June 4, 2005
Temperature-68.3 C -90.9 F
Windchill-90.8 C -131.5 F
Wind 10.2 kts Grid 72
Barometer 669.8 mb (11015 ft)
Breakfast: Granola
Dinner: Pasta with pesto.
33 people died in Iraq yesterday.
Tough week! The head cook decided to cut meal service from breakfast, lunch and dinner on the last day of the work week to a brunch served at lunch time. She felt her crew was working to many hours and the abbreviated meals would help them work the same hours as the rest of the station. Problem is the station "community" had already assumed many of the duties the galley staff were responsible for in past seasons and it was difficult for the population to understand why they are working so much harder than past galley staffs. Furthermore, her and the station manager decided to make the changes to the meals without consulting the other operations managers but past it up to Big "R" for approval. Wednesday night they sent out an email stating the changes to the supervisors and this is where the trouble started. Thursday morning my supervisor invited the cook to our safety meeting and she brought HR and the Station Manager with. She started out her sales pitch with "I hope you all will support us through these changes and I welcome your comments." Several people raised their hands and presented their comments and questions and she became defensive and said something that sounded like "this has already been approved by corporate and you are all going to have to deal with it" which we latter found out was a lie. Her and her hench men abruptly left the meeting and we were all left wondering how we are all going to work from breakfast until lunch on just cold cereal. I have found I burn more calories here than at home and a morning breakfast of cold cereal just doesn’t cut it. Most of the morning the crews were not very productive because they were all discussing the changes and the general consensus was that three meals a day was part of our employment agreement and we were getting screwed. Morning break came and my supervisor decided to have another meeting among the group to formulate a plan of action. We decided that we could live without dinner (crappy pizza) if they would make breakfast and lunch. Meanwhile the heavy shop mechanics were really upset by the changes and were discussing striking until the meals were restored. The station was in turmoil and I was becoming scarred that if the current course of things were to continue it was going to be a long 4 months before the first planes arrived.
My wife and several coworkers were putting a talking points paper together that addressed our work centers concerns and our proposal when the station manager walked in on them. He was very defensive and said he would send out an email and my wife became upset because she felt enough had been handled behind closed doors and sending out some email would not address the communities concerns and insisted he have an all hands meeting where a representative from our operations center would present our proposal. He indicated he would not have an all hands meeting and my wife and her coworkers said "fine we will call an all hands meeting and we will discuss without you!" Things were pretty tense and I was thankful that I was on the fray but then my work center decided that I should represent them in this meeting. Reading through the talking points paper it became clear to me that if I read all these points in the meeting things would degenerate quickly and the meeting would not be productive and would polarize the community further. I spent the afternoon in knots trying to think how I was going to mix in some humor and try to sell this thing without crucifying the galley staff. Meanwhile the station manger had the same concerns and fortunately had been doing some thinking of his own. He called an all hands meeting where he apologized to the community for not including them in the decision and he will be calling a meeting with the all the station supervisors in hopes they could arrive at a consensus. Friday evening they had their meeting and surprisingly the outcome was exactly the same as our proposal. The station is still reeling from all the polarization that occurred and I suspect there will be some hard feelings for some time. This whole thing reminds me of something I once heard about moral in the military "Don’t fuck with the food.".
Windchill-90.8 C -131.5 F
Wind 10.2 kts Grid 72
Barometer 669.8 mb (11015 ft)
Breakfast: Granola
Dinner: Pasta with pesto.
33 people died in Iraq yesterday.
Tough week! The head cook decided to cut meal service from breakfast, lunch and dinner on the last day of the work week to a brunch served at lunch time. She felt her crew was working to many hours and the abbreviated meals would help them work the same hours as the rest of the station. Problem is the station "community" had already assumed many of the duties the galley staff were responsible for in past seasons and it was difficult for the population to understand why they are working so much harder than past galley staffs. Furthermore, her and the station manager decided to make the changes to the meals without consulting the other operations managers but past it up to Big "R" for approval. Wednesday night they sent out an email stating the changes to the supervisors and this is where the trouble started. Thursday morning my supervisor invited the cook to our safety meeting and she brought HR and the Station Manager with. She started out her sales pitch with "I hope you all will support us through these changes and I welcome your comments." Several people raised their hands and presented their comments and questions and she became defensive and said something that sounded like "this has already been approved by corporate and you are all going to have to deal with it" which we latter found out was a lie. Her and her hench men abruptly left the meeting and we were all left wondering how we are all going to work from breakfast until lunch on just cold cereal. I have found I burn more calories here than at home and a morning breakfast of cold cereal just doesn’t cut it. Most of the morning the crews were not very productive because they were all discussing the changes and the general consensus was that three meals a day was part of our employment agreement and we were getting screwed. Morning break came and my supervisor decided to have another meeting among the group to formulate a plan of action. We decided that we could live without dinner (crappy pizza) if they would make breakfast and lunch. Meanwhile the heavy shop mechanics were really upset by the changes and were discussing striking until the meals were restored. The station was in turmoil and I was becoming scarred that if the current course of things were to continue it was going to be a long 4 months before the first planes arrived.
My wife and several coworkers were putting a talking points paper together that addressed our work centers concerns and our proposal when the station manager walked in on them. He was very defensive and said he would send out an email and my wife became upset because she felt enough had been handled behind closed doors and sending out some email would not address the communities concerns and insisted he have an all hands meeting where a representative from our operations center would present our proposal. He indicated he would not have an all hands meeting and my wife and her coworkers said "fine we will call an all hands meeting and we will discuss without you!" Things were pretty tense and I was thankful that I was on the fray but then my work center decided that I should represent them in this meeting. Reading through the talking points paper it became clear to me that if I read all these points in the meeting things would degenerate quickly and the meeting would not be productive and would polarize the community further. I spent the afternoon in knots trying to think how I was going to mix in some humor and try to sell this thing without crucifying the galley staff. Meanwhile the station manger had the same concerns and fortunately had been doing some thinking of his own. He called an all hands meeting where he apologized to the community for not including them in the decision and he will be calling a meeting with the all the station supervisors in hopes they could arrive at a consensus. Friday evening they had their meeting and surprisingly the outcome was exactly the same as our proposal. The station is still reeling from all the polarization that occurred and I suspect there will be some hard feelings for some time. This whole thing reminds me of something I once heard about moral in the military "Don’t fuck with the food.".
posted by Kirk & Jodi Roberts at 6:50 PM
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