Corporate Culture - Okie Style

I made a switch a year ago, almost a year to the day, from an IT Business Analyst role to a manufacturing gig. You might say, ‘why on earth would you do that?’ It wasn’t so much the work itself, but the locale had a lot to do with it, as well as upper management. I found it very difficult to get excited about implementing changes to energy billing software; especially the validation and testing portion of it. One huge upside that I miss is telecommuting. That is a phenomenal perk that I truly enjoyed.

Now, I sit at a drafting desk and estimate raw & finished materials for retail fixtures. You know the ones that hold clothes in your local department stores. This is not exactly rocket science and at times I find it difficult to be challenged. Hence the blog posts during the 8 to 5 hours…

And it is a whole change in workforce, like night and day. As K has heard, I’ve taken a shine to nick naming my co-workers. We’ve got the atheist, who I dislike approximately 85% of the time. Then there’s the hobbit, for obvious reasons. Can’t forget senior droopy, or as I call him deputy dog, with his walrus-like mustache and slow delivery. I can’t leave out the Democrat, for lack of a better nickname; maybe I should just call him “It’s all you Republicans fault”. Last but not least there’s my nearest cube mate with the weepy eye and smokers hack. I can always tell when the cough is coming because of the raspy intake of air right before his delivery. Don’t get me wrong they are all good guys, just very ‘down home’. The majority of them came from the shop to the front office and they never left the shop mentality in the shop. That is, breaks are from 10-10:10 and 3 – 3:10 and lunch is from noon to one. Imagine my surprise when, on my 30 day review, I hear “Tony, we’ve noticed you’ve been leaving early for lunch a lot of days, sometimes even as early as 11”. To which I replied, “Well, yeah but I’m always back within an hour”. “But we take lunch from noon to one”.

Oooooook, so that’s how it’s going to be.

I have never been in an environment that was so strict on time for front office employees.

I’m trying to do my part by showing co-workers how ‘flexible’ you can make your schedule. That became evident to them when they asked if we were still on overtime and I asked, “we’re on overtime?”

Where are all the cool co-workers?

It is now 9:09am and the atheist and the hobbit are just getting around to ‘work’. Wait, I take that back, work has not begun as there has been another journey around the cube wall for visitation. I'm waiting to hear 'live long and prosper'. This has gone on since 8:00am.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for shooting the bull with co-workers but I’m also of the belief that I should put in a good 5 hours of work in an 8 hour day. Ok maybe it should be closer to 8. However, these two knuckleheads spend the better part of their day philosophizing on the finer points of manufacturing with tangents in to the cool new collectors edition of Dungeon’s & Dragons that they scored on eBay. Currently they are discussing Warren Buffet, Barack O’Bama and Berkshire Hathaway. Mostly it’s the atheist talking while everyone else has to listen. When he’s not spewing forth his endless Cliff Clavin-esque factoids he’s busy bashing Christianity and how religion is a nice ‘superstition’. Yes he informed me on my first day in this group, that he is an atheist. Great just want I needed. Finally getting a firm grasp on my Christianity and I have to be exposed to this?

Can’t I just set my beliefs aside for 10 seconds while I ‘punch him in his Jack Johnson’?

It’s now 9:22 and no relief from their diarrhea of the mouth.