Old Workplace, New Workplace

Today, I spoke to someone from my old workplace. You know what he told me? He told me that he'd met another coworker of ours on the bus, when that coworker was headed to work... At the place we'd all gotten laid off from.

Now, this doesn't mean he wasn't laid off. It means they re-hired him. You want to know why?

Because that robot that beat our human record for a day fell from 100 parts per hour to 20 parts per hour, the day after we were laid off. Us humans were capable of 80 parts per hour. They laid off two shifts before finally getting around to us, but now they've got a full three shifts of temps working.

They are such fools. I knew that would happen. That stupid robot would break down every day, even when it was only responsible for doing the laser-marking. They really should have waited a couple days before laying everyone off, just to make sure the robot was reliable.

It was broken when they got it. They fixed it, but it was too slow to keep up with humans. It regularly couldn't perform the one function it could still do, and they really invested that much faith in it's ability to perform consistently based on a couple hours of competency?

At my new workplace, we have our bathroom and lunchroom at opposite sides of the factory. So for the first break, it's kind of like deciding whether you want to sit down, or whether you want to go to the bathroom. We're allowed to take bathroom breaks during work, so there really isn't any damage done to the workers, but this unproductive arrangement still kind of bothers me.

To get to the blue-collar breakroom, you need to go through a glass door and climb professional-looking stairs. To get to the white-collar area, you climb grimy, metal stairs. Nothing wrong with that, but it's also a little unorthodox.

There's a cafeteria, but it's only open for Day Shift. The cafeteria (breakroom) is rectangular, instead of square. It's funny how simple geographical decisions like that can have such an impact on the overall societal attitude of any given group of people. It's something I've always noticed. In my last workplace's square breakroom, we were more lumped together, and therefor, everyone felt more connected to each other, and every one was more cordial. In a rectangular breakroom, everyone is more spread out, and people fall into niches. It effects every aspect of the workplace, even outside the breakroom.

My winter coat is in tatters, but I don't want to buy a new one when winter's only going to be around for like, a week. Usually I wear my spring jacket, but winter's suddenly made a comeback.