First week back at work

[LVSteve]

So I have just finished my first full week back at work after a 15 month break. I will be candid and say that if I had the money I would now be retired. I don't like getting up, it is that simple. Then again I do like having income to support me and my hobbies, so I'll just have to suck it up.

Came across much of the same odd stuff going on coupled with a whole new level of "fun" that corporate America seems to think improves the workplace. Yeah, right, good luck with that.

Coworker, " Steve, glad to see you're back. Notice any changes around the place?"

Me: "Not really. Same BS, different year."

Coworker laughing: "And you are surprised?"

Maybe the first paycheck will improve my mood.

 

[Fishslayer]

"Yeeeaaahhhh.... I'm gonna need you to come in on Saturday, m'kay? Greaaaaaaaaaat."

"Oh... and I'm gonna need you to come in on Sunday too, m'kay?"

 

[pawncop]

The way I word it goes like this - "The circus is still the same, just the clowns are different."

 

[quneur]

"Hello Peter. What's happening? Ah, we have sorta a problem here. You apparently didn't put one of the new cover sheet on your TPS report."

 

[Hillbilly77]

"Well Bobs, it's not that I'm lazy. I just don't care."

"Another thing, let me tell you about TPS reports..."

 

[Old Corp]

In my last year, I would don a VERY serious face and quietly state:

"Look, just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand."

 

[Brian41]

It's hard to go back and feel for you. I went back last year after a break for back surgery. They changed my work area to worse and gave me less help than before. I lasted three months before I hurt my back again and had a bigger surgery this summer. I decided that was enough and before they put me in a wheelchair I retired. I feel much better now and enjoy not getting up at 0500 anymore.
Wish you well and the paycheck should help.

 

[shouldazagged]

If you hear "Steve, we want you to serve on the committee to draft a new mission statement," run like the wind!

Same if they tell you the next two days will be dedicated to "team building". This is always a hideous, pointless ordeal, based on the assumption that adults can't work together without dubious motivation.

I had a boss once who liked to try to control his staff by keeping them off-balance and ill at ease. Every time he did my annual evaluation he would say, "Mike, your skills are great. You do good work. But you're just not a team player." Whereupon I would thank him, because we both knew being a team player on his team meant submitting to a lot of pre-digested pasture grass. Frustrated him very nicely.

 

[Bozz10mm]

I know what you mean Steve. The machine shop I worked in for 10 years after my military retirement, seemed to get worse with every passing year. Loss of benefits, pay cuts, ISO 9000 certification, drug testing, reduced hours, personnel cut backs. But the jerk of a foreman never left. I hung it up 2 1/2 years ago and retired. Hang in there, your turn will come.

 

[labworm]

For 32 years I traveled 1.4 miles to my workplace.

Retired at 55, the corporation asked me to stay till I was 60.

I told them "The daily commute was killing me" true story.

 

[LVSteve]

It's hard to go back and feel for you. I went back last year after a break for back surgery. They changed my work area to worse and gave me less help than before. I lasted three months before I hurt my back again and had a bigger surgery this summer. I decided that was enough and before they put me in a wheelchair I retired. I feel much better now and enjoy not getting up at 0500 anymore.
Wish you well and the paycheck should help.

My absence was an administrative/contractual issue that took forever to resolve. Compared to you with a back injury I have it very easy, I know. Good choice on retiring before you really got hurt. Sometimes you have to say to yourself "This is just a job, it's not worth my health".

However, I am still disappointed to see how little certain things have changed given that during my enforced leave the "new, improved way of working" was put in place. This week has shown I will have plenty to do sweeping up the errors of others and bringing my often sideways view on things into the projects. I'm there to mix it up a little and get folk to think in different ways.

There was one nice surprise though. Senior management did realise that a project I was working on when I departed was not moving on and actually told some folk to get cracking on it. I fully expected to find the paperwork in the same place with a thick layer of dust and computer files that had not been accessed since I left. Kudos to the bosses for once.

 

[snubbyfan]

For some reason the doctors think that just because I have degenerative peripheral neuropathy and my hands and feet don't work right anymore that it's not safe for me to be a saw operator anymore. Go figure.
I was put on disability and at first, being disabled was about the worse thing that could have ever happened to me. Now I gotta admit, I'm kinda gettin' used to not gettin' up at 4AM and working for an obscenity yelling idiot 8 to 12 hours a day.
My wife works as a home health care aid and since a lot of people in town are on disability or retired she walks to work. Between the money she earns and my disability pay we manage to make ends meet or at least keep them within the same general vicinity.

 

[Old 44 Guy]

I worked for old Ma Bell 38 years. Had many supervisors in that time. I pulled the plug in 1988 & have out lived most of the ***'s I once worked for.