r/Prorevenge My Boss Fired Me, So I Fired Him! 

Boss: No one is irreplaceable, straighten up or you're fired Best Employee: Ok then, Bye Boss: Wait, you're not supposed to call my bluff

Bosses: "Apologize to this guy who threw you under the bus or be fired!" OP: "Okay, I'm fired." Bosses: **surprised Pikachu face** Lessons to be learned from this story: -Nepotism is cancer and inevitably kills anything it takes place at, be it businesses or even governments; -NEVER piss off your most important employees and drive them away. YOU need THEM, not the other way around.

Moral of the story: if you hire a friend or family member for your company, ensure that person is competent in that job. Another moral of the story: Don't make your best employee the scapegoat of the company.

lack of redundancy in critical sections of a factory was pretty common in the factories I worked in. It was 100% because the higher ups didn't want to shell out the cash for the machines and manpower. Out of the.... 3 factories I've worked in, only (1) had a redundancy for all of their critical machines, and it was a freaking print shop that supplied posters and stuff like that to the local stores and shows. The other factories I worked in were a medical machine refurbishing place (1 area goes down, it backs up EVERYONE, when I started there, there was a THREE YEAR backlog on the stuff in my section, and I cleared it out in 3 months. Guess who got terminated at the end of their contract instead of being hired on permanently like everyone promised?). The second factory was literally building parts for internationally located POWER GRIDS, again, no redundancy. Another 2 year backlog in the area I worked, we managed to get it down to a 1 month backlog before my contract was terminated after I got injured at work (tripped over a pallet that was a hazard and injured my bad knee and hip, but nothing was done until one of the managers tripped on that same pallet, later that same day. I liked him, I suspect he did it on purpose to get something done, and he wasn't happy when he found out I'd been let go). Again, if one section went down, it could back up the entire factory. But this is in the US, and to be expected, because CEOs care more about padding their paychecks instead of maintaining their businesses.

It's the weirdest thing. It always seems like hiring your own or other people's family as favors for friends and disrespecting/blaming other workers who did nothing wrong ends up failing your business. I still wonder how that is...

This is why you should never try to sabotage someone's job, because if they were fired as a result, it could wind up negatively affecting *the entire company,* including you. Also, yeah. Why not have MULTIPLE machines? It's like the parallel circuit. If one bulb dies, the whole circuit can still run!

Boss: "You're being very unreasonable!!" Also Boss: **Ignores Igor's f-ups not once, but THREE times, and blames everything on OP**

My favorite part was when the boss whined that OP was being "unreasonable" by demanding triple the pay to come back. Treat me like garbage and expect me to be "reasonable"? Yeah, not happening.

Moral of the story: If your entire business is set up so that 1 person is that important, make sure to never piss of that person.

Igor didn't finish the blade measuring in time because he wanted to avoid using the unwieldly, complex, and scary Excel program. Instead of learning, he did the easy stuff. Now he paid for it.

You’re absolutely correct on companies trying too hard save money. It costs little to cross train people and to have an extra person or two.

My fiancé is legitimately the OP of his work. He does 8 peoples jobs and is the only one that knows how to run 2 of the big expensive machines and he knows all maintenance - people go to him now instead of the actual maintenance department because they know my fiancé will actually help them fix it while maintenance will slap some ductape on it.... wish I was kidding. His boss pulled an Igor in front of the really big corporate people that were visiting and watching production for the week but couldn't fix the machine when it broke and kept looking at my fiancé whom he had just insulted to do it. My fiancé handed him his PPE gear and said "Since I obviously don't know what I'm doing, you better get to it boss man" before walking away. His boss couldn't do it but my fiance wouldn't help him until his boss said out loud in front of everyone that he couldn't do it and he needs my fiance's help before my fiancé fixed it in 2 seconds 🤣 At this point, my fiancé legitimately tells his boss to get on his hands and knees and beg after treating my fiancé like shit for the last 9 years and the best part y'all? They do! My fiancé takes photos to show me now so I'll randomly get photos and videos sent to me of his boss and his boss's boss on their knees begging my fiance because he's the only one that knows how to do basically everything with little actual training. My fiance thought when he first started that if he worked hard, learned as much as he could and was as helpful as possible that it would benefit him, if anything it's been a curse.

OP clearly doesn't understand that the US prison system has a separate tier for white collar criminals. That guy didn't have to worry about his soap, or gangs, anything like that. Just had to worry about making it on time to his tennis match with the embezzler who gets the weekend passes.

Nothing like some Pro-Revenge to start a Monday Morning

I was dealing with that bottleneck situation a few months ago but for different reasons. I used to work afterhours support at a car hauling company that employed over 1000 drivers across the country. Each terminal at the company had its own rules and procedures. Some terminals had it right and I got few calls from them. Others were so disorganized I, along with my other coworkers, would constantly get calls from them. It got to a point that the dispatchers started telling their drivers to call me if they wanted to modify a load (not in my job description). We were also computer savvy so anytime a driver's device acted up, they called us and not IT. That IT department was so bad they couldn't solve some of the simplest issues with the company computers. We also dealt with hotel authorizations, fuel card issues and redirecting dealer calls to the appropriate terminals. Frequently, terminal managers were also calling us to activate fuel/hotel cards for new drivers (they had a high turnover rate) and sometimes I had to show drivers how to use the devices. We were dealing with all these calls because nobody else knew how to do any of this stuff. We actually understood the log and freight systems better than most people at the company. I sometimes think I knew more than some of the guys at IT but I won't talk about those shenanigans... I left the company because the hours finally got to me and I couldn't handle it anymore, not to mention I really was fed up with the way everything was handled within management. I really wonder how screwed the company would have been if the support team just left. Sorry for the vent, it's been a slow recovery from that madhouse...

RSlash: "As a business owner, I genuinely don't understand how you can have so much riding on just one team of people." Also RSlash: _Employees eye RSlash with concern in the event RSlash ends up sick or suddenly passes away._

Sigh Who do these bosses always tend to intimidate THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO CAN HELP THEIR BUSINESS TO FUNCTION with termination for bs reasons. I mean seriously what did he expected tp happen? "Oh yeah i am soo sorry for acting this way and i will never do it again master"?

you know it's a juicy one when a single story takes up the entire video

A bit of a long one, though I guess all the backstory made the overall result all the more satisfying. Love it when smug management think they can bully decent workers into just taking all the bullying and abuse, and then get all surprised when they don't play along. I suppose they shouldn't have let Igor get away with being a douche for so long...

See, no, RSlash. That would be competent. If a company were that competent, we wouldn't be here talking about them.

I love when a boss threatens termination and is shocked that the employee gets terminated

I once worked as a cashier, did drive-thru, trained people, was a maintenance man and cook---and was slated to become manager. Then, they got a new Gen Mgr. and she hired ALL her homegirls and neices to be managers---and they either QUIT or sucked and were fired. Meanwhile, I used to argue with them or nearly get "domestics" for trying to get them to do things properly. Nepotism is stupid. Glad I dont work there any more.

oooooh, got one for this too. I worked as an IT consultant and we specialised in "panic" situations, i.e. companies would pay us a monthly fee and if something went horribly wrong we fixed it. When I started there we had about 15 consultants and about 7 that where verry good. We all had about 30-40 customers each.... the management and sales was dodgy to say the least with the Owner as boss, his wife as finance and their son as sales, did not matter to me since I did not spend any time in the office and the salary was good. After a while more and more of the really good consultants left and they hired complete idiots, within a couple of months from the first good consultant leaving I had 90 customers + that I had to go do backwork where other consultants had screwed up, firstly I worked around the clock 7 days a week. I more or less had to schedule any private thing I needed to do, I was kind of done with the company at this point but the way the pay was constructed I would be rolling in money. More or less you needed to get to a certain income to break even, then you get 10% of the income above that, then 20%, 50% and lastly 80%..... 80% was supposed to be impossible but I got there with ease during this time since I more or less worked, ate, slept and then worked again. Anyway the pay was delayed 3 months so you got paid in March for January and so on. When my first paycheck from the above "crazy time" came in it was 1/3 of what I expected.... it was still a great pay but not anywhere near what I should have been paid. I ofc. went to the boss and showed my spreadsheet of what I had billed and what I was expecting to get paid for this time.... the reply was that they had deducted backwork from my paycheck (backwork is when somebody else fooks something up and I go in afterwards and fix it), I ofc. stated that it was not me that was the reason for the customer being dissatisfied, I went in and fixed it and excpected to be paid for fixing it.... take it out of the other consultants salary, not mine. The reply was that it was taken out of mine and I could either deal with it or leave...... I chose to leave ofc. I had planed to leave anyway but this escalated my leaving, it also made me wanna leave in the worst way possible. In Sweden you can't just leave, you have to work there for three months after handing in your resignation so I did and I took damn good care of my customers during the three months, however I did no training, no handover, nothing and I was never asked to do so..... 2 days after I stopped working there the phone calls started with all types of questions, if I could come in to save their butt etc. I calmly said that sure if you pay me the $50.000 you guys owe me..... no we wont, well then I will not help you in any way shape or form. The company within 7 months had lost 60-65% of their customers, they where sued to replay a bunch of companies etc. and within a year they where out of business..... all and all I would have preferred the shitload of money they owed me but at least it made it hurt a bit less seeing them go down the drain.

The company made A LOT of profit in the beginning. Surely, they could have bought multiple machines to get the work done quicker, and have back ups.

I used to work in Quality Assurance operating a computer controlled measuring machine. These things are expensive (6 figures) and accurate to within 0.001 inches. The machine and the Quality Room had to be kept extremely clean to ensure proper operation and accuracy. It was properly cleaned and maintained so there was never any down time. You could run the thing 24/7 if needed.

Rslash: you haven't seen how big and expensive some machines get, redundancy is a wasteful and sometimes impossible luxury.

When you work with and for big companies long enough, you'll quickly realize that business destroying stupidity is the norm, not the exception. Since they're big enough, they can usually paper the problems over with money in preparation for their next error.

It’s not just about the money, but also space. I’m assuming the machine for this could take up several hundred of work space, and just placing two near each other had to be pre-plan, or they would have to expand the production area. Which of course, means even more money. But also a hassle to probably make the moving of existing equipment needed to either build or shuffle things around to get two machines working. Meaning just a lost of time and money while spending money to hire all this work. So, you might just loose more than just accepting the shut down of it for a month

Sadly the way this company was run, is in no way a unique story. From the names I am guessing that OP was from Italy. When I was studying our teachers warned us to be very careful dealing with certain south-european countries, because of corruption, nepotism and work ethics, permeated the entire area at the time. Is it any wonder, that several of the countries, more or less, went bankrupt?

That's one thing that Walmart did correctly and probably the only thing is that your family cannot be your boss

Okay, one thing to note, you can't compare your RU-vid "business" to a real, actual company manufacturing products. At the beginning, it states that their an American company working in Europe. It's basically treated as a subsidiary, so funds are going to be a little bit tighter. Buying calibration machines or any manufacturing product in general is going to cost up to 6/7 figures. Yes, I understand if you're a big enough company, you COULD buy another machine or 2, but you're also looking at the time to make it, the cost of the parts, someone to design a company specific machine, setting everything up, letting R&D test it out to see if it's what they need, etc. There's a lot more to buying machines than just "Oh, let's go buy another one!" It's a way more in depth process than just going to Amazon and finding a camera, going online and buying editing software, going on fiver to hire editors.

I really wish rSlash read what on the posting, not adlib to brevity. I tend to follow along just because and I find myself backing up to find where I missed a sentence and I didn't

I would have put in a standing offer to come back for 25% of the gross cost to the client to refurbish the part, and waited until they agreed to 15%. Then I would have worked 16 hour shifts for the month and a half it would take me to train new people. I would also make sure I got credit for each part the trainee's did while I was training them. That, imo, would be _reasonable._

Companies that big but are not run well have a certain velocity that will keep them operating for a while, but they will inevitably fail given enough time. I had a friend work at a small job shop running CNC machines. The job shop was very successful, and the boss was a good guy. My friend asked him why his shop was doing so well, and he said something like "I decided to open a shop that has a clear ordering process with accurate prices, is easy to order from, produces the parts requested in a given time, and ships promptly." That's it. He just made sure it was easy to order, and that parts were built properly and on time. Just doing that and he was ahead of most other job shops. He wasn't faster or cheaper than any other shop, he was reliable.

I've heard somewhere about a study conclusion telling that idiots cost a lot more to societies than criminals. These stories illustrate that study very well.

Did anyone else notice how much out-of-sync Dabney's audio was to the text on the screen? I've watched enough of these videos to know that what he says doesn't perfectly line up but this is probably the most extreme deviation in speech vs text that I've seen on this channel so far. I'm not hard of hearing but I have a difficult time focusing on what people say and I usually put on subtitles to make sure I didn't misinterpret what was said.

There’s a term in software engineering that applies in other disciplines called “bus factor.” Basically, the minimum number of people that could be hit by a bus that would leave a business unable to function. In many of the cases that show up on rSlash, the bus factor is one, and the proverbial bus is them leaving for a better job.

For a while, I was worried nothing would happen to Igor. Glad he was the first to go.

Rslash sometimes takes some liberties when reading stories; rephrasing and skipping, specifically. definitely noticible here

I relate to this story. I work with very sensitive measuring instruments and this past Friday instead of allowing me to do my normal calibrations they prioritized my work load for non-critical equipment. Well guess what over the weekend a critical sensor malfunctioned and caused a leak that I'm guessing is going to cost about 500k in fines and clean up costs.

As a company worker, and not a company owner, I can tell you this... It is a lot more common than you think it is to have something that appears trivial and unimportant to the job be something excruciatingly important. There are several jobs where I work which several departments are dependent upon in order to remain functioning; and yet the bosses and owners don't see how important they actually are and often don't put in enough preventative measures or labor training as they should to make sure it doesn't go down. On paper, I'm fairly certain that many people have their hands on that machine despite only 3 people understanding how to perform maintenance on it. As the OP said: "Using the machine and understanding the machine are two very different things", and bosses rarely - if ever - consider the difference.

I love when he posts, he has a good voice and great stories

moral: before you fire somebody, ask to yourself "do we have somebody that can take his tasks?" if the answer isn't "yes", don't fire him/her unless you don't care that his tasks aren't done. if you fire the (wo)man you need, the shit will hit the fan. and you will have to clean the mess.

I don't think they had only one machine. It sounds more like they had multiple machines, but only 3 people who knew the detailed inner workings of those machines. He said there were multiple people who knew how to use the machine, but only 3 people knew how it worked. It happens all the time. When people know how to use something, but don't know how it works, they tend to assume that certain "shortcuts" are ok. If you don't have people to discourage the harmful shortcuts, they'll destroy everything by accident. The problem want the machines, it was that they only had 3 experts who knew enough to discourage harmful shortcuts. One who retired, one who is expensive and in high demand, and the Last who was fired. So the ignorant guys who remained ruined some machines, and they had to shut down the machines that WERE working, because they didn't have anyone who knew how to run the machines without destroying them.

Automation engineer here to explain rSlash's questions. What they have is a very precise, and VERY expensive piece of machinery. We're talking millions for a single machine. And from the sound of it, they had the machine working at near full capacity all the time, giving plenty of work to the other stations who needed the parts next. Having another machine would not be a good idea, as it would just be idle for most of the time. An idle machine still needs maintenance, so that would be more work and more money spent on a machine that does not run anyway. The real issue here is the lack of care for the machine. Only 1 of the 3 people working on it (assuming they actually had a full rotation, he didn't mention a 3rd) took any care for the machine, and a piece of equipment like that needs CONSTANT care. This type of machine is, thankfully, made so that it will not break down if you treat it right, so all they had to do is what OP did. But of course, OP was the only one actually doing their job, so it broke.

rSlash: "Quality control" Me: - immediate traumatic flashbacks - Also, you grossly underestimate how much business is riding on one or two people/machines ready to blow a gasket, but middle management just wants a 9-5, no work job with a hefty paycheck.

The more profitable the company, the more likely you have people pinching every bit of income out of it, no matter the cost to get there, which inevitably leads to their own failures.

Freddy:"Are you ready for Freddy?" Worker:*Pulls Uno-reverse* Freddy:"No way!"

Last story, as someone that used to work in a similar environment I thought I'd chime in. So not even factoring in the cost of precision measuring machinery which is typically north of a million dollars at the cheapest, many facilities like this have the teams they do so that when something breaks down, even if one department is down for a few days, a week, or a maybe even a month. The other departments can still work for the most part until that department is back up. Then there's a big catch up phase where other departments may be slow but overall productivity isn't halted. Now, if they did for instance have a second machine and a second team, that would not mean double the productivity. It would mean the same productivity in half the time, and then there's no work to do the other half. I worked at a lumber mill and this is how it was broken down Logs are brought in and stacked Saw mill cuts the logs into boards Kilns dry the boards Planer finishes and bags the boards Now, at any given time. There's usually 1-2 weeks worth of leeway. So if the saw mill goes down, the kiln still has plenty still to dry for the planer to run. If the kiln goes down. The saw mill is still cutting, and the planer can run what's already been dried. If the planer goes down, the saw mill can still cut and the boards be dried. If there was a second of any of those departments, one area would always be waiting on another, either waiting for more logs, waiting for more to be cut, or waiting for more to dry. We even had a saw shop that used those precision cnc machines for re tipping and sharpening saws. And it was always a matter of fix the machine and move on. If there were twice as many machines and twice as many operators in the saw shop, that wouldn't change how many saws need reworked. It would just lead to people only working half the day instead, which laborers would hate because we love our overtime. I hope this makes that user's story a little more understandable

Some specialist industrial machinery has a legal component when you acquire it, that is you can't purchase it and you have to basically rent it from the manufacturer. This is so the manufacturer can charge the company a premium renting it, for parts/repairs and servicing keeping a continuous revenue stream. It's quite possible that OP's company only has one measuring machine simply because their contract wont let them or the extra rental and service contract isn't financially viable.

Love this story, I've seen too many situations like this. Some little jerk is friends with the bosses so they think they can get away with anything. This is why I'd never hire a friend to do serious work

Classical failure of the bus principle, mixed with nepotism and corruption 😁

To answer the question as to why not have a second machine. There are a couple hints in the story. First is that the parts weigh almost 50 Lbs. In turbines, these parts would be made of as light and strong of material as possible, Probably Titanium. Which means these parts are large. The other is that it has stone tracks. These are marble to reduce vibration from other machines. All of this tells me that we are dealing with large machines all around (Not just inspection, but the Rework Machines as well) which takes up space. Now assuming they moved into a pre-existing Shop, space is a premium and if having a Second Inspection Vehicle would mean removing some essential Rework machines. You can guess which they would opt to keep. I wouldn't be surprised if they had a Built in Maintenance Day. My old work had tight Quality control too (Automotive Airbag Components) and we had a Day (New Year's Day or first business day of) that we would shut down the factory, do inventor of parts, and necessary maintenance on vehicles and machines.

Igor reminds me of my friend's former co-worker. and I use "worker" lightly. Not sure how this guy got the job as he was completely unqualified. I think he lied about his job experience. 22yrs old and zero knowledge of electronics, repairs, etc. Also was lazy AF. I think his dad had some sort of connections to get him the job and kept him from being fired for 2 years. His "work" day consisted of coming in to work (often late by over 20min or an hour), clocking in, going back outside to his truck and vaping marijuana so he was high AF, moseying on back into the building, sitting in a chair and putting his feet up for the entire shift-- if he even bothered to stay the entire shift. He'd often leave hours early. Sometimes he would walk around and look at stuff but he could never fix anything on his own. He was supposed to move boxes of inventory, but he left them for my friend to do. Only time he ever worked was when my friend was there and he could move heavy stuff. He would often no call no show or call in last minute. Friend, who had a new baby in the house and had suffered a stroke that was still affecting his health, was always getting called in to come fix something bc this guy wouldn't do anything. Guy would claim my friend didn't train him. The boss kept giving this guy raises to encourage him to actually do his job but he still refused. My friend said he was tired of having to do all this dude's work while this dude was making $$$ for barely doing anything. He kept complaining to the bosses over and over but they would never fire him. He finally threatened to leave if they didn't do something about it. That came after the guy had blown off yet another shirt and when confronted about it, told my friend that he could make more money doing massages and that was what he was doing instead. Friend told him he should go do that fulltime and leave this job so he could actually get someone competent hired. To explain how inept this guy was, I have been an unpaid family caregiver for the past 15 years and even I have more knowledge and experience with electronics & could do the work. I took electronics in high school and electronic engineering in college. This dude never even went to college and knew nothing about electronics. He couldn't even figure out how to turn a screw. Anyway. After friend put in his ultimatum and listed all of the issues again, they got on a group chat where the lazy jerk lied about everything. Said he needed the job or would be homeless (he lived rent free with his mom) and all sorts of other bs. Friend had already told the boss they were all lies. So the boss finally set some ground rules. Said what the guy was expected to do every day if he wanted to keep his job. Dude quit within hours. Fortunately, at this point, my brother had been working for a different company in the same area in the same building and my friend had been teaching him how to fix stuff. If friend wasn't there, he could walk my brother through it. My brother was already doing the clown's job before he quit. Friend had been telling his boss he had someone who could take the guy's spot who was a fast-learner and would do the work. So, within an hour of the other guy quitting, my brother got hired. He now works two jobs at the same place and since they are cooperative companies, they work together on his schedule so he doesn't have conflicts and can do both. Pretty soon the 2nd company's contract will end and the new one will take over and they plan to give him a big pay raise when he takes the new contract. So, it's working out well. I agree. They should have backups, but they care about getting the most $$$ for themselves and aren't willing to pay what they should to get things done properly. They like to screw the lower tier employees a lot. They forget that they need those employees and treat them as expendable.

This story kept reminding me of my last job. Highly technical, lots of expensive tools, and requires encyclopedic knowledge of many products from many manufacturers. The only other person in the company who could do this job retired. I reminded the bosses that I'm only one person, and thus cannot exist in two different places simultaneously. So they should keep me on the specialized work, and let the other guys handle everything else. Also, the company treats their tech guys like unwanted step-children. Ambition and innovation are not rewarded, managers take credit for what the tech guys do. Nope. Keep doing what doesn't work. Three months after the other guy retired, I quit and went into business for myself. Now they have to hire me as an outside contractor, which allows me to work less and make more.

90% of r/prorevenge: "hey you the only guy that can do this one super important thing youre fired (1 day later ) OMG no one knows how to make this come back op"

as a former quality engineer working in aerospace, i would say that every department in the facility is equally important and a stall in one would create a backlog in others. You definitely cant order multiple machines in the case one breaks because they are prohibitively expensive in most cases and that would be so wasteful. Any trustworthy machine manufacturer will most likely send out a replacement unit while yours is in repair for a small rental fee, which is nice.

I’ve ran a CMM before in the aviation industry and that surface with the chip in it is usually granite. That whole cmm story makes me CRINGE so hard my spine is dust

That last story was amazing. I wish I could have gone out the same way with my manufacturing job when I was being bullied. Oh well

Having worked in a support role for production companies (meaning I work with production staff on factory floors, but I'm not personally involved in production), I've seen a lot of situations where one machine exists to do a task, or one person really understands a specific task/role. Usually it stems from the assumption that there isn't enough work to justify having extra machines or extra bodies if only one will do, and they figure that the opportunity cost of lost productivity + cost to restore if/when the machine or person is unexpectedly unavailable is greater than the expense of maintaining a redundancy. Consider the following: If you own ONE car, and that ONE car breaks down, you're screwed. So if you own TWO cars, you defer that risk, but is the expense of one person (you) owning two cars worth it, compared to the expense incurred by loss of transportation if your car is suddenly out of commission? Usually not. So you just own one car and if it breaks down, you deal with the inconvenience at that point. In the case of my current job, we have two people in a role where one of us could do it without the other one, but if we only have ONE person and that person is unavailable, the job doesn't get done. Our company feels this role is important enough that they're willing to pay two people to do the job of one person to offset the risk that one of us is out of the office, or busy, or quits, or gets hit by a bus.

Boss: You're fired! Fired employee:Well, it is you are fired too!

Having a backup for a machine like that just isn't feasible for a lot of companies. Plus, most of the time, having two teams and two machines working means you're producing more than you need, so they're just sitting idle the bulk of the time.

That's the magic of entitlement: You're immortal, you can do anything you want and it will all work out... which we are finding that... Nope! Not gonna fly! Good luck!

18:55 Tech student here :D I had maintance classes and from what I can tell the machine was surelly pretty expensive, and from what OP told there wasn't any maintance team, they were negligence on letting all the work to a single person without backup in case of any screw up, plus the fact they hadn't had any reposition machine.

0:52 your work makes you the Golden goose, thanks dude to Antonio. 3:34 He really passed on the Golden torch with that, and you took good care.... The boss that however fires you cannot see that, only because the eggs are gold, but the goose looks like any other.

Life baffles me man. I grew up with learning disabilities and I work very hard to be competent at my job and anything else that I am doing because I was always told "you are never going to be anything" so I always assumed that I had to be very smart for anything that I wanted to do. But now that I work a corporate job as a Graphic Designer, I feel like the people around me who I work with don't know anything about their job, or just in general. People go out of their way to not do their job, and rarely ever do their job right when I'm scared to make 1 mistake.

Interesting. I left one job (wasn't paying enough) and started a new one on the same day. Although, both were temp jobs, and I'm still at said job...🤷‍♂️

The crater in the stone would be a perfectly flat slab of granite, my dad’s mate works in F1 doing the same job. Very important that those machines are used properly.

Hey rSlash, I fix autoclaves for work. You wouldn't believe the number of pharmaceutical, food, and research companies only have 1 autoclave and no contingency for when it goes down. I repeatedly tell people to buy a backup unit for redundancy. Especially for things that are deemed "vital" for operations. And this isn't just small companies. I've dealt with some major food companies that looked at me like I had 3 heads when I told them they shouldn't have just 1 machine to rely on.

Engineer here. Regarding having another machine, it's very fu**ing expensive to buy precision machines, measuring machines can go into the millions or tens of millions of dollars, and if I understood the story correctly the machine could measure irregular surfaces, and had a calibrated base with irregularities in the order of micrometers, needless to say it is very expensive, and its software very complicated. That's the reason why they didn't have another, if It can handle the work with a capable operator it isn't worth it.

those 3d measuring machines are FREAKING EXPENSIVE!, maintenance and calibration also are quite expensive, you can consider it as LAB equipment, not production, because you have to have trained technicians operating and as OP said, those technicians need to understand how the machine works.

The last story is representative of ALL of the major companies in the USA. It relies ENTIRELY on the submissive acceptance of the workers. This is why salaries are anonymous and profits are constantly recategorized.

1 thing confused me. The machine was working for 3 shifts a day. Did I get that right? So OP worked a shift then Igor worked a shift. Did another person not mentioned work the 3rd shift? Or did OP work 2 shifts and Igor the night shift? Thank in advance for anyone that replies.

Good morning rslash. Thanks for the stories. It's usually not a good idea to hire family or good friends. Have a great day

Factory work can be some serious bs. I worked as a temp extrusion operator and ended up getting some bad blood between me and the guy who trained me, in the end I got blamed for damaging some expensive parts and such a large amount of missing plastic compound that within the time I'd been there I would have to steal pounds of compound every day which would be impossible

I worked at McDonalds for a few years in my early 20’s. They had one server for the whole store. And this thing was ancient. I mean. It had been sitting in a tiny corner, at the top of a cabinet for 15 years. No one even knew where it was when it pooped out on us. It took 9 days to get a new one. That meant we had to do everything by hand. No drive through lists, no screens of any kind. It was miserable. And it always shocked me that a multi-million dollar company like McDonald’s didn’t have a better plan for something like that. Bottle necks suck

Sounds like there are too many bosses, which is done to "insulate" the guy(s) at the top. I remember on my job I had a "lead technologist" who had an unofficial assistant, since the two of them got anything they wanted. Over the lead technologist was an assistant supervisor, then a supervisor, then a department director, then a vice president, and so on. It was difficult to get anything out of them since they were so well insulated. There might have been four workers on duty at a time on day shift; only two on evening shift and only one on night shift. The bosses all worked day shift and didn't give a hoot about the other shifts; like most bosses, they wanted a big staff when the bosses were there so they wouldn't have to work, and worried not one bit about the other shifts. Insulated management is a very bad idea since quality of the services, and customer satisfaction, decreases sharply. What's so different about this story is that night shift left work for dayshift. This is contrary to my experience; in my workplace dayshift ALWAYS left a bunch of work for evening and night shifts, even going so far as to schedule a bunch of stuff for the late shifts even though there was time to do the work on dayshift, and at least twice as many workers. Damn your commercials.

They work off a “just in time” model. They don’t account for issues in process. It is how most manufacturers and shipping is handled now. If everything works, it looks cheaper and more efficient.

Trust me they don't want to spend an extra cent on anything. I work in a big pharmaceutical as a Lab tech 2 and we had Frankenstein equipment. Meaning we had to put the good parts of other faulty equipment together to make one equipment we could use. Well the instruments there were mostly on the 250k to a million bucks new, but using scraps was a little to much for a multi billionaire company. We lost a lot of time fixing the issues with the machines plus the time preparing and doing the tests , so we had to incur in over time, meaning 8 people getting overtime weekly and that adds up quickly . My base salary was in the 40ish k but with the overtime I was in the 80ish and that was just in my first year working there as I got pay bumps that got me into the 100k a year. They totally could afford the machines but think their brains can't comprehend that. It was great for the most part , lol.

I don't listen that much but it's like listening to all the other reddit youtubers at once with a nice voice

omg!! The comparison of the Igor guys intelligence! I gotta remember that one!!! *"To compare him with a lightbulb, he'd be like a wet match in a dark basement somewhere in a black hole"* Holy shit x'D

The main reason why that facility didn't have a second machine and a second team is cost. The machine itself is into the millions to tens of millions dollars worth of cost, is incredibly specialized, and takes a long time to get ahold of. People don't just have these machines on hand; they're built when ordered and take a long time to be built, and are usually built for the entire facility. Likely looking at a year's worth of time waiting for a new machine. Then the people that are to operate those machines are also highly specialized fields that require heavy education, experience, and certification investments. Buddy and Igor were the energy sector's equivalent of brain surgeons. You can't pluck a random general practice doctor out of his office for this; You're basically going to need to educate someone from the ground up and doing that on any sort of time pressure would probably be worth into the millions to tens of millions of dollars. Based on the idea that a typical gas turbine plant is 400m dollars, and this service station is likely servicing several plants, I'd wager the entire facility is probably worth in the 100-500m dollar range, with this one operation being 70% of the facility's costs, so we're looking at anything from 200m dollars to 400m dollars worth of equipment, education, and experience. Yeah companies aren't willing to shell out for a second machine because that's likely a second facility and that means paying upfront for several hundred million dollars. That's why the guys brought in were paid so much. The position probably normally goes for 100-200k/year. Short notice you'd be getting something closer to 10-20m/year until you could train and educate a new set of regulars, as the total weight of contracts are probably into the billion dollar range. Redlining any place that is supposed to manage contracts of that high amount will definitely see kill squads and courts involved because you're probably endangering at the very minimum a country's state/province or in the case of some place like Belgium, the entire country with a screw up like Igor.

To explain your question about why not having 2 machines? I'd say that you mostly don't buy a 2nd machine of that kind (measuring machine) because of 2 reasons 1. Money (very very expensive) and 2. the space they take on, depending on which part they'll need to measure they get very very big But these are only guesses, I haven't been trained in that field yet, although I worked for about a month in that field (2 weeks internship +2 weeks holiday job)

Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. -Valery Alekseyevich Legasov.

Another story about how in the work place if you can make yourself as critical to the efficient functionality of the company you have almost unlimited bargaining power.

Well I can tell u from at least a blue collar worker side of things why they don’t buy the second machine, at least from the way my company handles these things, you’d run out of work, and it’s not as simple as just buying a second machine. If u buy a second machine u double the output for that section, which means every section behind that now has to be doubled as well or kicked into a higher pace to keep up, this isn’t ideal because fast paced quotas lead to a lot of shortcuts and if ur not prepared can ruin ur production systems. Also you now have to drum up twice the business u usually had because you’re now making twice the output, which sometimes isn’t as easy as it sounds and there’s not always going to be a guarantee you’ll have work, so if you run out of work, ur now keeping twice the guys and twice the cost of operation, so it’s more expenses and risk at the end of the day. It’s not always a guaranteed failure, but a lot of the times we stager what we produce on a site in order to keep work available, this way we have a reason to keep guys, if we get twice the guys we’d blow through it in no time, and be up a creek if there’s no other available work.

Throw a little wrench in a big engine and you can destroy it. Same thing with a business.

rSlash you are absolutely correct at the end in your reasoning. I'm a cabinet maker apprentice and our workshops have more than one of each machine, cause if we only had one and it broke down, it would literally halt the entire production line. An absolutely nightmare scenario. Any competent, professional business will always, always have at least one backup machine. Because you're fucked if you don't.

this is truly, pro revenge

Some of those bottlenecks are economically unavoidable. If you've been following the semi-conductor shortage, you discover there is only one (1) company in the world capable of making the machine to make the most advanced type, and only two facilities with one of those machines exist, as the machines require tens of billions to manufacture and maintain, and the very best engineers in the field require an additional 2 years of training (after already training and working at the top of their field for a decade or more) to learn to even begin to run and maintain the equipment. The tech is incredibly secret, as well, as our hi tech world would be significantly less hi tech if that company folded, the machines broke down, or the very few people in the world that know how to make them quit or disappeared.

that one should legit sell his story to netflix

I can tell this took place in canada. The names, the metric measurements, the US reference, and the absolutely on point perfect description of the average Canadian workplace, cliquey, incompetent, inefficient, and ruthlessly run by nepotism. I would even Hazard a guess that this happened in the West Coast or western region of canada, Alberta or British columbia.

i've worked in an industrial environment and played a lot of base building and management simulators. even I, myself, would point out that's a red flag when production is dependent solely on one machine that requires constant maintenance....

19:10 if I were to ever start a small business, I'd want to keep it a small business, when you get big enough temptation and stress comes your way, which means, more success, more deadlines, more notoriety, and of course more greed

Critical path equipment, stuff that will shut you down. You need 3 machines. 1 or 2 in operation, one in reserve and or maintenance cycle. You then load balance them so they are getting equal amoungs of work over time. You also have maintenance contracts with the manufacturer or authorized representative or two people who are factory trained on them.

The company i worked at did research in a chemical industry. We had minitureproduction"plants" the size of a room. In times past for the most critical and volitile components we had a kind of module ready in a warehouse on campus and it could be replaced within the day. Of course they got rid of it, because it was unused inventory and thereby a "loss" Do I even need to mention that anytime something failed afterwards it took weeks if not months to fix it, costing a couple tenthousand dollar for each week of downtime?

Why not have a second machine? I have a close friend who just happened to manage a department of a company that also has a gigantic "Very precise measuring device" too. It was 2nd hand and costed roughly 20 million USD converted. From what I've heard, they had to grease a whole army of hands to be allowed to import that thing. So yeah, sometimes things that entire factories rely on may not be so easy to purchase :)

Going to work sucks WAY less knowing at 8am there is a new rslash. Glorious

Good comment about bottlenecks. That should be basics 101 especially for manufacturing companies.

You don't need another machine. A fix for anyproblem is already prepared. The problem was the lack of a repairmen.