Plotting and Scheming

Suzie hit her breaking point yesterday at work. I started getting more serious about moving on and finding a new job a while back, and now she is joining me.

When I say we are surrounded by complete chaos at work, it's really she that is in the thick of it. Working in the office, she is completely immersed in what has become total madness. I'm the lucky one--I only go in and out of the office in the performance of my daily duties. She has to live in it.

If there ever was an office of people that was one step from "going postal" ours would be it. It has been going on for some time now, and shows zero sign of abating. There is a never-ending circle of lost paperwork, misplaced paperwork, wrong paperwork, no paperwork (when there should be), incomplete paperwork, duplicate paperwork... It's got nerves frazzled beyond belief.

They keep accepting the jobs for parts that comes down from Boeing because that's what we do--We make parts. The trouble is, we have far exceeded our capabilites. We are having to "farm out" work to all corners of the area. We are so overloaded that there are at least 4 different machine shops in the Seattle area that are doing work for us full time. Okay, the shop has exceeded its physical capabilities and the result has been having every Tom, Dick, and Harry that owns the right machinery to subcontract for us. That works for the shop. What about the office? The paperwork can't be farmed out to anyone else. We have to to do it. We have no system in place whatsoever to track the flow of parts and/or paperwork. No barcode scanning system--No "system" of any kind to enable us to keep up with our workload. As I've mentioned before, they are pencil users in a computer world.

The brothers La Croix can't be totally oblivious to what's going on--They must have a reason for not doing anything to rectify it. I have been speculating that perhaps they plan on selling the company in the very near future? There is no indication of such a thing, but if they were planning to sell, what better time than when business is climbing at a dizzying rate? They are both old and there is nobody to succeed them. It's an interesting notion...

Although Suzie has been affected for some time now, she has finally reached her breaking point. Time and time again it has made me sick to watch what was unfoldin in the office. The tempers flaring and flying accusations are hard to ignore. I'd pop into the office for just a minute or two sometimes and leave in a whole different mood than I entered with. I felt like I had just been chewed out, when in fact, nothing had even been said to me--It was that bad. I can't imagine having to sit in there all day long, ducking and dodging.

Suz stopped by my place on the way home yesterday for a much-needed hug, but I was out on the Harley doing some errand work. When I went up to her house a little later I found her working in earnest on her resume. On the verge of tears, she shared with me all the things that had happened to her to push her over the edge. It's good that she has finally had enough. We have had enough. We both agreed that it used to be such a good company. Yesterday for example, there were people in the shop building shelving, sweeping floors, and washing the company van, while in the office there was more work than we were equipped to handle and people were having meltdowns.

After listening to her day unfold, we started romancing the notion of quitting--This time as a team. Sure, the proper way to quit a job is after you have found a suitable replacement, but what if that keeps you there past your limits of endurance? I'm not saying that will happen, but it's very possible. We can both afford to have a lapse of job for a little while. We talked about taking a couple weeks off and taking a road trip. Yeah, just talk, but stranger things have happened... There is no problem with finding a job around here--This area is ripe with jobs they can't fill, and there are "help wanted" signs out all over the place. She will most likely get a job with more money and I will probably get one with less.

I predict that one way or another we will both be out of there in a month.