I definitely struggled at work today and said things to people I shouldn’t have. It was all regarding work, but when I dig deeper and look at the topics I find that I am in the wrong and looking at an incomplete picture.
So I’ve been at this job two years in September, I have trained, assisted in training and learned the process of making batteries like the back of my hand. There’s more to it and much more at stake than you’d realize as we manufacture roughly 28,000 kilos of toxic slurry per 12 hour shift. Leading to point number two I have been a “safety champ” going on about a year and a half now, created new systems for efficiency, team building, and safety analysis, some of my changes to my piece of the process have been taken company wide. But here’s the issue.
In this time I have climbed from nothing. I was a temp who everybody said wouldn’t make it. I fought physical battles, mental strain, and personality clashes. I earned every bit of knowledge and I have never been afraid to share it, the operators I train are becoming known to have less incidents, further awareness etc. I was in competition for a promotion but was knocked out due to attendance points over the last year due to covid. When I was converted from temporary to full time it was in the middle of the company being shut down and 78 hour of paid time off I’d accrued over the better part of a year was lost in the shuffle. Any family issue, any illness, any emergency I was docked, I mean to the point I found out a supervisor threw away doctors notes, and I was punished for missing the same amount of time everybody else did. I got removed from the running after 5 months of proving myself. And Paul got promoted to AMO (advanced machine operator) following three months behind my girlfriend whom was here a year less and I trained more than Paul got promoted to a Production trainer. I remained the same it has been a year since my last promotion, and it was a year supposed to be six months before that one.
Both of these people I taught are now in some way my boss. Not to mention they make $3 and $5 more an hour than me. Today we came back after a disastrous shutdown to a pretty horrible day of maintenance. Paul as Amo has things he is supposed to do that I am not allowed, but today I was told to do them… all. While he walked around texting. I was doing the dangerous work without the pay I deserved, like the last two years I went did so without incident taking on much more than I am being paid to be responsible while also assisting other operators.
I definitely let my coworkers know, and even people outside of my group. How stressed I was, that I was crying in the car on my way because I KNEW it would happen. And I told them all how Paul should have been doing it, and that if they want me to do AMO work I should receive AMO pay, and I mean it wasn’t just me doing what I was asked. I was making calls and asking about things that were big picture and then executing them even to some praise from our supervisor yet. I’m still in the same place.
I think the important thing about me being here is I recognize where I went wrong. It isn’t fair, and it is pressure that is undeserved, my words could have been harmful in my relationships, and my Attitude likely carried to more than myself. I have future opportunities to progress, I have been noticed but it is still so difficult being held back and feeling used, but in the end pressure makes diamonds, and karma is a mirror. Instead of taking the route that I am being slighted, I had to flip my perspective to recognize I am trusted in a significant way, and when that pressure comes I am stronger each time for the time that I need to stand alone when the guard is passed and I become the AMO or supervisor, or safety lead or whatever comes my way. It is not setbacks but growth.