Associate
I swear a fair bit at work. One guy on our shift doesn't, but he's weird.
Swearing at work
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So I go by this rule usually, however I failed in a meeting between departments and with both our boss and our immediate understudy in the room. This will be long winded to set up the scene and the background.
We are getting a potentially lucrative contract in overhauling a set number of units, I've been part of discussions direct with the client as the workshop manager, and am fully aware of their expectations and was instrumental in setting out realistic and achievable goals which both parties are happy with. I left the commercial dept to do their thing knowing that my thing will happen when we get the first 2 engines.
2 weeks ago the contracts were agreed and signed and it's just a waiting game as to when they arrive.
I've only been workshop manager since April, prior to that I was project manager for all in house work, Africa, and offshore oil and gas, it got a bit much and we ended up splitting the role into 3, so I took in-house. The previous workshop manager wasn't very good, didn't have high standards and was constantly undermined by those around him. I tried so hard to work with him but the turd we were churning out was awful, so eventually he was moved to he side in a health and safety role and looks after site service personnel.
I've spent since April improving the paperwork (standard procedures, improving facilitie, introducing a 5s work environment), and getting the team to my standards, and it's worked amazingly, much less warranty work, much less headaches and the guys have planned work.
My colleague manager of the commercial dept, was not involved in any of the discussions or paperwork. It was kept that way by his staff and myself because he has a reputation for talking bull pooh and doing more damage than good when discussing such matters, were it not for him being a friend of the business owner I am in no doubt he would have gone a long time ago.
Anyway, our boss asked him to call a meeting to run through the work and expectations, I arrived to the meeting 10 minutes late as the meeting I had with the MD over ran. I made my apologies, sat down and laid out my plan, explained we would be following our standard operating procedures as per our previous builds to ensure quality, the customer is to supply all parts so that's a headache we don't have to contend with. These engines aren't electronic so makes running then nice and easy, the customer has advised they over service the engines and they were in good running order and requires overhaul due to hours operated, and it's cheaper to plan the overhaul than have a breakdown because they get fined. I laid out the engineers chosen to carry out the builds, advised the 3rd party crack detection, and the test cell we plan to use. Pulled out the clients list of expectations and advised it's less than what we would do naturally as part of our own internal procedures so based on all this I'm not expecting any issues. I explained that as per our procedures once we've stripped and inspected the engine and components we would always have a hold point with the client incase we find additional faults, which may require additional parts or increase the total time required, but for obvious reasons I can't provide any definitives until we get to this point. Unfortunately we haven't been given a date when the engines will arrive other than in a few weeks time, so it's impossible for me to make a plan in the planner and I can't book crack detection, test cells etc until I have a date. I explained I've purposely not planned any jobs we've currently got and I'm making sure any current jobs are always at stages we can stop at, in anticipation of these engines arriving so we can jump on them straight away, and that I will plan the current jobs around these engines arriving when I have dates.
Everyone in the room was happy with this, my boss said right as we're all happy with that meeting over. Then the commercial manager piped up and said he wasn't happy, felt I hadn't put enough effort in, I had a blaze attitude and didn't.think I was taking this contract seriously and the company was riding on this opportunity working out and he didn't have faith Im good enough to do it.
I started calm, said I've done all I can, but without dates I'm very limited which everyone agreed, I said if you feel you can do a better job and get my workforce to work better for him than me then he's more than welcome to take over.
Our boss tried getting him to stop talking but he was being talked over, and the personal attacks continued and he brought up me backing up a member of my team after he'd tried lambasting them for 10 minutes over a technical query he thought he knew better on,
Again I started calm by relaying " as I said your more than welcome to do it yourself if you feel you'll do it better" , he then said I'm not going to do it as ibe got enough to do, but I don't think your the right person to do it either.
To which I got up, shouted a **** off, a **** you, then walked out, unfortunately I couldn't leave it there and I went back to say sorry but instead I just told him all the things I'd done and the successful jobs I'd had completed under my tenure to which our boss backed me up, and told him to **** off again, then made it to the top of the stairs again, thought no I really need to apologise, walked back in looked at him said what more do you need me to do to make you feel comfortable with the job, to which he said I'm not talking to you now after your out burst, you've shown your true colours, so I told him **** you and **** off, I went to walk off again, but my boss stepped in and said right everyone else go meetings over, said to me he needs to speak to me about something else
I sat down apologised to him, he said tbh the guy deserved it and you can't beat a good **** you in a meeting, but and I agreed, as I was the one that swore it's down to me to apologise, which ****** me off, but I knew as soon as I swore I'd lost the high ground.
I was so cheesed off with myself, I can't say it wasn't justified, but I shouldn't have done it.
I still don't have a date as to when these engines are going to arrive.
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i refrain from swearing on any skype calls that are not just our close team. In the office it's a case of its busy refrain. There are some people who seemingly try to put swearwords into sentences and i find it irritating and depending on circumstances a really bad image.