Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Have and have not

An interesting situation at work as lead me to think about this particular conundrum. We recently had an HVAC worker come in to repair a couple of the small heaters in the warehouse. They needed repair basically because of their placement which I assume could not be helped. Anyway, after he was finished an email we sent out to the warehouse crew from our Operations manager telling us that the heaters are there to keep the pipes from freezing and they are to be left set at 40 degrees. Someone had turned one of them up to 60 and unless we want to pay the gas bill we should leave them alone. Follow that up with one of the inside salesman (A guy who receives phone calls all day and punches part numbers into a computer) left his check stub lying around and we discover that he's made close to $100,000 this year. Now the office space is very comfortable and warm, it feels warmer than my apartment which is usually around 65-68, now my question is do the office people pay for that heat? I would guess not. So here's the situation we have a crew of warehouse guys that haven't had any raises or cost of living increases in years being told that the warehouse is gonna be cold love it or leave it cause we obviously can afford to pay for it, yet the office workers get to sit in a Miami climate and make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The rich, wealthy, and powerful sit comfortable while the poor make little, get less, and are told love it or leave it.

2 comments:

Paul, Dammit! said...

That is shitty, man, but it also tells you which people the company feels they need to reward. Maybe you can show how the temperature affects productivity in your department? If you could, that would be a good reason to have a conversation about the butt-ass cold workplace.

Bill Elms said...

I hear ya man, and you know, I probably would not have even given it a second thought except for the attitude that the email was sent in. The Operations Manager here is the king dick of asshats. It really makes me appreciate my former O.M. Mike D all that much more. Hopefully some progress will be made in the near future or the stay in Seattle will be very short only because of the working conditions, which is a shame.