Fresh Produce, Rotten Leadership
I used to work in the QA team in a factory. We were a good team. We shared our workload where possible, we got our jobs done, but still had time to build a rapport. One of the best jobs I had, until the equivalent of a bull in a China shop came along. Our new manager, whom we didn’t need or want. She changed a lot of things, but this moment stood out to me.
We dealt with fresh produce, so vegetables. As part of our QA monitoring, we had what we called a “hot box”. Basically, think of a fridge, but warm, with water placed in a tray at the bottom to keep it humid. The idea was to accelerate defects, etc, and then we’d monitor these defects and report back to the grower who sent us the produce.
On one particular day, I’m working in our office mostly alone; all of my colleagues are out busy in the factory elsewhere. Finally, they come back in, with some of the guys from production trailing after. During downtime, some of the production workers did come into the office, which we always appreciated. They’re a good laugh. Right off the bat, they notice one change in the office and ask me:
Colleague: “Why is the hot box door open?”
Me: *Deadpan.* “Because [Manager] said it was too humid and breeding bacteria.”
There followed the silence where you could hear a pin drop. Yes. The manager came round during the downtime, looking for things to criticise, looked in the warm, damp, humid hot box, and decided it was too humid. She told me to turn it off and open the door.
We gave up trying to explain things like this to her. Between us, I think we had over fifty years of experience, but she was completely oblivious to how produce manufacturing worked. We used to get our products dropped off outside in crates for us to inspect. She once ordered us to hurry up, otherwise they’d get wet… they got washed before hitting the production lines anyway. She had no clue.
We had a test to check our knowledge, and we all ended up having to correct her on the questions she asked; none of them were up to date with our procedures.
We told the overall manager of the department our grievances, but they were disregarded. None of them were around to see what she was really like, despite the fact that the production staff and QA staff detested her.
One day, one colleague of mine had nothing to do, so he offered to take some of the heavy workload off another colleague. The colleague who accepted this help was reprimanded. She was told she should never ask someone else for help. We were told off if we dared take five minutes from a mad twelve-hour shift to chat. I even remember when one of the company-issued tablets made a noise in the office, and she accused me of having my mobile phone with me.
There was even a time when she asked two of us to go and help production for the entire day (so doing the basic packing, etc.), and then the next day confronted us to ask why all of our cleaning tasks for the previous day weren’t done; the day she essentially made us short-staffed by sending us to production.
In the end, three out of six of us handed in our notices. Her reaction?
Manager: “I don’t have to deal with these useless QA’s anymore!”
And that’s coming from the woman who hid when we had an audit because she wouldn’t have had a clue what to say if the auditor had questions… I hate what that woman did to our team.
