For over a year now I've been tormented, harassed and bullied by my coworkers.. while this was happening, I kept dismissing it as normal workplace difficulty.. it's hard to see what's going on while you're there, in the moment. but looking back at what's happened, and looking around online for what constitutes a hostile work environment, I'm pretty sure that's what was going on. I'm not saying I have legal recourse for the environment I was in, because I don't really think I do.. but I guess you can decide if I'm exaggerating.
I worked with 2 other people on a paint line.. we paint parts for windows and doors to later be put together by window and door assemblers, the line we worked on I liked to call the Frankenstein line. Years before I ever worked there it was just a paint booth and an oven to dry the product. Over time it's morphed into 3 paint booths, 4 ovens, and 4 sanders with conveyers between them. Most of the machinery is constantly on the verge of breaking down, and part of our job is to maintain that equipment, and bring it back to life when it inevitably fails or dies. Sometimes the fix is too complicated for our "pay grade" and we have to call maintenance in to fix it.
When I first started I was actually excited that I had found something that paid decently, that I could actually do. Images of becoming a well-versed operator on this line made me so hopeful for the future. I had done lots of different work but never worked anywhere that challenged my mechanical ability the way this has. I surprised myself many times along the way, but those surprises were drowned in a sea of horrible training, manipulation and violent outbursts.
When I think about factory work, it does conjure up ideas of rough people, salt of the earth people.. I don't expect everyone to behave appropriately all the time, and to never express anger at their job. I think this is a different story though. The violent outbursts started almost immediately. The product would get stuck in a sander and destroyed, fall off while covered in paint or clear coat picking up dust and dirt, the spray tips would have defects or excess dried paint that would create a poor spray pattern, ruining the product. So part of our job was to foresee those things and stop them from happening.
There was also one particular oven that product could get backed up into, which could start a fire, burning the product and creating a small safety hazard. At least until we could carry it over to the sink and douse it with water to put the fire out. If you let it go long enough though, it could potentially be a huge fire hazard. My station was sort of in view of that oven. I could see the oven itself but I could not see if the product was backing up unless I walked about 20 feet from where I needed to be. So occasionally the line would back up, causing the product to sit in that oven. When this happened, both of my coworkers would throw a tantrum. I was watching my booth on the end and putting the product away. I had about 100 feet of line to watch, running back and forth to make sure it didn't back up on the end and didn't jam up anywhere along the way.
When product backed up in the oven, both of my coworkers would glare at me as if I wasn't doing my job properly, start slamming boards, throwing boards, breaking boards. They never said, "hey you're doing this wrong."I got no feedback whatsoever. If you don't clean the tips of the guns inside the booth off, that excess dried paint can ruin the finish of the product, but in order to open the booth and clean them off, you have to shut the whole line down, or it will back up into the oven that burns the product. So I suggested we shut down every 10 to 15 mins for the 30 seconds it takes to clean them off. Instead, they'd rather that we just keep running until there's a problem, let a bunch of product get ruined and then get mad about it.
I made it my goal in the beginning to stop those imperfections. Sometimes we'd get drips from paint or clear coat building up inside the booth, hanging like wet stalactites inside a cave, and leaving little round circle drips on the product that were very hard to fix once they've dried. I'd bring my coworker the product, and ask them where it was coming from. Every time, they'd walk over to my booth, point at one of those stalactites and say "right there." I'd clean that part up, and 10 mins later, I'd still have drips on the product. When we're running clearcoat it always gets 1 coat of stain, and 2 coats of clearcoat. So booth 2 and 3 were both putting clearcoat on the product. I started checking the product before it got to my booth. Lo and behold, most of the drips were on the product before it even got to the booth I was responsible for. I stressed out horribly over those drips, I really wanted to do my best, so I racked my brain trying to solve that problem. I grabbed a board with a drip on it before it got to my booth, handed it to both of them on separate occasions and asked them where it came from. They both walked over to MY booth, pointed at a random spot, and said: "look, right there." I started telling them that most of the drips were coming from their booth, and they laughed at me as if they were incapable of making mistakes.. but then all of the sudden the drips stopped.
I know all of this isn't that bad so far.. but don't worry, we'll get there.
For the first 4 months that I was there, we also had a problem with the product coming out rough. They kept telling me that you have to run over and sand product coming down the line by hand, before it hits the last sander in order to make sure it's smooth when it comes out. That's a nearly impossible task with everything else going on. To their credit, they did get over to sand those products as much as they could. One of them, we'll call him Jeff.. who was the lead of the line.. he would run over and sand them by hand. Well, part of my job was quality control, and some of them still came out rough. I was told to send the rough ones through the process again and that's exactly what I did. When Jeff saw what I was doing, he came up to me, very angrily and said: "if I sand them by hand, they're good.. you're being too particular." After getting after me 3 or 4 times.. finally, I started just letting them go, and putting rough product in with the final product. Jeff told me that it was just the grain of the wood and there's nothing we can do about it.
After being there about 6 months, management decided that we had to tear the whole line down and do a rebuild.. fix everything and update a lot of equipment. Dr. Frankenstein is back to work.. We got a new supervisor who came over to me one day, looked at the rough product and said "these have to be sent again." Upper management came through and one of the more angry looking members of management got right in my face and said "WHY ARE YOU SENDING THESE." I gave him the same answer that Jeff gave me "it's just the grain of the wood, there's nothing we can do about it." He stormed off without saying another word. My supervisor grabbed the whole rack of product and sent it through again.. just like I had been doing from the beginning.
We fixed everything. They kept saying everything was going to be so much better now. The product was rough because we never changed the sander brushes on the sanders, and the drips and other imperfections were from old defective spray tips, the line wasn't properly lined up, and half the line wasn't even bolted into the ground. A former manager came in and retrained us on how to run the equipment properly. Ironically enough Jeff wasn't there that day.
My job difficulty was cut almost in half. The product was coming out almost perfectly. We had a little more cleanup and set up to do every day, but with the time saved from the lack of damaged or substandard quality product, we should have been able to keep up with everything.
Well fast forward a couple months, and everything started slipping again. The line started jamming up alot, and nobody seemed to be able to fix it.. my coworkers barely spoke to me, would be obviously pissed at me and not telling me why. They would come do parts of my job for me and not speak to me in the process. I told my supervisor that there was some hostility there and I don't know what it's about. Jeff barely spoke to me, even though he was my lead.
One particularly bad day, the line jammed up over and over again.. leaving my other coworker, we'll call him Brian.. extremely angry. It became clear to me that he was angry because I missed some stuff that was jamming up, and several pieces of product got damaged. He sent a very heavy, very wide and very long piece of oak through the line which got stuck in a sander and sat there for a minute with the sander tearing into the finish. I didn't see it because I was running up and down the line trying to prevent other jam ups from happening. I saw him run for the piece, and in a fit of rage pulled it out and chucked it probably 15 feet through the air, in my direction. Well, I, of course, was already running towards him to help clear out the jam up, and the piece came about 2 to 3 feet from hitting me in the face. If it had hit me, I don't think I'd be writing this right now. He obviously knew what he did was wrong because he had a surprised look on his face, and he apologized under his breath. Jeff looked over at me shaking his head, which is funny because when I brought it up to him later.. he acted as if he didn't see it. Brian told Jeff that he had to leave early that day without giving a reason why.
One day we had a problem with one of the ovens on my end, and throughout the day I'd have to use different tools to fix various things.. I'd end up with a small collection of tools on top of the oven, which I'd usually have cleaned up every day by the end of the day. I'd set them on top of a removable panel at the entrance of the oven. The panel was about 3ft by 5ft.. So by noon that particular day I had an impact drill, some allan wrenches, a screwdriver and a few other pieces sitting there when the oven stopped working. Jeff came over in a fit of rage at the fact that the oven stopped working, grabbed the removable panel, and literally threw all my tools onto the floor to get behind the panel. I had to crawl underneath the oven to get some of the stuff..
A few weeks later Jeff exploded at me.
So there's a sensor at the end of the line that stops the entire line if too much finished product backs up. For the first 6 months I was there I had no idea that the sensor even existed.. If you turn it around, the line will keep running giving you time to do other things. So from my very first day, that's how the line was run.. One day someone turned the sensor back around without telling me. The line shut down, and I asked Brian what that particular error message on the control panel meant. He explained to me that the sensor was supposed to be used and that we just hadn't been using it. Well, this makes my job exponentially harder, mostly because they trained me to do things in a totally different way. My supervisor happened by, and I brought the situation up to him, and before I could even finish a sentence.. Jeff jumps out of nowhere and into my face. Literally screaming at me in front of our supervisor. He said "EVER SINCE THE TEARDOWN YOU'VE THROWN ALL OF MY TRAINING OUT THE WINDOW" and "YOU'RE MAKING THIS JOB HARDER THAN IT NEEDS TO BE." I froze up because of how hostile he was when he approached me, and choked on my words as I brought up the fact that I got no feedback from him whatsoever about how I'm doing, or what I'm doing wrong.. He scoffed at me. Our supervisor suggested that he retrain me to show me what I'm doing wrong.. I agreed and a few days later the day came for him to retrain me.. and nothing happened.
Three months had passed by since the teardown, I brought up the fact that I felt like there was a lot of hostility from my coworkers at least twice with my supervisor, and at least once in front of all three of them. Jeff sat stewing on something that wasn't even real for 3 months and moved a sensor I had no idea even existed, in order to piss me off and force a confrontation. He had even sent Brian over to explain it to me instead of doing it himself which is what I'd expect a lead to do.
There's another example of the emotional manipulation I witnessed while working here. All 3 of us had particular duties first thing every morning in order to set the line up. Jeff and Brian worked together on 2 booths, and I generally worked alone on the third. So one day Jeff kept disappearing.. and it was seriously starting to piss Brian off. He came over and vented to me about his absent partner, to which I just kept working and pretending to listen intently. Jeff would show up for a minute or two and then disappear again. After that happened about 4 or 5 times.. while Brian was complaining, Jeff comes over and starts screaming at both of us. He said "IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE FACT THAT I KEEP LEAVING, YOU CAN FUCK OFF.. MY DAD HAD A STROKE." He looked at me and angrily said "IT'S NOT REALLY DIRECTED AT YOU." I replied "I know, I have no clue what's even going on."
At that moment I actually did. If someone is going through a tragedy like a stroke of a family member, I'm very sympathetic to that.. I don't wish any ill will on anyone.. I also know for a fact that if he had approached Brian and explained what was going on in the beginning.. Brian would have been very sympathetic about it too.. My contention is that he intentionally said nothing, he intentionally tried to piss Brian off and used his father's stroke to guilt him into feeling bad for getting mad. It's passive-aggressive, manipulative, and just plain old aggressive. Brian fell right into his trap though.. Immediately following his outburst, Brian got this worried look on his face, said "I better go talk to him" and chased after him..
I had brought up the flying board incident to my supervisor during my review.. he said "If it happens again, let me know." I remember thinking that something like that, something that could possibly cripple or seriously injure me, wasn't something I wanted to risk letting happen again. He's the boss though. In hindsight, I should have gone to HR. My review was before the incident where Jeff exploded at me, and a couple months later Jeff was moved to a different area for the summer. It happened a lot while I was there, he was supposedly the lead, but he was moved to different areas a lot. So right before Jeff left the line, my supervisor gave me another review. It was strange because I was literally the only one who got this review. He sat me down and asked how things were going, and I told him I didn't understand what Jeff's little outburst was about, he said it must have just been "frustration." He gave me another raise, because as he correctly guessed.. I was looking for another job. He said "I don't want you coming in here every day being miserable."
Things calmed down a lot when Jeff left, but every so often he had to come back to get some paint, or get a tool or borrow something from us.. and he still kept picking at me, he'd make little comments blaming me for something that had inconvenienced him.. like Brian borrowing his paint and not returning it.. even months after being gone from that line, he'd come back and blame me for something.
It literally made every day of my life a living hell.. I hated going into work every day.. Jeff was unapproachable, even just to ask for someone to cover so I could go to the bathroom. The last incident I'm gonna talk about happened on a day when Brian was gone. We had tons of product that was coming out with spots all over it. Generally, when this happens it's because something is wrong with spray tip, or something else inside the booth. I grabbed a couple pieces and brought it over to Jeff. I called him over and he just glared at me for about 2 seconds and looked away.. I sat there for another minute, and he finally came over, you could tell he was already irate. I pointed at the spots, and said "we're getting these things all over the jambs, and I don't know where they're coming from." He started walking away, then stopped and looked back at me and screamed: "THE FINGER POINTING HAS TO STOP, DO YOU WANNA CHECK MY BOOTH?!?!" I flat out told him "I'm not finger pointing, I literally don't know what this is." He just ignored me. It was near the end of the day, and there are certain parts of shutting the line down for the day that requires 2 people. Jeff literally walked to the other side of the building and found someone else to help him with a 2 man task, when I was 20 feet from him.. this is the kind of petty bullshit I've had to deal with on the job.
That's the end of my story for now. I've worked a lot of places in my life and had to work with a lot of difficult people. I'm almost 40 and I've been working since I was 15.. but I've still never encountered more hostile, manipulative, and just downright cruel people in my life. Feel free to comment and share if you've experienced something like this.. and thanks for reading.