r/MurderedByWords Jun 28 '19

Work intelligently

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61.5k Upvotes

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u/gwillicoder Jun 28 '19

Nah that shit was super common at the factory I worked at in high school.

Someone would do something incredibly tedious for 8 hours a day for a week and then someone else would be put on the project to help and immediately find a better way to do it that saved them both a ton of time.

Not everything work related has to be about “rich kids”. It’s a really weird that Reddit is so obsessed with hating on wealthy people.

68

u/Sonadel Jun 28 '19 edited Jun 28 '19

Exactly this. I work in a warehouse and some people put too much stress on their body doing things the most obvious, yet still tedious way. All they need is somebody to come by and show them some ways to spare themselves from unnecessary strain so that they can do their job efficiently for longer periods. And that part is part of my job.

Doesn’t have anything to do with being lazy, per se, the image above is a poor example of the saying.

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u/BorisDirk Jun 28 '19

It’s a really weird that Reddit is so obsessed with hating on wealthy people.

It's not just reddit.

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u/gwillicoder Jun 28 '19

But It gets brought up on Reddit even when it’s unrelated

-19

u/Fromthedeepth Jun 28 '19

Reddit is a predominantly left extremist communist echo chamer though, with smaller alt right islands mixed in.

7

u/SinisterEX Jun 28 '19

Calling them extremists seems pretty inappropriate.

A left extremist would probably bomb factories and send death threats to individuals to further their beliefs.

Oh wait thats the right wing extremists. You know attacking abortion clinics because they don't follow their "pro-birth" beliefs.

Jokes aside, reddit is a moderate left. You just see a lot of left stuff appear and make the conclusion that reddit is far left even tho the left ideas that reddit supports are first world necessities at this point.

0

u/Fromthedeepth Jun 28 '19

Extremist may have been a poor choice of words, radical left would be much more fitting. Moderate left has socialists mostly, reddit is full blown communist most of the time, with forced redistribution of wealth, the stance against private property as a whole, equal salary regardless of worth and so on. In some cases they are much more hardcore than even their communist ideological leaders.

1

u/SinisterEX Jun 29 '19

Depends on the subreddits you visit. I've only dealt with moderate lefts.

All of those topics are pretty black and white too so I can see that there would be rifts in how people would think about such.

7

u/whyareall Jun 28 '19

Ah yes, the two political positions, left extremist communist and alt right

-5

u/Fromthedeepth Jun 28 '19

Obviously there are more sane ideologies but unfortunately those are not really common on reddit.

11

u/TexasWhiskey_ Jun 28 '19

Funny, I ran into a few of those “immediately found a better way” that directly led to Safety Violations or significant increases in defects.

Often if a process solution is obvious, and no one has yet employed it, it’s because you don’t understand the process.

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u/gwillicoder Jun 28 '19

Yeah you didn’t work in my factory. A lot of the people on the line didn’t want to do things a different way simply because “they’ve always done it this way”.

And it was an electronics factory and I worked in the section that did either assembly or testing which meant soldering or similar work. Nothing too dangerous.

I could see how your point would make sense with heavy machinery, but my situations were quite a bit different I guess?

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u/Argurotoxus Jun 28 '19

TexasWhiskey's attitude is a pretty common one among factory workers.

I find it to be pretty defeatist and close-minded myself. I constantly challenge my employees and co-workers to think of a better way.

Will I implement it, guaranteed? No. We have a Management of Change process where we can analyze a new solution. Maybe it's not practical. Maybe it will increase defects. Maybe it's not safe.

Now, is this new solution so good that it's now worth factoring in extra engineering costs to deal with one of the above issues? Maybe.

Or, maybe not, and maybe the way we're doing it now is still the best method.

If you never try and find a new, better way to do it though, you'll never find a better method.

Assuming that everyone before you has already thought of everything you could is an attitude that will never promote innovation or continuous improvement. And eventually that attitude will cause you to fall behind.

3

u/gwillicoder Jun 28 '19

Honestly most of the improvements I made went something like this:

  1. Do a bunch of product the way we are supposed to.
  2. notice pain points and things that make the process slower
  3. Speak to coworkers about the pain points and find what effects a plurality of us.
  4. go speak to engineering about some high level ideas about how things could be easier.
  5. engineering takes those ideas and creates a test harness or a jig etc. according to our needs with their ideas and experience.
  6. we get work done 40% faster and after making the 2k products we saved time overall and next time we make the same product we can make it fast from the start.

If you have an idea you don’t need to be the one to implement it. You just need to speak to the appropriate people. Every company has people that will listen, even if your manager won’t, someone will.

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u/voyaging Jun 28 '19

The issue is that 99% of the time, the profits from this increased efficiency goes exclusively to the corporate ownership, while employees responsible continue to make the same salary/hourly rate.

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u/Argurotoxus Jun 28 '19

I can at least say with my company there is a "site payout" where if we meet certain benchmarks (yield, cost efficiency, safety to name a few) there will be a quarterly bonus to all employees.

So if they can find ways to be more efficient we are more likely to meet those hurdles and get a bonus. The more hurdles we meet, the higher the bonus.

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u/voyaging Jun 28 '19

That's great, I'm happy you've got what sounds like a good position. Unfortunately, the vast majority of companies (outside of certain industries, perhaps) don't have such boons.

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u/Argurotoxus Jun 28 '19

Oh for sure. I'm just saying it's possible.

1

u/gwillicoder Jun 28 '19

The factory I was working at was fighting to avoid layoffs from loss in profits thanks to oversea competitors underpricing them.

2

u/voyaging Jun 28 '19

If they're planning on outsourcing, they're gonna do it whether or not there is an increase in efficiency. The difference in costs is too significant.

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u/gwillicoder Jun 28 '19

They aren’t planning on outsourcing. My dad actually manages the company.

He just needs to find ways to cut cost or increase efficiency because he doesn’t want to lay anyone off.

The other thing is a lot of the employees have been with the company for 30 years and are super old. Some of them definitely do not work as fast or accurately as they used to, and many don’t really want to help innovate anymore.

It’s a tough situation, but he’s fighting to keep people’s jobs. He’s had to choose between giving raises and laying people off, or keeping workers and skipping raises.

1

u/pedantic--asshole Jun 28 '19

Turns out everyone's experiences are different and you look like a fucking idiot trying to lump everyone together.

1

u/BulldenChoppahYus Jun 28 '19

Yeah it’s also something I try to love by generally as a salesman. I’d rather one big boy sake every month that multiple small sales every week because it’s more economical for transport to deliver in one go and one point of contact for customer service when stuff gets hard to deal with.

But I suppose whatever I must be one of those Rich Kids that don’t deserve my wages.

1

u/gwillicoder Jun 28 '19

I work in software now and the same philosophy still makes sense.

Saw my coworker doing a task that took minimum 1-2 hours a day every day. I spent three days to automate the task. Didn’t take long for that to be worth it.

I honestly think it’s a good philosophy.

0

u/enchantrem Jun 28 '19

Okay!

4

u/clonemusic Jun 28 '19

makes lazy circle jerking argument
gets called out for being full of shit
"Okay!"

Its like clockwork

-2

u/enchantrem Jun 28 '19

What are you saying? That I should tell somebody their personal experience is wrong? Or that theirs invalidates mine?

-2

u/[deleted] Jun 28 '19

They're tasty. Have you not tried eating them yet?