u/Bitter_Lab_475 — reddlx

I found out writing these stories are therapeutic and it is obvious I still have some old professional anecdotes I have to work on mentally, since I started to remember more things.

This is related to a job I had during this Kevin story.

I hope this is a nice place for it.

Quick rundown of my situation back then: 2021, I, 32 years old, Mexican, technically male, entered this company because of desperation. The job sucks, my supervisor J is worse and his supervisor was even worse, living hell, literally was looking for another job after one week.

When I started in the company (again… long story), my supervisor (in the previous story called J, let’s call him JEAN for ease of reading) wanted me to kickstart a new manufacturing line and start a special project.

You see, the special project was a cardboard box recycling plan. For context, these boxes had to sent to a foreign warehouse then returned to another manufacturing plant (not directly ours, let’s call them OTHER company) next to us. Why? I don’t know, since they were not even open at that warehouse or any process done to them, my only guess is for customs purposes. So, since we are so close to them, the plan was that they returned it us after use (without sending them to the foreign warehouse) and reuse them when we send the product again. The cycle will repeat a number of times until it is declared too worn out.

I believed it was a good plan. Normally these boxes would be thrown away and this was a good way to save on constantly buying packaging material and avoid pollution. The problem is that he had this idea since a long time planned out, but he had no ideas on how to implement it, so I had to be the one coordinating this.

This is where the problem started, because this was the steps for the process:

1. Product will be sent to the warehouse.

2. Warehouse will send the product to the OTHER company plant.

3. OTHER plant will unpackage it, save the box with the packaging material.

4. Every Wednesday, a truck would be sent to pick the product and send it to our plant

(laughable because we were literally NEXT to each other, we did not need a truck, we could use pallet forks to send them, they would not even fill a third of the truck… I think we even shared a wall with a large door with their company, I believe they used to be the same plant at some point.)

5. We would receive and mark the number of times used and date of reception in a sticker the box had to use as tracker.

6. Repeat.

Of course there were small mini steps like ensuring the box were not damaged, cut, all packaging material repackaged, etc. But it was that simple.

Three meetings where personnel from our company and theirs showed up… and no one could understand these steps, so I decided to do a flowchart with color codes and theoretical timelines, they said “Yeap, makes sense”… but it was obvious that they either did not understand or didn’t care

I started to get frustrated because MULTIPLE meetings were done and everyone agreed with dates and methods. They seemed engaged enough to DEMAND the meeting was made daily and yet did not understand or asked questions. I was also scolded if because of a major force event I could not attend a meeting. I know they didn’t care, they just wanted to complain.

I prepared everything, I sourced stickers to have the trackers, they were bright yellow with bold, large capital letters spelling “DO NOT DISPOSE!”. I spoke to people on our warehouse to ask them to put the stickers and when they received a box, to follow the instrcutions. Warehouse fortunatelly were the only smart ones in this story and did.

Calm before the storm

We sent the product, telling them when they would receive it after their foreign-located warehouse send it back to them. 2 or 3 from OTHER company people responded “Acknowledged”.

I could feel a weird feeling, a sort of “pre-disappointment”. Like I already knew this go badly.

They received the product.

One Monday, OTHER company sent an mail regarding the first batch being received… then silence. I asked if the boxes came as we said they receive them and I was met with silence again.

Wednesday came and I asked our transportation coordinator if she had sent the trucks to receive the boxes. For context, she was a bitter old woman who attended to every meeting and was the ONE who suggested the day of the week and time to send the truck. She was in every email too… and just said “What are you talking about?”

I was regretting coming to work… I could have stayed at home and just missing a day of pay, which was a fair price for my mental peace.

I sent an email to the OTHER company, who were also in the email chain and attended meetings and they said “oh, we disposed the boxes, why?”

I remember vividly I was about to throw a screwdriver across the office, but managed to stop myself.

They claimed they didn’t know which boxes were the ones to recycle and not to dispose. So I sent them a sticker roll photo of the stickers they received, a 7x6 inch yellow sticker that says on top “DO NOT DISPOSE! next to the shipping and manufacturing info in the box”

Their response “oh yeah, well, that is barely visible…” I have to make clear we put that sticker near the sticker they have to scan to input the shipping to their system.

3 months of planning, daily meetings THEY REQUESTED.

This repeated 4 or 5 times with slight variations, and yet I never heard anything from procurement department regarding buying too many boxes. I was so fed up of this job, so done. I asked myself:

-What would happen if… I just don’t follow up? They throw away boxes, we don’t reuse them. Will they even notice? What could I lose? My job? Would that be THAT bad?

Well… I stayed for another 7 months in that job… Also It’s been almost 5 years since then, I changed jobs twice and I never heard anything back.

JEAN never said anything again about the project, this was one of the more exhausting things I had to work with and it was for nothing…

I swear, that place was just performative employment…