Background. Covid craziness basically screwed me out of a 15 year career in food service. I worked in a bakery for a while, liked it, then went to Culinary school. Got a degree (yeah, it's a real thing, lol) in baking and pastry arts. Worked for some crappy places, and finally clawed my way up to a management position. I was running my own shop in an established restaurant. And then Covid happened. Bottom line, I had to bail and find a different line of work. Even today, the kinds of jobs I would barely qualify for even given my education and experience in baking are offering pathetic starting wages. Like, McDonalds level BS.
So a little over a year ago I went back to what I had done before and got a job in a shop building trucks. After a few months got into the QC department and had a little raise. It still wasn't great, but the place is really close to my house and benefits were good and cheap. Then they were forced to deal with the fact that their wages were low, and everyone got a pay adjustment. Not a raise, that's a different process, just a straight up bump in pay that didn't factor into any other raises or promotions. At that point I was making reasonable money. With the catch that $2/hr of my wages were shift differential. For working second shift, that I wasn't working. I was hired for 2nd, told it would be starting up soon, and that never happened. I was also told since I was hired under that deal that I would always get the differential regardless of what shift I was on.
You can guess where this is going.
Friday they called me into the office and I was informed the shift differential was gone. It came from "very high up" and so sorry, blah blah blah. This in the middle of a year where I've seen many of my basic expenses nearly double. They then told me I could keep it if I went to 2nd shift, at a different plant. Where they work crazy amounts of mandatory overtime, and it's a much longer commute. So yeah, more money, but at the cost of basically all my free time. They seemed to be pushing that option, which to me says they don't want me there any more. Which is interesting since the QC dept. is way understaffed, so what's the plan here?
I'm 49 and I've never in my life worked at a place where I was treated with any degree of basic decency. Shit like this is just par for the course. Really getting sick of it.
So a little over a year ago I went back to what I had done before and got a job in a shop building trucks. After a few months got into the QC department and had a little raise. It still wasn't great, but the place is really close to my house and benefits were good and cheap. Then they were forced to deal with the fact that their wages were low, and everyone got a pay adjustment. Not a raise, that's a different process, just a straight up bump in pay that didn't factor into any other raises or promotions. At that point I was making reasonable money. With the catch that $2/hr of my wages were shift differential. For working second shift, that I wasn't working. I was hired for 2nd, told it would be starting up soon, and that never happened. I was also told since I was hired under that deal that I would always get the differential regardless of what shift I was on.
You can guess where this is going.
Friday they called me into the office and I was informed the shift differential was gone. It came from "very high up" and so sorry, blah blah blah. This in the middle of a year where I've seen many of my basic expenses nearly double. They then told me I could keep it if I went to 2nd shift, at a different plant. Where they work crazy amounts of mandatory overtime, and it's a much longer commute. So yeah, more money, but at the cost of basically all my free time. They seemed to be pushing that option, which to me says they don't want me there any more. Which is interesting since the QC dept. is way understaffed, so what's the plan here?
I'm 49 and I've never in my life worked at a place where I was treated with any degree of basic decency. Shit like this is just par for the course. Really getting sick of it.
