A toxic workplace?

Today is my day off. I began by waking at the usual time, but rather than going to work I collected my gear and biked to the nearby lake, and caught a fish. Returning, I cooked it for breakfast with my wife. It was a really pleasant morning.

Then, we started on our project of painting our cathedral ceiling in our new house (we have borrowed scaffolding for the week). I am listening to Harry Potter and mostly enjoying myself. But for the last hour, thoughts of work keep flooding my mind.

Joe and/or and the other local manager (shall we call him Dave?) wrote in the toolbox talk, “Please do not circumvent chain of command.” Clearly, aimed at me. And everyone is talking about this colossal e-mail that I sent.

Well, I put more thought into it. Here is my view of it.

I have been seeing things for weeks. Months. I have talked in much detail with my immediate supervisor, Royce. On occasion I have spoken to Joe: but he is not one to make small talk to. A few weeks ago I screwed up my courage and told him, “My truck was left quite dirty. Can you please tell the cross shift to clean better?” A basic protocol of cleaning had not been followed, and now there were gobs of product glued to a crucial part that would take fully an hour to clean. 

“Oh,” grumbled Joe, then he scoffed, “is that all you wanted to talk about?” He turned back to his desk.

Hardly receptive to my communications. But I had tried.

Then Gary had asked how things were going. I said “fine,” but when he probed deeper, I let him know that actually, they were not fine. No doubt Royce and the other managers have been passing along my concerns. I am fine with doing most of the work, but the cross shift is leaving things in a mess, and there have even been accidents causing damage that I suppose I am going to have to fix. 

He said, “I am the most forgiving guy on the planet for accidents. We work with machinery — it will get battered up. But I don’t like it when people don’t report stuff.”

So he asked for a detailed report. Cautious of causing a ruckus, I asked who I should send it to. He told me to copy Dave and Joe. I copied Royce as well.

All that I did was transcribe the daily trip logs. Managers should be reading these anyways: it is an official document. I also included pictures of work I had done, and of the slight damage to the truck presumably from an accident. 

My reasons for doing this were double: with Joe being the way he is, I was sure that I would be blamed casually for any damage or mess on the truck. “You drivers sure are being the hell out of these trucks, and leaving them a mess!” Joe was never interested in precision: only in showing his superiority in any way possible. But secondly — and far more importantly — I wanted my workplace to improve. And you know what? It did improve. 

After that e-mail, Kim skulked around for a bit. He avoided eye contact. But he cleaned his bloody truck. And he didn’t smash it to bits again. And after a few days he got over it, and made casual and light-hearted communications with myself again. He was over it. 

Except that Joe wasn’t over it yet, and was having a bit too much fun kicking the new whipping boy. Pushed him too far, and started the dominoes falling. 

“Please don’t disrupt the chain of command,” the toolbox had said, “If you have something against someone, please speak to their immediate supervisor.” It had said something like that. That’s how it was interpreted. 

That’s what Royce said too. 

“I guess you really had it out with Kim this week.” And Kim, when he came into the office, was acting all weird around me, like I had just stabbed him in the back. 

Everyone is so convinced of this, that it has made me question myself. Is this what I wanted to do? Is that my motivation? Try to kick him lower in the hierarchy, so I can rise up?

I do want to rise up, and I do want him fired. But not like that, and not for that reason. I want to rise, based on my performance, and I want him fired because I don’t want to die, or have our workplace shut down.

But neither of those things were my motivation. It is becoming clearer as I type: I do not think that I am deceiving myself. I wanted to change my workplace. I wanted it to become a place where solid work ethic is rewarded, and laziness and dangerous actives were pointed out. 

In a private text, I told Gary about all of the extra work that Royce does, and how he really cares about the plant. That is true. He literally cares for this plant like on of his own kids. That is why he gets so upset about things. That is why he is quitting. He cares so much, he’s falling on his own sword. Why? “Maybe then, people will listen to what I have been saying!” He’s willing to put himself and his family in jeopardy, for the good of the plant. But nobody cares about that. Nobody sees it.

What they see is trouble, and an uncomfortable spotlight. A spotlight on lazy workers, and no doubt Kim and his coworker (who is lazy, but not incompetent, and certainly not stupid) have found a way to spin this. A spotlight on two middle-managers who somehow manage to spend their whole days hunched over their computers in the office, doing paperwork for four workers…yet blissfully unaware of the lopsidedness of the workload, unable to motivate, and incapable of identifying and correcting workplace negligence and accidents when they occur.

On top of all of this: who is in charge, really? Who is my boss, really? What is the chain of command, really?

Nobody nows. Nobody, knows.

But one thing is clear: the spotlight is not appreciated. 

And nobody is terribly sad to see Royce go. And I have been told to be quiet. 

So where does that leave me. What is my next move?

Do I contact Gary with all of this? Blurt it all out, and ask for help? 

He would be very sympathetic, and then he would hang up the phone and there would be silence: but there would be hell to pay with other people, and then they would find snide ways of making me pay. That doesn’t seem like a good plan.

So should I just shut up? If I stop speaking, I lose my voice, my power.

On my last shift, Royce and I pointed out to Dave more damage on a truck. We had taken pictures. There had been another accident: a bumper had hit something solid hard enough to rip a weld off. Dave said, “uh huh, yeah.” And went on with his day. It will take an hour or two to fix: and what the hell are we doing letting people drive, who keep crashing into stuff? These are not bumper-cars we are driving.

*Puts head in hands*

#Ijustcan’teven

I don’t know what to do. I really, don’t know what to do.

It seems that I may have found myself in a toxic work environment. Is that fair to say?

Well, it seems pretty clear to me that silence is the golden rule. 

Laziness gets a blind eye.

Unreported accidents are not really a big deal, so long as you cover your tracks well enough.

The big rule seems to be, “don’t be a bother,” and “don’t make your mid mangers look bad.” 

Damn. Why do I always end up in such bad work environments? 

Is it just me? Honestly, is it me? Am I a snitch? A whistle-blower? A narc, as Kim said?

Am I causing this problem? Maybe I should just shrug and endure it?

But this sort of behaviour is not normal. It is only in our small norther town, where trained workers are so scarce that these sorts of workplaces exist. In a big city, Kim would be out on his ear in a heartbeat, and there would be a line of guys waiting to take his job. At the money we are making! But in this town, there are plenty of ways to make an even bigger pay check, and so the distant managers have to take criticisms into account: but also take into account that workers of any sort are hard to find.

It is supremely frustrating. I was frustrated when I started typing, and I thought this would give me some clarity and peace. It has given me clarity, but no peace.

What am I supposed to do?

If Royce were to stay, I feel like we would have a chance. Together, we could keep pushing in our own ways. Together, we could have pushed hard enough and long enough that the work culture would have changed. I would have shone my piercing light, the work ethic would have to pick up. Unreported accidents would be noticed and reported: people would start realizing they could not get away with things. Royce would have kept up his hard work ethic, his high standard. The workplace and vehicles would be seen to be normally clean and orderly: the mess would be the exception, not the rule. Disorderly conduct would be noticed, and stopped.

…but without Royce, what can I do?

Without Royce, I will become Royce. 

I will become the lonely voice of reason, in a workplace dedicated to expediency and secrecy. Diligently doing a good job, and hoping to make a difference: but routinely taken advantage of by everyone else, who don’t mind that I do a good job, since upper management is just happy to have warm bodies in seats on the cross-shift, and so long as the work gets done, what do they care if one person shoulders 75% of the load?

And if there are a few near-miss accidents? A few injuries? A few near fatalities?

…well, as long as we don’t report too many of those, all will be well. But if there are too many reported injuries, then the whole workplace could be shut down.

That is what this is really about. Kim did something really, really stupid once. It caused an accident that caused serious and permanent damage to Royce. But Royce did not report it, because Kim had already filed two workplace injury claims in a month (because he was running around like a fool and harming himself), and one more injury threatened to shut the place down. And so he was silent. And to this day he hurts every day from that injury, and he has no compensation. 

Secrecy is rewarded. Not being a bother is rewarded. 

What am I to do? I feel profoundly stuck.

I will continue in this job. It is a good job: I like the hours, and the pay is good. 

If Royce leaves, I will find myself promoted to his position. What will I do about mismanagement?

This step fills me with dread, but the way that Royce survived was establishing a firm relationship directly with Gary. Perhaps I should not silence myself: I should not give in to intimidation.

“Do not bypass normal hierarchies?” What hierarchy? If you want to be the manager, then take the damn job and be here permanently. Take on the responsibility of the role, and not just the thug-like power of being the guy on site with the most seniority.

As it is, it seems that the only true consistent manager I have is Gary. 

I may not unload all of this on him. 

I will need to be careful how brightly I shine my light.

But I will continue to be in contact with him. That may be the only way that I can survive, and navigate this madness, of living in this increasingly toxic work environment.

***

I have decided that I need to reframe my thinking. Be more selfish, and less concerned with perfection, and with the company. 

If management listens, and makes changes, and Royce stays, that is a win. 

Or, if he leaves, I will move up up take his place. I will need to figure out how to orient myself in the changing work dynamic. But I can handle that. People basically like me: and they all fear me a bit too, which is not entirely a bad thing (for a workplace such as this). 

So either way it’s a win, if I just think about myself 

And if Royce is teaching me anything, this is not a workplace to fall too in love with: they are not worthy of it.