Two Parts.
All set forth by a few harmless, or so I thought, questions to ONE (the real one, later explained) of my two bosses. A little background, I'm an electrician currently employed at a brick mill. I was hired through a temp agency to fill a gap in the electrical department at said mill. I joined the ranks of only one other electrician, we will call him Boots.
Neither of us are union, all of the laborers and three maintenance workers brick production are union(sidenote)
On my first day the other electrician opened with "Hi, I'm Boots, its just me and you. I'm not a boss by salary, but I'm your boss in this department" I thought to myself of the phone call I received before accepting the position. I was instructed to meet up with the Maintenance Boss, we'll call him Byrd. I shrug it off.
I soon later meet Byrd, and he introduces himself as the boss of the five men that work in the Maintenance Dept. I didn't think twice about it. Since then Ive been working hand in hand with Boots in repairing any electrical mishap/breakdown/repair/etc. that would come up in our normal day. We've gotten along pretty well I'd say. He has conveyed a lot of information to me for the industrial electrical field.
After a week, a mandatory safety meeting I attended allowed me to work over time, time and half for working hours over 40 hours in a week. I soon started working nine hour days to benefit from the overtime. Here is the FU: This past Friday I asked Byrd if i had a set schedule ( I had been coming in regularly at 530 AM and staying to 3.) He said no, and then I asked "but I have unlimited overtime available?" Not thinking anything of the other maintenance people in the room. HE glared at me intensively, but I just looked around, as I usually do, dumbfounded and curious of how incredibly old and run down this mill had become. (its from the 40s, its a fossil)
Fast forward to this morning. I walk in. Boots says nothing to my standard "Hiya". He barks at me to hook up an air compressor that had been dropped off on the weekend. I think, hes hung over (again) and brush it off. I finish that. He has me organize a small room of wire that looked as if a tornado went through. Manage that. Shit you not, my next objective is to separate and judge by condition weather or not to keep, 20 or so 5 gallon buckets full of every size, thread pattern, and washers of nuts and bolts. Lunch time. (1/8 of a bucket's contents thrown on the floor.)
FYI, by this time I had figured out Boots was pissed at me..
We sat at lunch and he squeezed a lame "..how was ur weekend.." through his gritted mouth. I answered and asked him and he said something along the lines of okay and he mumbled something about Easter. Then it happened. He became extremely red and opened with "..I've worked here for over a year and half and have never had anyone go above my head for what pertains to scheduling. I tell you what to do and I tell you when you work! No more overtime, only when its needed!" And right there is when I realized what was going on. The mill is like high school. There are clique's, and there is a mess of drama. A rising issue with the mill is that it has the majority of the laborers union based. Meaning they are limited to all sorts of normal things regular employees would get. Overtime, paid vacation, and sick days are a few of these. Well when I had mentioned (unknowingly some what incriminating myself) by asking Byrd those overtime questions, the other non electricians in the room were union and I guess started asking questions about my employment. It all came full circle today. I wondered about all those Saturdays Boots would tell me he had come in from 4am-10am and say all he did was sit in the office and do nothing. I realized then that I had totally brought unintentional heat on my co-worker. He spatted out something along the lines that he doesn't want any schedule issues to go up top (the admin dept I'm guessing) so he wouldn't be put on a schedule. Honestly, a lot of down time in the work we do, but he hangs around everyday an extra hour or so and I thought he was just doing electrical stuff as I left.
Now I'm in a weird spot and doomed to separate bolts until I'm thrown in a brick kiln by unruly yinzer farmers!
TL;DR I asked questions that may have made my coworkers overtime scheme common knowledge..
