I had this theory once...

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I had this theory once (no this is not my working theory that a vast majority of VW Jetta drivers are good looking woman - but that's another one that I have been working on for awhile, check for yourself next time you see a Jetta, view the driver, there is a good chance it is a good looking woman). OK, it's one that I've been cultivating for awhile, and today, it became especially clear to me that this is what we might should do in the US, or all the world over more specifically. It's called reverse retirement. Yes, reverse retirement. Here's the entire premise of this theory of mine. You go to school, you go to high school, you go to college, you graduate from college, and immediately upon receiving your degree, you retire. This would not only apply to college grads of a traditional 4 year school, but it would apply to high school grads, and 2 year degree grads as well, and a few others in between. It would kind of be like a tiered system of retirement depending on how much higher education you had obtained post high school, or if you had just graduated high school only (and yes home schooling would count as well - AKA Trull School, what a scam that was for those of you who know what I'm talking about).

I figure I hear lots of stories of people who retire from working, only to possibly pass away a short time thereafter their retirement, and they never get a good chance to enjoy the work that they've put in, and money that they have stashed away over the years. We could avoid all of this by retiring in our late teens and early 20's, and having a good time then, when we're all really full of energy and ready to party down for the most part. That would have been a good time. Going back to my tiered level part of it. Say you finished high school, and didn't want a higher degree. Fine. You only get 5 years of retirement, and then you have to work. Say you finish college. Fine. You get 7 years of retirement. 2 year degree, you get 6 years. Master's degree, you get 9. And if you get that PhD, call it 11 years of retirement until you have to start working. Of course, this theory of mine, poses certain problems. Such as, if you've not worked for years on end to save FOR your retirement, how are you going to PAY for your retirement right out of school? This is something I've not worked on yet as to where to get the funding for this. I think if we don't build a few useless bridges in Alaska, maybe trim and tuck, and make a few amends here and there on the budget, we should be able to swing it. And we could always make it a reverse Social Security benefit as well. Yeah?

OK, this is something that will never work, but around 8:30PM when I left work (mind you after getting there at 7:00AM this morning) it popped back into my head. As did a lot of other things as well, such as telling off the people that I work for, because being at work on a Friday night at 8:30, well, that sucks. I can't say it any more plain than that. It's just not a pleasant experience in my mind, and this has been happening to me a lot lately, and yeah, it stinks. It's stupid and decroded. You know, I expect this to happen every once in awhile. But over the last 15 days at work, this has happened to me probably 10 times where I've been there for longer than 12 hours in a day, and there are actually other guys there that have it worse than me. It's really simple that to get on my good side for doing something like this, really, all you have to do is give me a word of thanks. I don't require much else. I'm not getting paid for my overtime, and I don't gripe about it (at least to the powers that be at the workplace), but damn people, how about a nod of appreciation for doing something that you didn't want to do. Just a little acknowledgement of a job well done, or something. What do we get when we do this? Nothing. Nothing at all. At the very least, the hourly folks that I'm in there with stoking the late fires of work are getting time and a half for being there, so they're not complaining too loudly. Sure, they complain, because frankly, there are other places that they would rather be as well, but like I said, they're pulling in good money to be there, me, I'm still just pulling the same old money. Maybe I could get a few extra days of vacation at the end of the year or something like that. Or, like I said, a nod of appreciation would be decent.

Now what is especially funny about this is that the people who essentially force me into staying at work late on a Friday night are nowhere to be seen. They've all jumped ship at 4:15 after they've hatched their hare brained scheme of doing whatever the hell it is I was doing this evening, and then dumping it on my lap. The conversation sort of flows like this, "Oh hey Tom. We decided that we need to sort out these bad parts from these good parts, and we just decided this at 4:00 this afternoon. Can you stay and make sure it gets done? Yes? Good, because I have a birthday party to go to this evening, and oh, damn, I've got to get going now. Bye!" That's how the conversation went this evening. Holy shit people. I can't believe that the company that I work for even is operating at all at times. It still amazes me. The person telling me this drivel this evening? My plant manager. The guy in charge of everything. Who stayed around this evening from management to help out with this little project? Yeah. You guessed it. Nobody. Nobody at all. It was just me, Clem, and his business partner Jethro out there checking parts. Clem and Jethro had more interest in shooting the bull than doing what they were supposed to be doing, but that was OK for them, they were getting paid by the hour anyway, so what did it matter to them. I was about to explode a few times, but kept it in. It's not their fault either, well, it is their fault for being slow, but not their fault that they got called into this little fiasco. And then, to top that off, I kept getting calls from different managers on this particular program. One minute, plant manager. Next minute, program manager. After that, quality manager. And then, the supplier quality manager. Finally, at one point in time I told one of them, I forget who it was, that if they wanted this information so much they should have stayed around this evening to see how things turned out, because we were having a hoot of a time. OK, maybe I didn't say, "A hoot of a time." but I did make a wise assed comment about coming in and seeing for themselves instead of calling from their couch with a beer in their hand. Jeez.

And then, there is a group of yuck heads who work in our upstairs office. They are what we call new program managers, and advanced quality engineers, and a few others that for some reason we couldn't find space for downstairs even though every other cubicle is empty. If you dare to venture up to this office, and look around the joint on a Friday afternoon, there isn't a soul in sight. Nobody is to be seen. I take that back, there are a couple of people up there, but those are the folks who would be there if a hurricane blew the building down around their ears. But other than that, these other kiss asses that work up there, gone. You can hear crickets chirping in the corners. I kid you not. CRICKETS! Of course, once again, these high and mighty people seem to keep calling me on their cell phones from their secret undisclosed locations, and when I ask them where they are today, it's funny that they're never in Roxboro on a Friday. Never. They're always at our Sanford plant (if they live near the Triangle), or they're at our Alamance plant (if they live near Mebane/Burlington). It never fails. Or somehow, these assholes who are supposed to be doing PROCESS work for the most part, are working from home. Tell me now, how do you figure out manufacturing processes if you're not in the manufacturing facility? Quite a conundrum that we have here isn't it? Indeed it is. Now look, not to plead completely innocent on these charges, but on a Friday I'm not always on my "A" game there at work, but I am there damn it all, and that's a lot more than I can say for a lot of those guys. I mentioned something about that to my plant manager today, in a kidding kind of tone. He won't do anything about it, since he's one of the worse offenders. That guys spends less time at the plant than any plant manager I've ever worked for. I used to work for this Japanese company, and the company President, the head honcho, head man in charge was there just about every single day. When he used to have to travel to Japan, if he landed back in Bangor Maine, and it was still regular "working" hours would he go home and lay down? Heck no, he'd come into work. Now that was someone who you could follow. The slackitude with which I am encountered with on a daily basis stymies the mind.

With the group of people that I work with, we have an especially dense group of ass kissers. Yes men if you will (I call them yes men, because there are no woman). These guys will throw you underneath a fast moving train if it means that they will look better for doing it, and they do it. A lot. These are the same group as mentioned above that tend to not ever come into work on a Friday. What really pisses me off, is that they have this higher positions within the company, and they suck at what they do. Well, most of them suck at life, but they really stink it up when it comes to working for a living. It's scary. They're not very smart, they don't know what they're doing for the most part, and these are the guys making some of the larger decisions for our business. No wonder most of our crap is going to Mexico, and will probably all be in Mexico in less than 10 years I bet you. It's a good thing that most of the people I work with on the floor, the production folks and supervisors, and the "everyday" people out there are good. If we didn't have a good workforce at our facility, we'd be especially screwed. But we do have some talent out there on the floor, we have some great people. Some who would do anything you asked them to do for the most part, and never argue about it. This is WHY my company works. It's not for the ass kissers who sit upstairs on their large pillowy asses all day long. No. It's about the folks making things out there on the production floor, assembling parts, and doing their best to make money for the company. And get this, a lot of those same folks who work almost tirelessly out there on the floor, have been doing so for the last 3 or 4 years without getting a pay raise. Not a single cent. When they ask the plant manager about this, he has one answer for them, "In today's economy, you should just be glad that you've got a job at all. HAHAHHAAHA!" On second thought, my plant manager is an asshat as well. 4 years without getting a pay raise, while at the same time, we've turned a profit and have been the best performing facility within our company for the same 4 years running. And yet, no pay raise. I think they gave them a $200 bonus last year, and a $50 Wal-Mart card at Christmas. That's some gratitude right there indeed. They can't throw a freakin' bone to our employees, but at the same time they can do the following things:

1.) Open a separate office in Durham for the higher ups so they don't have to drive to Roxboro (it's true). We pay a huge rent for an office building in Research Triangle Park so that 10 guys don't have to drive to Roxboro to work. Remember the upstairs office I was talking about earlier? They all used to sit up there. The offices are still open. What a waste of money.

2.) They hold a week long quality conference at the Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill. I don't know if you've ever been to that place, but rooms are like $200 or more per night. And I'm sure that the conference itself was no cheap item to put on. Best part about it is that I'm betting that there is no trickle down from this conference in the long run. I won't hear 'boo' about this from my boss who is going to it.

3.) Last year, they ripped out the old carpets in the office and put in fresh new ones. Remember, there was nothing wrong with the old ones, and the place where they put the new carpets in? Yes, the upstairs office that barely has any people in it, especially on Friday. Rumored cost of new carpets and installation? $40,000.

4.) That office I wrote about over in Durham... Well, the entire staff gets their lunch paid for every single day by the company. Let's see... 10 guys. Each has an assistant = 20 people staffing the place, plus probably about another 5-10 people who work there in various capacities. So we have about 30 people. I'm going to go out on a limb and say lunch cost per person is going to be about $10. 10 x 30 = $300/day which will then = $1500 / week multiplied by 52 weeks per year, and we have a grand total of approximately: $78,000 / year just in lunches.

5.) Last year the CEO of the company came to Roxboro to visit for one day, and barely left the head conference room in the front of the building. The plant manager decided to remodel everything. New leather furniture in the front lobby (again, nothing wrong with what he had up there in the first place), water sculpture, new wall hangings, display cabinets, cleaning, new floors, and so on and so forth. Once again, rumored cost of the re-model? Approximately $70,000-$80,000.

No wonder we can't the employees a pay raise. They're spending it all on other items that most people in the world won't care about. Ever.

OK, I've been ranting far too long about this subject, and I'm getting very, very, very tired, so now it's time to sleep again. I can't wait to sleep in tomorrow, for it's Saturday, and I don't have to ride tomorrow (see previous entries about vicious road rash injuries). Ah, sleep. I might just do that for most of the day. I think I deserve it.

One last thing. Big shout out to tegaderm - see picture at the top of the page here (http://www.3m.com/us/home_leisure/nexcare/tegaderm.jhtml), without which, my skin would never grow back. That stuff is like Miracle Gro for road rash. They should sponsor a road cycling team and provide them with an unlimited stash of the stuff. It's like gold to bike racers this stuff, pure gold.