I read with interest last week’s report from Reuters that 13 Chrysler assembly line workers at a Detroit plant were fired after Fox News (who else) caught them on camera (smile!) swigging beer and toking up during their lunch break.
I’m certainly not in favor of anyone’s assembly lining while impaired – these guys are dealing with machinery. Certainly, someone could get hurt, and/or the Jeep Cherokees these guys were building could end up with a shaky something or other. And I haven’t seen the video clips of the episodes, so I don’t know if these guys were just having a brew or two, or really pounding them down.
Still, I can’t help but have slightly mixed feelings about this entire episode.
When I started my post-B school career in 1981, it was not uncommon for a bunch of us to go out at lunch and order pitchers of beer for the table. We didn’t do this regularly – but we didn’t do it irregularly, either. If we went out for burgers to TT’s or Charlie’s Kitchen (where we also got to look at the toilet seats with the embedded JFK half dollars in them), whether it was for someone’s birthday or just because, we always had beer. I’m not a beer drinker, but I’d usually have a social glass or two.
We weren’t exactly like the account execs and creatives on Mad Men, where everyone seems to have an ice bucket and a collection of bottles in his office, and it always seems to be “open bar” time. But we had a beer or glass of wine at lunch without even thinking twice.
The company I worked for also had a weekly Friday Party, at which we had pizza, junk food, beer, and wine. Or, if you preferred, you could smoke a joint. Shortly after I joined this firm, there was something of a crackdown – I think because a few spouses started showing up with kids in tow – and if you wanted to smoke, you had to go into a conference room and close the door.
Friday Party aside, there was one guy who got stoned every day during lunch hours. He left the office at high noon, walked the block or so to the parking lot, sat in his car, and toked up. Back at the office by one for a chillin’, glazed afternoon. It came as no surprise to me when I found a report showing everyone’s salary which this fellow had left out in a common area. (I only glanced at it for a moment or two. Honest! Just long enough to commit the key parts to memory. He makes how much! Then I slipped it under his door. I didn’t make a copy – I swear – although once the report disappeared under Cheech/Chong’s door, I had a moment of regret that I hadn’t.)
Over time, the drug culture at this shop became a bit less prevalent – most people no longer puffed a j at Friday party – but a bit more hard core for those who used. Coke appeared on the scene, and I well remember knocking on an office door and then opening it, only to find the person I was looking for, Exacto knife in hand, hunched over a mirror on her desk.
Well, blow me down!
I just backed out and reminded her that she should probably look her door.
Needless to say, I didn’t report this to HR or anyone else.
Who cared?
Work never seemed to be impacted. What we did wasn’t life or death, and we were generally kind of half-assed, anyway.
That was thirty years ago.
Fast forward.
The thought of going out for lunch on a work day – other than for a very special occasion celebrating something big – and having a drink is pretty much unfathomable to me – and not just because having a beer in the middle of the day would make me sleepy.
I just don’t think this kind of thing is done all that much any more.
Another thought that I can’t shake on the Chrysler 13 is that they were supposedly “dimed” to Fox News by someone they worked with.
First off, if these guys were screwing up the assembly line and the jobs of their fellow workers, the decent thing to do – if you were too scared to call them out directly – would be to report them to management or HR and have someone in the company start keeping watch, no?
Although some European car manufacturers supposedly have beer machines in their plants, Chrysler has a not on the job policy, and – although the Chrysler 13 were off the job – a not working impaired policy as well. So I can understand why someone wouldn’t want to have to work with a bunch of folks who were a bit “off.”
Maybe the fellow employee tried this route, and got nowhere, but I can’t help but thinking nasty, self-righteous, priggish a-hole. Probably plenty satisfied, now that 13 guys have lost their jobs. (I can even see what the dime-dropper looks like. Creep! Not to say that the guys caught drinking in the park may not have been nasty a-holes, as well. They may well have been just god-awful to work with. It’s just that they probably weren’t of the self-righteous, priggish variety of nasty a-hole.)
And why is something that happens in a company, and should be handled within the company, on the news?
Shouldn’t investigative reporting be focusing on corruption.
Give us Enron, whose shenanigans – is that a great word, or what – were illegal, immoral, and caused untold financial loss and grief! Give us “public servants” who take their check, but spend the work day loafing or putting in a new deck or double-dipping in a second job. (This is Massachusetts: we seem to have a relatively steady supply of these stories.)
But a bunch of assembly line workers having a few beers at lunch? This is news?
Of course, there’s the obvious angle that this is a Chrysler plant where the President spoke. And Chrysler was bailed out, after all. So it’s certainly not surprising that Fox News would connect “our” tax payer money to Chrysler workers guzzling before returning to work to build gas-guzzlers. More outrage, please! Can’t get enough of it!
I dunno.
The whole thing seems like a tempest in tea bag pot, or, rather, beer bottle. And I bet they never would have lost their jobs if it hadn’t been for the crack investigation of the reporter who nailed them.
Sure, the guys caught drinking were knuckleheads. And now they’re unemployed knuckleheads, in an economy that doesn’t exactly shine brightly on blue-collar knuckleheads with limited skill sets. But I can’t help but feel just a teeny, tiny bit bad for them.
Maybe their union will appeal, and they’ll just end up with suspensions.
Maybe (I know this is far-fetched) they have something else, something better, lined up already.
Maybe (I know this is far-fetched) there wives have fab jobs and they won’t mind playing Mr. Mom for a while. (I know this is far-fetched, too.)
Meanwhile, I sure wouldn’t be surprised to hear that someone – the reporter, the charming colleague who wanted this scandalous “case” brought to light – ended up eating a knuckle sandwich for their lunch one of these days. Certainly not advocating it – I am so not the resort to violence type. Just sayin’….
Sad for the Chrysler 13 – those dopes - and their families.
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