Clocker said:
What's even worse is when your employer requires you to write 'standard work instructions'. These are basically procedures that are so detailed any idiot could follow them. Why would they ask you to do this? So that the job can be performed somewhere else where the people doing it don't have a clue, of course. We're writing manuals to eliminate our own jobs. It's kind of demoralizing.
Kind of funny you mentioned that because the last place I worked had a penchant for asking us to do things like that. Their justification of it was "What happens if you die tomorrow and nobody knows how to do your job?". My short and sweet answer was hire somebody with a good education and analytical ability and they'll figure it out same as I did. What I was basically doing was repairs, but past the minimal level of training they initially gave me I was eventually able to figure out how to fix almost anything(even boards that were somewhat water-damaged). The time came not too long before I was officially laid off that I asked to document everything. At the time I was asked I didn't know about the closing of the NYC shop. I also didn't know that I was the only one to be offered a job at their main plant in Virginia. In any case I turned their request cold(remember at the time I didn't think they were laying people off so my decision wasn't based on that). The reason I gave them was very simple. My ability at repairs wasn't based solely on what I had learned working there in two years. Rather, it was a combination of my education, troubleshooting projects I made for myself, and just plain analytical skills. In short, they wanted me to somehow document four years of college and everything after. It plain couldn't be done. In short, management doesn't have a clue what it is even to repair something, let alone to design it from scratch. I told them if they have a kid fresh out of high school that they hire to replace me try sending them to college and then having them build projects on company time for a year or two, although by then they'll probably be asking for more than I was getting so where's the savings? My very short answer was you can have it done right, or you can have it done cheaply(which never is cheaply when it needs to be reworked by someone like me again).
I didn't take the job they offered(incidentally at no pay increase) since Virginia was hardly a place I would want live and I didn't like the company's penny pinching mentality. After the NYC shop closed I continued to work as an independent contractor for my former boss(who bought the NYC shop out and somehow did manage to make it earn money(maybe by caring about customers?). The main plant in Virginia went completely out of business(no surprise there, and it seems not transferring there was a good decision in retrospect). Unlike his former bosses, my ex-boss knows the value of a good worker, and doesn't bat an eyelash when I bill him at $50 to $60 an hour(his ex-bosses thought $11 an hour was good money). He'll use cheap labor for basic everyday tasks but any critical design or repair work I get, not some "engineer" in India making $7 an hour. It's worked out well for both of us, although he's never had enough work for me to approach anything resembling a decent living.
I guess the moral here is that pinching pennies just thinking about the next quarter is bad business. This isn't to say a business shouldn't try to eliminate fat(which incidentally is usually the same highly paid clueless executives who are brain dead about what running a business actually entails). But mortgaging your future by cutting R&D, or driving away customers with poor service is just plain bad management. When the local K-Mart closed a few months ago, I knew the reason that caused the dropoff in sales. It was so obvious to everyone but management. To try to save a bit here and there the number of cashiers were cut to the bone. Many times I would walk in, pick a few items off the shelves, see a 20 minute line, and just put the items back and leave. Many people just dropped them on the nearest shelf instead. Besides the extra labor wasted restocking the items they represented potential sales never realized because of poor customer service. For some reason management thought people will come into a store and buy what they need regardless of the wait. Sometimes if it's big shopping you will but for a few impulse items never. Many a time I walked in, saw the lines, and walked out. Doubtless many did the same.
