Report threads that break rules, are offensive, or contain fighting. Staff may not be aware of the forum abuse, and cannot do anything about it unless you tell us about it. click to
report forum abuse »
If one of the comments is offensive, please report the comment instead (there is a link in each comment to report it).
Du Pont Canada Inc. Corporate Head Office - General Services Analyst
This job started out well. I was supposed to familiarize myself with the way things were being done in the General Services Unit and to develop, where possible, recommendations for smarter ways of doing things. I learned a great deal from my mentor in this job, the General Services Consultant.
I learned about printshop operations, Computer Aided Design, telephony, and a host of other details involved in the support of a large business organization. I was also assigned to studying the telex system. It was clearly in it's dying days but still in use at Du Pont whose customers spanned the globe and in many cases lacked the infrastructure necessary for more modern communications. Facsimile transmission at this time was still new but was experiencing explosive growth.
After about a year and a half, my boss was promoted to a site in Saskatchewan. My new boss brought a whole new set of priorities to my job. I found a whole new set of assignments which made me into a more functional member of the group... analysis came last... priority was given to such tasks as showing safety videos to outside contractors doing work on the premises, chasing after the snow plough guy to clear the parking lots and spread salt at the entrances. My phone started to ring incessantly with people complaing about ice in the doorways and a host of other janitorial type issues.
One assignment involved harrassing some guy to paint a yellow safety stripe on one of the concrete steps outside the building. Given the amount of time I spent playing telephone tag with this guy it would have been much more efficient for me to simply don a set of coveralls and go out and paint the damned step myself.
I was no longer an analyst. I was now a building superintendant wearing a tie.
Unhappy with this new set of assignments (I later learned a new term applicable, I think, to this circumstance - " constructive dismissal,") I found myself motivated to use the same analytical skills acquired in this position to analyse my own job.
I concluded that, after factoring in such things as commute times and costs, and income taxes it became apparent to me that my real net pay for this job was about $5.50 per hour. No wonder, in spite of a nominally respectable gross income, I was nevertheless always strapped for cash. I analysed myself out of the longest continuous period of employment at a single firm. I quit this job and went back to cab driving.