I turned in the last of my Unitrans keys today and found that the weight of those keys left on my carabiner felt foreign - funny how that works. I know a lot of what I throw up here has dealt with Unitrans, and I promise this will be the last of it.
A second discovery weighed a little heavier on me than even the missing keys: I was the oldest employee in operations, and the only one with any sense of continuity in the company. I had been driving since the spring of 2003. There were many employees who had come before me, and at least 800 hired since I was given the employee number 1386. What is unsettling is I'm not talking about only student employees. By the time our new General Manager was hired I had already been driving for a year. I sat on the new Assistant General Manager of Operations' hiring panel as the company's Human Resources Manager, and I have been working longer than the recently graduated student they hired to replace the Safety and Training Supervisor.
I was hired as a driver during the picnic day season of 2003. I missed my interview because I was busy being yelled at by the Band. I got hired anyways, thanks to the diligent and observant HRM. I drove for a year and when I reached the requisite lifetime hours for doubledeck training (500) I applied to Shop instead of route supervisor or ADT to avoid competition with many of my friends. I spent a year as a maintenance mechanic and learned plenty. I also learned that though I loved the people in shop, I hated my job. So, I applied for Supe. Got the job finally in the fall of '05. By the time spring came around I found that I had applied for the HRM position and gotten it. Oops.
I've seen 6 HRMs go by - Wilson '02-'03, Art '03-'04, Art (again) '04-'05, Roy '05-'06, Myself '06-'07, Christy '07-'08, and finally Bob '08-09. During my last few years, I surrounded myself with "old people" those who had been around too long, and we swam in a cloud of negativity. Those who stuck around for more than two years suddenly became a rare breed. They became those who had witnessed the company for all its triumphs and faults and saw the same things come and go, the same mistakes made by the student managers year after year and no one learning from it all. It was described as a slow-motion-train-wreck that many observed silently. Those who cared and tried to make changes, tried to help a company they loved met with walls and immovable career staff, leaving only bitterness for their efforts. See? Negativity. Wow. The problem is, we all loved our jobs and what we did. There were many who stuck around past their graduation for the security and comfort of the job, though it was against university policy. People always find loopholes.
Here's the thing: The actions taken by the student management aren't felt immediately, this is especially the case in HR. The time it takes to recruit, hire and train new drivers is about 4 months from start to finish with each training class before the effect is seen in service. For any noticeable effect to show up, it takes at least a year. Roy dealt with Art's mess, and delivered to me something that passed for a company, I walked into the office with high hopes and trusting my career staff, which was admittedly naive. As I dealt with driver shortages learning from my own mistakes (as there was nothing to glean wisdom from, and certainly no one to give it), I passed the torch to my replacement hopeful that my policies and hiring frenzies would support her in the role to fix what Roy's predecessor had let the company become over his two years of... well it was something even if it wasn't management. No one student manager can claim any particular achievement, and no one can point fingers at any of the student staff and say that Unitrans' failings lie on their shoulders (Even with Art, the career staff is responsible for protecting him and not holding him accountable for doing his job). The system is long standing and its progress is a long, slow, continuous affair. It is short sighted for anyone to claim otherwise. (e.g. the "creator" of a three hour Mandatory)
The problem continues, though: no one who has has the means to do anything about the smaller problems faced by student management cares enough to do it. Those who are responsible for the oversight and guidance of the students who run the whole damn thing lack the knowledge requisite of the positions they supervise. The career staff can't step out of the system and look at it objectively to pose solutions. As is evident in me being the oldest employee -career or student- on the books, they also lack the framework of continuity to see recurring problems in the system or recommend solutions that were once in place and were lost in the changeover of student staff.
I know there may be some people out there who read this and roll their eyes because this is an old issue they heard before. This is really an old symptom: "Blame the career staff because the system doesn't work properly." Much of the old career staff retired during my tenure with the company and has since been replaced. The key word there being symptom. Though there are many who don't see any problems with the way the company is currently run, the problems persist. I am writing this down so that I hopefully never have to deal with this again: I will no longer need to complain, as I will be free.
But... it's always nice to have one last rant.
2 comments:
Hooray! John is done!
I ruffled a few feathers with this post, and got in an argument over it. I wanted to post my rebuttal to claims that I was discrediting the work of my colleague and replacement:
You got to make your case, but you denied me the chance to make a rebuttal. I'd like to make one.
My case is that the work in HR is built off of every HRM and that to claim otherwise is short sighted.
You're saying I'm discrediting all of your work with that statement.
While I won't deny the amazing amount of work you put into the company and the position, you're discrediting the work that both Roy and I did by claiming that you're the "inventor" of a three hour mandatory. In the fall of 2005, we had a 7 hour long mandatory. In the Fall of 2006, a 9 hour long mandatory, and the fall of 2007? I'm not sure because it didn't set a record in length =P. You know though, it was your mandatory. You may have dragged it down from 5 or 6 hours in the fall to 3 in the Spring with your hard work, but so did Roy. Thats the way the system works. Hell, I even cut 4 hours off of my mandatory between fall and spring. The company loses roughly a third of its employees to graduation every summer, and the rest of the year is spent building it back up.
"things may play over from previous years, but from what I got at the end of the year, we thought Unitrans was going to fall apart and we'd even have to cut service."
You got your summer training camps. These are not an original idea. Roy tried to get them for me, but Debbie wouldn't have any of it. She had been accused of overspending and over-budgeting and Geoff had gotten on her case for it. She wouldn't get behind the idea after she'd been chastised for it the year previous. (Roy had both been trained by, and trained in Summer camps). Instead, Debbie told me that we were fine on Drivers, she had spreadsheets and everything. She brought her numbers to manager's meeting and we ate them up. I set my minimums accordingly and, well, look where that got me.
I got the end of it all. I got to step into the giant gaping hole of "you reap what you sow." Except I hadn't sown it. Neither had Roy, he worked his ass off. I spent the entire year courting Geoff to come to Mandatory, so he could see what the system was like. It was only after the demonstrations of 6 and 7 hour mandatories that he came to agree that the situation wasn't my fault - that the system was broken and that something needed to be done about it. Granted his admission and your training camps were about as far as he got.
Also, (I don't mean any malice behind this, and please don't interpret it that way) You left for Scotland before the first camp even got off the ground. I was the one who got to deal with the absolute mess of Scott and Geoff allowing Vicente and Josh to run things. I was the one who was expected to throw band-aids on the training department's oversights for over a month so that by the time you got back, two camps had gone through and they were finally getting around to doing their jobs.
Another thing you haven't recognized is the amazing amount of service added my Jon White, Nadia and Mike. Over the years, the OMs kept adding service, new trippers and extending old columns for better service. Between the three of them, they added hundreds of hours, admittedly to keep up with the growing population of Davis, all the new freshmen (you, and your schmancy new dorms). And the company didn't grow with them. Roy fought tooth and nail to cut service, because he couldn't keep his head above water in hiring.
"I was handed a very difficult situation and I worked my ass off to make it better"
That's the job, you take what you're given and you do your best to make it better. You have done a damn good job, but no matter how hard you worked, your pat on the back is a slap in our face if you decide to claim all the credit. Those who stand on the shoulders of giants can see farther than the giants themselves (sorry that's a bit self indulgent, I don't claim that much credit). I didn't write this post to offend you, I didn't write it to discredit your work. I'm assuming that's why your upset, because it takes away from all that you poured into this company. Think though, after all that I poured into Unitrans, and how much I truly love the company, how I felt when my work was forgotten, you got the prize, and I got remembered for the record breaking 9 hour long mandatory.
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