How Does This Company Even Function?!

My immediate supervisor and I work in the shipping department for our company We manage and control thousands of pounds of material that ship out of our facility every day. Things move pretty smoothly around here. Sometimes things back up when it’s really busy or if we’re short drivers, but in situations like that, we have third-party companies we can outsource shipping with.

Several times a week, we see emails from some of the owners or sales representatives asking why something that was just produced hasn’t been delivered yet, or they’re in the office breathing down our necks to make sure things are shipped out NOW! Then, we see emails from them saying to not hold orders and ship them out now! Even though we’ve explained to them that we don’t hold orders many, many, many times, they still yell at us for holding orders.

Long story short, if the material makes it to the floor, it has to be out the door instantly so we don’t get yelled at.

Then, we have other people in the company that can do no wrong, regardless of what kind of complaints come in about them from customers and vendors.

Take the ladies that handle Accounts Payable (AP). They can go up to a month before they get to invoicing orders for material that we’ve shipped out, but the owners don’t care, even after customers that have received material have called in asking why they don’t have any invoices for the material they received almost a month prior. This is a constant issue. Also, all invoices needed to be scanned into the server so we have both a paper and paperless backup. It can take multiple months for orders to get scanned into the server, and when we need to access this information it’s not scanned in the server yet. It takes months, but it’s okay — no problem found according to the owners.

These AP ladies constantly “work” from home. I don’t know how they can work from home because all the invoice paperwork is here at the office and they’re not allowed to take it with them because paperwork has been lost in the past. Yet, they’re allowed to “work” from home because they can respond to emails. Emails are about 25% of their normal job, but that’s because they email out invoices to customers, and if they’re not in the office to do invoicing, they aren’t emailing. They literally have nothing they can do at home for work, but apparently, it’s okay by ownership that they can “work” from home.

Next, we have the IT guy; he is never around. We can have computer issues that go on for days and days until he finally shows up. When we call him he’s aggravated that we’re bothering him and he tells us that he’ll be around soon. I usually have to fix most computer issues since this IT guy takes forever, but it’s okay that he can take a week or two to fix a computer issue; ownership doesn’t care.

Then, there are the owners’ daughters who work here. Out of the three owners, two of them have one daughter each that works here. The two girls are cousins. It was like a family feud when they started and worked in the same office space — constant yelling, bickering, and complaining. Eventually, [Daughter #1] was moved to the same building her dad worked in, so the drama between them ended. While it was entertaining to see, it was nice that the childish bickering ended.

[Daughter #1] now takes after her dad; she’s always out, poorly entering orders, and causing a lot of mistakes that cost the company a lot of time and money, but it’s never her fault. It’s always production’s fault or a shipping issue because we should have known the order she entered was wrong and fixed it for her.

The other owner’s daughter, [Daughter #2] started out great for about the first six months. She was always on top of things, never missing a beat, and not making any mistakes. She was set up to work under my supervisor. After six months, she sweet-talked her way into getting a raise, and after that raise, her work ethic dropped off the charts. She started coming in later and later, or she’d call with some BS excuse to not have to work for the day, and her mistakes kept piling up. Here are a few excuses she’s used to get out of work for the day.

Daughter #2: “I can’t come into work today because my cat is stuck behind the drier and I can’t just leave her there. I need the day off to work on getting her unstuck.”

Daughter #2: “My cat scratched my leg, and I don’t have any special antibiotic at home I can use that I’m not allergic to, so have to run out to stores until I find some. I won’t be in today.”

Daughter #2: “My cat threw up on the floor, so I have to take him to the vet and I won’t be in today.”

[Daughter #2] has changed her times from coming on her own accord without asking her supervisor. She used to come in around 7:00 am and work until 3:00 pm. Slowly, over time, she’s pushed her start time out later and later. Her hours are now around 10:30 am to 4:00 or maybe 5:00 pm, and customers are complaining that she’s not available when they need her. But that’s okay; she can’t do anything wrong.

Then, we have the lead supervisor for the floor. This guy is a piece of work. He dresses provocatively — shirt unbuttoned down to his navel so we can see his nipples and pants so tight you can see everything. He pees on the floor in the bathrooms, and he only hires women to work in the Quality Control department and takes bets with others to see how long it takes to sleep with them… yet he can’t do anything wrong.

Sadly, the thing is that in any other place I’ve worked, there are always people like these of some kind causing similar issues. You have to learn to work with them or go somewhere else and work with similar problematic people.