Working nights as a freight employee for the past 2 years at the Home Depot 7245 has been a long and hard struggle. Since I have started at this location there has been a severe double standard on the part of supervisors and management, in which myself and others have been held more responsible and accountable for meeting performance standards then other fellow co-workers. We are also given the most work and the hardest work to do, in which we are expected to complete the work of two or three people on our own. Not only do we complete are work every night, but then we are also expected to have to make up for the lack of work done by other co-workers on a daily bases. The fact is there is no reason for why these people should not be able to complete the work or tasks that they are presented with on a daily bases without having to be constantly baby sate or having their hands held. This has become a constant burden to the rest of the Freight workers who do actually work and are then expected to have to make up for workers who are unable to meet performance standards.
According to the performance standards every person should be working up to 18 pallets/ carts a night and yet there are coworkers who are barely working (4 to 5) Pallets/ Carts a night. This is directly due to the fact that these employees are spending 1 to 2 hours of their shift in the bath room every night, taking extended breaks, and grossly failing to complete their work due to wondering around or standing around talking rather than working. Not only that but many do this deliberately making the rest of the night crews jobs and also the day staff‘s job more difficult. This has also been the case concerning the receiving department where one employee in particular is purposely not doing his job properly or putting in the effort to improve for the past 6 months. He is deliberately not properly sorting the freight or putting it in the right departments to be worked. This kind of behaviour has been an ongoing problem for the past 2 years and it is clear that if these people are not improving and meeting expectations it is time to cut them loose and replace them with other competent people that are capable of doing the work.
The problems presented above steam directly from a failure of the management on all levels to rectify and solve these issues. This should also not come as a surprise that these unacceptable activities are being under taken by certain workers, since many complaints have been made by me and other co-workers to the supervisors and management. The lack of attention or effort on the management’s part to correct this for the past 2 years has allowed these types of unacceptable work ethics to become common place and engrained within the workforce. That instead of parting ways by replacing these lazy and incompetent workers, the management seems content on continuing to keep these employees on for years compounding the above problems.
For this I and other co-workers have had to suffer being treated and work as if we where slaves. That once home after are shifts we can’t even get up for 2 hours after sitting down because our feet, knees, legs, and sometimes our entire body are ridiculously sore. This is clearly a case of gross unfair treatment by the management and because of this incompetence I and other co-workers have had to suffer unnecessarily. It is unacceptable for the management to have allowed this to continue on for so long and demonstrates the bad judgement as well as the little effort they have put into actually correcting the problem. Quite frankly it seems as if the management could careless and at this point it is doubtful that things will ever change, unless there is a change in management.