Re: Pig's Retirement Countdown... 5 Days Left

Michelin Tires, Shift Manager, Lexington, SC, 1990-1991

I’ve made a bunch of mistakes in my life, but leaving Milliken and going to Michelin was a whopper!!! I started as a Shift Manager trainee, which was good enough, but I soon found out that Michelin was not for me. Once I became a shift manager for “Chain 1”, I quickly learned my boss was a piece of work. You always hear that the Devil is this big red dude with horns, pointed tail, and a pitchfork, but let me tell you that’s dead wrong. The Devil is a 4’ 11” woman who has been trained in the army, is serious all the time, and has absolutely no sense of humor. This woman made my life miserable!!! I worked my butt off, but nothing was good enough for her. One morning after I had busted my butt all night long to hit my goal of 2000 tires being made, she came in for her morning “interrogation”. Before she even got started good, I interrupted her to tell her that “I quit!!!”. She tried to get me to stay, but I gave her 2 weeks notice and that was that. I was done with Michelin after only 10 months. On to the next job.

76er®

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Yep. In my 40 years total in the chemical industry, I had good bosses,

Feb 17, 2024, 9:40 AM

thankfully, most of the time. But, a couple of bad ones really can sour you on the whole "going to work" thing everyday. And, there are many different types of bad bosses, just as there are different types of good ones.

I only ever really had one woman boss in my time at the chemical plant. She was by far not the worst, or the best. She was right in the middle. I would work for her again. She was a french woman, and you could tell she came from a different culture. I remember one conversation we had early on, which about summed things up. She told me "I like you, because you don't sugarcoat anything, you just tell it like it is!" To which I quickly replied "Well, I hope you still feel that way after the first time I have to tell you you have your head up your a$$ about something!" After a startled second, she busted out laughing, and I knew then we were going to get along fine.

A just flat out lying boss is one of the worst types to have. Thankfully, I only ever ran up on one of those in my time, and the company found him out and sent him on his way after a couple of years. Another bad type is the back stabber, take all the credit for none of the work type. I also had one of those, near the end of my time in industry, and he hastened my retirement by taking all the joy out of coming to work. It's hard to like coming to work when you know your BEST day will involve just not getting slammed with even more work that somebody else was supposed to do, and that somebody else will get credit for once it is done.

Since you ran your own business, you were on the other end of the equation. What type of boss did YOUR employees perceive you to be? Probably a Pig.