Oh, and the icing on the cake. The guy who was SUPPOSED to move my computer still billed for moving it. It was the ‘plea deal’ of some sort corporate did with the union for my misdeed. Union wanted me fired on the spot. Guy billed 4 hrs for moving 1 computer and a printer across a building. It had taken me a whole 10m to do it.
Not too long ago, I was doing a trade show at a convention center where my company had a booth and you know what that means, scores of pinky-ring wearing plug-uglies needed to be hired to do every little thing at ridiculous wages.
So at this convention center, there were two freight elevators at either end of the building to move gear up to the convention floor from the loading docks. So a team of union guys have our equipment moved to the freight elevator only to find out it is out of order.
Now you would think the logical thing to do would be to have everything moved down the hallway to the other freight elevator that was working. But that would be too simple.
The union guys just stood there and shrugged. Their job was done as far as they were concerned and they would need to get a work order if they were going to move everything (that was on wheels) down the hallway to the other elevator. I mean, I could have done this myself in about 10 minutes. But I wasn't allowed.
Meanwhile, the guy that was paid to run the elevator was just standing there. More on him later.
Finally, after a bunch of phone calls and learning that the elevator would likely not get fixed that day (it was on a Saturday), we were able to get the necessary paperwork and permissions to have the equipment moved to the other elevator. After everything is finally moved there, no elevator operator. Apparently he was at lunch or on break or something.
So I asked if we could just have the elevator operator from down the hallway - you know, the one that was standing by a broken elevator doing absolutely nothing - come on down the hallway and get us on our way. That seems logical, right?
"Oh no, no, no" I was told, "That is simply not allowed. That man was hired to run only THAT elevator and not THIS elevator."
So ludicrous as this sounds, we had to wait about a half hour for the other elevator guy to come shuffling back from wherever he was, and I do mean he was shuffling, while the other elevator guy was standing in front of a broken elevator down the hallway. Mind you that if I was by myself, I could have hit the button to call the elevator, pushed everything inside, gone to my floor and pushed it out inside of about 90 seconds tops.
True story and just another example of how labor unions have helped to strangle this economy. I have no doubt that such nonsense was behind this guy having to crawl off a plane. There were probably only certain people allowed by the union to move around a wheelchair.