail, but I do not think this is what the customer had in mind when they checked the "air" box. I have seen supervisors throwing boxes, too, when the deadline crunch moves in. They have this official policy called "hand to surface," which basically says you are to place a box on a shelf or belt not throw it. This law is usually enforced when they want to harass a particular troublesome employee or when one of the higher-up idiot gods are touring the plant.

Another way packages are mishandled is they are intentionally kicked or stepped on by the people who actually load and unload the trucks, who are called "package handlers." These poor guys are on the bottom of the food chain in terms of pay and treatment. They tend to be sullen, twenty-nothing, text-messaging addicts, who have the maturity level of baboons suffering with BSC. Their job is very physically demanding, especially in the summer when temperatures soar. There is no airconditioning in the warehouse or trucks. They have only so much time to unload a truck, so they have to cut corners sometimes and throw the boxes out of the truck. So, putting these factors together leads to some of these workers taking out their frustrations on the boxes by kicking them or stomping them, or not retaping open boxes, so some of the contents spill out. I have come to believe that fragile is Italian for "kick me." I would not ship by my company especially if you were shipping something fragile, like your grandma's good china. The average package handler lasts about 3-6 months due to the bad pay and conditions. In the eight years I have been there, I must have seen at least 60-100 handlers come and go.

Well, that is all for now, thanks for listening to my rant. Stay tuned for more reports from the Insanity Factory.