Foremen

You know I started working here at the end of January and since then I have had at least 5 Foremen leading me to believe that is a terrible job to have! When I started here we had Mario and Vinny. I really liked them both and was glad to work for them. But something happened and Vinny was gone so instead we had Greg and Mario. I was good with that too as I liked Greg and felt he was a good Forman. So far so good. Unfortunately there were some politics going on and in the big blame-game of life Mario got to go for that fishing trip he was looking forward to a couple of months early. Enter Bernie. I liked Bernie as he was an experienced Forman who was laid back but professional. He and Greg worked well together so everything was going well when travel schedules got mixed and I ended up working half my shift for Mike and then the rest for Bernie and Greg. Again, all good! I was even getting used to the change. But... Greg got put back on the tools when night shift was halted and Bernie was sent to a new site. So now I have Dale. I like Dale. He is a young Acadian from New Brunswick with a heavy French accent, lots of energy and a big smile. He knows the business well and knows the skills of his crew well enough to use us on jobs that match our skill sets. And he ways says that if we work hard and don't lie to him he will go to war for us if need be. Except with his accent it sounds more like: "I tell you boys, dowwn lie to me an work 'ard an I will fight for you!". Yesterday he proved it. There is another Forman on sight who just returned from vacation. He is keenie-beanie to make an impact and so he has been flying around the site cracking out orders and getting things done. Getting them done maybe a bit too quickly and in areas that aren't his to manage. As our site is wrapping up, for instance, he went the other day mid shift and unplugged all the welding cables from a bank of machines that will be going ack to the rental place. The problem is he did it mid-shift with no warning 3 days before the machines were to be picked up and this effectively knocked our crew out of work until they could re-jig their welding cables and get them re-set to the other bank of machines on the other side of the site. This process took the rest of the day and killed all production for the day. It also left some welders very ticked off! We let that one go and got back to work when yesterday he struck again. As there are no plugs receptacles in the walls of a surge bin we have power packs on the floor that have 20 or so receptacles on their sides and which are about the size of a coffee table. The scaffolders needed the power pack on the surge deck moved so this foreman flew in and started unplugging the extension cords that were using it. I though we had blown a fuse when our equipment stopped so I went over to reset the fuse. When I got to the Power pack he had our plug end in his hand and told me to unplug the rest so we could move it. I argued that this was dangerous as someone could be using a mag drill and unplugging it would kill its power and cause it to drop. "fuck 'Em" he said so the plugs got pulled and the power pack got moved. I should take a moment to point out that this is a major no no. Apart from mag drills if you were in the middle of using a hand drill on metal and pulled the plug it would snap and break your wrist. If a worker had done this they would be fired. Not to mention that it pisses off the people using the power and is plain ignorant! One of our welders started to slowly burn with anger. Finally he tracked this foreman down and screamed at him. He then went and told our foreman Dale. That was when Dale proved he was there for us. He tracked the guy down and a big argument took place. We never saw that guy on our surge deck again. I am so glad to have Dale as a Forman. And because he goes to war for us we would go to war for him. And that is how it should work!