(The incident described occurred early in the year ca1980. The changes in management style came about in the latter part of the 1990s and early 2000s.)
“Come with me. I got a job I want you to do,” Supp said.
So I dutifully follow the lean, bearded supervisor out the control room to the back end of the plant near the cooling tower, to the oily water separator and storage tank. It was a very chilly day and the long walk was welcome.
He pointed up to a 2” straight run of pipe going into the squat little tank and said, “That line is plugged right there. I’m going to send Collins back here and y’all work on unplugging that pipe.”
“OK,” I say, and watch him walk away. The cold day put an extra step in his walk.
It is one of my earliest memories of being a green horn chemical plant operator at the beginning of a 28 year career. I blankly stare where he pointed and wonder how in hell he knows that pipe is plugged right there. Moments later the happy-go-lucky Collins, who has at least 2 years more experience than me, arrives.
“Supp said he had a job he wanted us to do. What is it?”
I point at the spot on the 2” pipe that runs horizontally about 8 feet off the ground. “He said that pipe is plugged right there and he wants us to unplug it.”
“What! Does that son-of-a-bitch have X-ray vision or what? How does he know that?”
I shrug. “Guess that’s why he’s a supervisor.”
Collin’s response, “You know, supervisors are like little birds. They fly by, dump some shit on you and fly off.” To illustrate his point while saying this, his outstretched right hand was opening and closing indicating a bird flying from his far right to his left. The hand pause a moment in front of him, as if the bird had landed, then flapped off after making its deposit.
And that has been the most apt description of first line supervisors I have ever heard in all my 35 years of being in the American work force. Of course they were not all like that. Even old Supp was not as bad as this incident might make him out to be. I have worked for some really good people. However, the dung rolls down hill and even the best are forced to do the dumping at times.
Companies started doing away with first line supervisors in the mid to late 1990s. It was a bad mistake. There was always a tension between the workers and the supervisor because he was the company man. Yet, most times he was a man who had started at the bottom like any other worker, and with drive and ambition worked up through the ranks and made it to supervisor. He was respected by all (in most cases) for his knowledge and abilities, and reviled (in some cases) for his propensity to kiss the superintendent’s ass. He was hardly ever a degree-ed person, but had the knowledge and experience that no college could impart. Through him was filtered all the nonsensical crap that management could think up. Even though some of that shit did get down to the troops, not as much of it did as does now days. The first line shift supervisor was a company man with company crap transfused into his blood stream, but he was a tempering tool that is sorely missed now that he is gone.
They took those men who were supervisors, thinned their ranks through attrition or voluntary demotion, put them on a straight day work schedule and started calling them coaches. No more could they filter the shit, but now had to reinforce the enforcement of every stinking turd that came down the management pipeline. Most of the old supervisors had too much time invested to do otherwise, or try to make a difference any more. They may have even preferred a firing squad; of either kind (one killed you physically, the other killed you financially and socially). And soon a new breed of lackey started to fill the slots for “coach”. Hardly are they respected and little do they get done but keep tally of policy infractions by plant operators and maintenance technicians.
It is a sad development. The big problem is that this is the new model being implemented by many American industries; those that are still around, that is. Company officers claimed to be making the bottom tier workers closer to the man at the top. One engineer likened it to taking the management ladder schematic and turning it on its side.
"They fly by, dump some shit on you, and fly off." Haha! That is a perfect analogy. There is always tension with supervisors, you're right, because they've become the face of the management. And it's tough for them, too, because they're still with the guys but can't really be one of them anymore, because having that power over everyone has put a barrier up. And of course, they're often getting shit on, too. By a much bigger bird! 😎