If you screw up on stupid basic common sense stuff, no, you'll at very least get bitched out.
Usually, so long as you're not affecting productivity in a bad way, not creating bad relations, being reasonable and cooperative, you're fine.
The worst that happens is when you have a supervisor or a foreman who brings along his home town buddies who are unqualified for the job and he ends up coddling them or letting them get away with bad behavior or poor standards. In that case I keep my head down and try to stay out of conflicts because no matter what, I'm gonna be the one to get blamed.
On one crew the foreman had his son in law, a friend of his son in law, a nephew and his wife on the crew plus some others who were hangers on or something. Three of us were tasked with welding out some floating pontoons and I followed standard procedures and welding sequence. They tested out the pontoons after we had already gone on to another project and my foreman got notice that there were just a huge amount of leaking welds. I got blamed and was sent back to repair the leaks. Just hearing that they thought it was my fault sort of peeved me but then, I'm not infallible so I left without protest. After all, I get paid for miles I drive and I like driving anyway. I got to the job site and started going into all three pontoons where I had welded. I only found three tiny leaks which is normal and had them sealed in a few minutes. However, going into the other pontoons I discovered they'd been welded out of sequence, poor technique and a huge amount of leaks occurring in every corner and everywhere there was a joining of welds. Too cold weld, cold lap is the term used, poor connections and wrong sequence. Just basic stuff but I fixed it all that day and went back to the other site to rejoin the crew. If I had said anything there would have been denials and counter accusations so I said nothing. Every job I was on with that crew stuff like that happened. When two of the foreman's relatives were separated from him and sent to a project where he had no control they got fired in short order as they should have been. They were constantly messing stuff up, bloviating about how great they were all the time big daddy covered for them.
At NASSCO shipyard it was always production, production and production that counted but the crews got into a habit of passing the buck on fixing defects and laying it all on the third shift to cover for them. I eventually got tired of it, of the lying and shifting labor to us so I put in some really hard hitting reports to get all that ground to a stop and had some frank discussions with my foreman and supervisor about rules being skirted. Rules clearly spelled out in literature that we had in our hands daily. To their credit, I was able to reason with them about how this was not only going to cause us to lose the crew and be split up but both the foreman and supervisor would end up losing their position and be placed back on their tools to work with us. In like one week of carefully placing unsaid threats in the minds of those on first shift by subtle hints and revelations about what I knew plus the reports I was making sure got to the front office all the scheming and back stabbing just stopped cold.
In the right situation with the right people one man can indeed have a huge effect on even a business that employs thousands. You just have to work carefully with the system.
Some crews though, are just doomed right out the gate with poor leadership and cronyism that brings in trashy workers.
One project I was sent to on an emergency basis was because the previous crew who were all friends and family were completely unqualified. Thankfully I had no part in what went on or I would have lost my mind.
They would work a couple hours then take off for the day and record it as a whole day worked. They were way behind because of the fraud on hours worked. The welding they did do was horrible and had to all be redone. It's actually fortunate they got fired after "finishing" one tank which we had to go rework to pass inspection on it. I think on that job the company actually broke even.
I left working for an IT company because of all the office politics, but it sounds like your site had the same type of people O_o
looking back, the best bosses were the ones who could actually do my job as well as I could, I don't know what that should be the case but it always worked out that way
People are people no matter where they work, or in other words, we will encounter similar problems with similar personality types I think in what ever type work we engage.
I've worked around psychotic CEOs who came out to a project after it had already been poorly executed from the opening operations until I arrived and brought on a friend with more expertise.
So the late coming CEO starts walking around nit picking on trivial stuff, making claims about supplies that weren't true saying we had things I knew damn well we didn't have. He ordered materials that were not to specs and then claimed that was exactly what was ordered, basically calling my friend a liar. My friend and I sat up late at night reconstructing the heating system layout on our own time because the first people there simply cut the system out as ordered but failed to number the parts or at least take a photo of the layout. They also flame cut beside the couplings rather than just cut the couplings through so they could be carefully gouged off and refitted with new couplings on reinstallation. So, none of the heating pipes were correct length and we had to insert short pipes and more couplings to make up the difference. The stands were not numbered by location so we had to just try to fit them up where they belonged and make some new stands, adjust and reweld old stands and on and on in a cascade of problems.
How did the CEO help? Oh, by jumping all over my ass because I had the top button of my fire resistant coveralls open while standing outside the lunch room away from the work area.
He didn't supply us with scaling guns to chip slag and then when I used my very nice chipping hammer to do it by hand in a tight corner he got angry and tossed my personal tool out in a field in the weeds. I eventually had to go purchase a scaling gun on my own to use on the job and when we had a fierce argument over procedures he fired me and refused to let me retrieve my scaling gun. A tool costing me $150.00.
On a large sheet we were installing for the side wall I had never seen it done properly in the first place and never seen any proper procedures for installation to avoid warping and shrinkage. I did have some knowledge of a technique I know about which I was using but he comes up and starts quizzing me. Of course I didn't know so he starts quoting a procedure obviously memorized from some obscure manual. I told him it would have been nice if I had this information before I started but happily and thankfully I applied the new procedures with precision and the job went much more smoothly. Also obvious was that he didn't invent this procedure. I can tell when someone is quoting from a manual and it's a shame this wasn't shared with me before I started the installation.
I found out later this guy had never been a workman of our trade, came out of a university education and used his dad's money to buy his position as CEO.
I was a quite grateful he shared with me a very good procedure that was simplicity in it's sequence that totally worked around a common problem. That is, when installing a door sheet the welds pull the curved metal tight. You have to allow for that but if there's a dog leg in the seams you have to cut back on the old seems to each side of the dog leg. All the vertical seams have to be welded bead by bead inside and out alternately so it all shrinks together. Then you weld the horizontal seams seperately. Also diagram the procedure and sequence to your worker before they start even if they might already know. Like the saying goes, "That's why we go over these things". To confirm everyone is on the same page reading along.
That bastard "Slammin' Hammond" was of a similar type. Constantly bitching about stuff that didn't get done when all along it was because he didn't order it done, didn't assign a person to do it, didn't think of it, or took someone off a detail and reassigned them and never put anyone back on an assignment after it was left hanging. Eventually someone working above him "fell" on him and put him out of work forever. I've no sympathy for the guy.
In an office, you can just get fired or promoted to your level of incompetence where corporation tosses you out.
In a construction project involving rough guys who think in a very straight forward way, sometimes they find the simplest solutions to supervision that's out of line.
One black female was promoted to foreman and had the front office cheering her on. Yeh, she has a pussy! Out by the docks she was insane, consumed with petty hatred and a vindictive spirit. She was firing at lest one person a day at times and on a good week maybe only fire a couple guys. Eventually she got to myself and a friend of mine. I had deliberately demanded to be assigned to an area out of her reach and a close friend followed behind me the next day. For over a month we worked in chummy companionship enjoying our lunch breaks and banter while we welded out our repair job on a nearby ship. She found out and had herself transferred to our area where she fired both of us in the first hour over petty arguments she made up. The month before I had warned the supervisor she was treading on thin ice and some of the fellows were becoming enraged. It was only a matter of time before something happened to her.
The night she fired me I went down to the bay and sat by the breakwater drinking beers and watching the tide roll in. I'd look for another job far away in another state in the morning. Next day I had a job lined up and spent another night drinking more beers down by the bay and having some fried chicken. It's all good. Then another fellow came buy who had been on our crew and also been fired. He had some news. She had been run off the road shortly after quitting time on her way home. She had a broken neck and would never work again and she didn't see who did it. I have an idea who did it but no proof as after the job I had no further contact with my good workers. I wish him well where ever he is and what ever he is doing. Maybe just fishing down by the bay?
Hah, I've had that 'button undone' BS as well, that site had a lot of ex military and I think they missed using authority for the sake of it.
I've had the same experience with female management too, it's like they've had to try so hard to get there they became a bit highly strung and insecure? And they are just pointless in the role really, men do not like working for women, they like working with other men because men are predictable. As far as I can tell women don't like working for women either.
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