Some of my coworkers read this, but I write this one in jest. It seems everywhere they put me, we run out of work. I have been in chemistry since about the start of the year and the reason I moved is because the guys over there couldn't stop chanting "there is so much work and overtime, nobody wants it anymore. Like a fat boy who just smelled fresh cake from down the hall, I dropped my old skills and promptly got trained in the ways of the chemist.
I don't want to say I am the kicking-est ass that ever walked these halls, but shit, as soon as I start working on a backlog of work, it gets done, Son! When I joined the group almost twenty years ago, they used to cry about a backlog of almost three years in SEM, which was the first technique I learned. After a couple months, I kind of asked if there was OT since there always seemed to be so much work. I was told sure, not many people liked working it, so go ahead. Before long, I, almost singlehandedly had the backlog eliminated and we finally became a group that would do the work in the same week, sometimes in the same day that the work was submitted. This also had to do with bringing in more quality people and getting rid of some of the bubble heads that were floating around in the group.
About ten years ago I was then introduced to TEM, still in imaging, but totally different. They too were overwhelmed with work. They had a I'm going to say kind of racist manager who kept the group pretty white, and the work ethic wasn't there throughout the group. The lady that was on my shift was a beast, I could not keep up with her, but she overworked herself on out of here. The rest of them, I would call duds or half-asses who wouldn't put in their fair share. After they got rid of that manager, all of a sudden, the brown people started working in that specialized field and again, the work went down to where we would work on whatever came in that day, from a backlog of months.
I now find myself in chemistry, another branch of our company, and I hate to say it, but as of the last three weeks, we have been able to keep on top of everything that comes in. They were struggling to keep up last year, now with the help of your truly, I am actually sitting back at the TEM prep tool doing work for them because there is nothing to do in chemistry. There was word, back when I decided to jump ahead of the work to get myself trained, that we were going to get a huge contract that was going to double their workload and I was giddy with anticipation. I even tried getting involved with this work, even though I was brand new to the group and didn't even understand the purpose of what we were doing.
We may still get this magical contract sometime this year, we supposedly qualified ourselves, they have just been dragging their feet. Maybe they just used us to get a cheaper price from their old lab, maybe the work is coming, who knows. Another excuse I heard for the slow work was that our biggest customer had a summer shutdown, so most of the engineers went on vacation the last two weeks. I guess we'll see if work picks up next week.
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