I'm in the state of Georgia.
A couple of weeks ago, I got hired on the spot by a local plastics manufacturing company as a Thermoforming Operator. They had a job fair and posted it online stating that they were hiring on the spot. I gave my previous employer of nearly 2 years a proper two weeks' notice. The production manager for the plant and an HR lady were present for the job fair and doing the hiring. Everything went fine until my first day, which was awful. 90% of the building is Hispanic people who speak very little English at all. When I walked into the building and into the break room for my first day, everyone stared at me like they were thinking, "What are YOU doing here?" I'm a Caucasian American guy. I felt hostility all around me and got a lot of angry looks. They apparently hate Americans. The HR lady and production manager are American, there are a few black guys working there and one or two Caucasian guys who are machine mechanics. These are thermoforming/blow-mold machines about 35-40 feet in length and pretty dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. They put me with a Hispanic guy who could barely speak any English and was refusing to actually train me properly. At one point when the guy training me went to lunch, a couple of black American guys came over and watched the machine to help out. When the Hispanic guy that I was working with came back from break saw them explain something to me in English about the machine control screen, he seemed really angry and offended that they were showing me something. My "training" with him was that he would point to his eyes and motion for me to "watch him" and that was basically the training. The machine is computerized with a ton of buttons on the screen. He didn't explain them. He would point to his eyes and to the machine and press various buttons. That told me very little about what was going on. It is very loud in the building due to all of the machines, so you're wearing ear plugs and safety glasses. Everyone screams at each other. To get one another's attention over the machines, they all scream, "WOOOOOOOOOOO!" at each other all day long.
The overall plant manager that hired me was on vacation for the week when I started work. The supervisor under her is a Hispanic lady who barely speaks English. I was told by HR to go in on my first day and wait in the break room for the supervisor. When I went in there and waited, she sort of smirked and said, "I don't have anyone to train you." It seemed like that meant she didn't have an American who spoke English to actually show me how to do the job. She didn't work with me at all and kept her distance all day. I couldn't understand the Hispanic guy who was supposed to be training me. He would constantly act like I wasn't learning, shaking his head and mumbling stuff in his language to the Hispanic coworkers. He left me many times with two machines running and disappeared for quite some time on the first and second day. One machine malfunctioned while he was gone and I stopped it using the only way that I knew how (emergency stop button). He comes back and acts angry that I stopped it. At one point, he left me for 20 minutes and both machines needed attention. The supervisor lady who barely speaks English ran over and fixed one of them, but she told me, "If that happens again, just cut the plastic before you turn it off!" I told her that I was never given the tool to cut it with. It was actually HER job to give that to me according to the HR lady. The supervisor told me that she "didn't have one to give me" and went back to the other side of the plant to do her stuff. I called the HR lady who hired me and did my orientation. She told me that "there is a language barrier with my supervisor" and told me that the overall manager was on vacation that week and would be back next week and "would address the things that I told her" regarding what I was experiencing. She proceeded to tell me, "Take a deep breath. It's your first day. You can only do so much. You have a LOT of training to do. They can only expect so much. Can you ask your supervisor to put you with someone else to train?" I think the HR lady may have called my Hispanic supervisor and told her to put me with someone else to train the next day, as well. I get there the next day and apparently that person that I would have trained with called out. So now there are 4 of these huge machines side by side on my side of the plant. The one we were running, two in between that aren't running and one halfway across the warehouse that the guy I was with also wanted to run. So we're running back and forth about 50 feet one-way all day long grabbing the boxes, putting them through a metal detector, stacking them on a pallet, running to the front and back of the machine to check for issues and then running back to the other machine and repeating all day long. He would still disappear a lot.
When I was in orientation, the HR lady told me that no one should have cell phones on the floor and to tell the supervisor if I saw anyone with one. My supervisor had one (and I saw her on it at one point) and also the guy I was working with. I noticed a ton of people had cell phones on the floor. There were no clocks in the production facility like I was told in orientation that there would be (so that you know when you take a break, etc.). 12-hour shifts of 5am to 5:30pm. It is hot as heck in there. My first day, I went through 5 bottles of water. You're not allowed to have water on the floor and it is hard to get a bathroom break or water break in between. Lunch is 30 minutes and two 10 minute breaks. I was told by HR that no watches were allowed, either (parts could fall into the plastic trays and contaminated them since they're food trays). I walked off from the job 2 hours into my second day because it was miserable and I was frustrated with my lack of training and constantly getting left. The guy wasn't training me, it looked like he was badmouthing me to the supervisor like I wasn't doing my job and I felt hostility all around me. The Hispanic packer ladies on the machines constantly stared at me like I wasn't doing my job. I clocked out and went home. I called the HR lady yet again when I got home, about 30 minutes later. I explained everything to her in a voicemail, because she wasn't in to work yet.
I'm thinking about going to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about this place. I thought I had a job and I could not get the proper training to do it. The few black American guys working there...two of them saw me as I was leaving. One of them said he has been there for a month and nobody has trained him properly. He said that on that particular day, they put him on a machine type that he has never worked with before and expected him to just run it. The other guy also echoed that same thing and said that they "don't train people there" and all of these people are just blindly trying to run the machines. They stated the same thing - that they couldn't understand what any of the Hispanic people were talking about and struggled to learn by visual cues from them. Employment reviews of the company on various websites also reflect this practice of a lack of training and a lot of discriminatory issues within the company and language barriers. Then there are the seemingly endless OSHA violations in 2009, 2012 and probably other more recent years where OSHA came in there and fined the living heck out of them. In 2009 alone, $250,000 for 35 violations. Slip hazards, they had two amputations from machines, guards were off from the machines, employees were getting electric shocks from touching the machines, dust hazards from ground plastic flying everywhere and no respirator program, etc. They were also employing illegal workers at that time. Not sure if they're still doing that. The place is a nightmare.
Do you think I would get anywhere with a discrimination case against them? This cost me my job because I just couldn't deal with it anymore. I expected training and to not be discriminated against. My supervisor didn't want to give me the tools to do the job. It was just a big mess. I couldn't communicate with anyone and they clearly hated me for being American, including my supervisor who barely spoke English. I've never had that problem before. Apart from looking for another job (which I have already gotten a big head start with), do you have any advice? I have never had a supervisor that didn't speak English before. It is even more shocking that she was in charge of that entire plant building.
A couple of weeks ago, I got hired on the spot by a local plastics manufacturing company as a Thermoforming Operator. They had a job fair and posted it online stating that they were hiring on the spot. I gave my previous employer of nearly 2 years a proper two weeks' notice. The production manager for the plant and an HR lady were present for the job fair and doing the hiring. Everything went fine until my first day, which was awful. 90% of the building is Hispanic people who speak very little English at all. When I walked into the building and into the break room for my first day, everyone stared at me like they were thinking, "What are YOU doing here?" I'm a Caucasian American guy. I felt hostility all around me and got a lot of angry looks. They apparently hate Americans. The HR lady and production manager are American, there are a few black guys working there and one or two Caucasian guys who are machine mechanics. These are thermoforming/blow-mold machines about 35-40 feet in length and pretty dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. They put me with a Hispanic guy who could barely speak any English and was refusing to actually train me properly. At one point when the guy training me went to lunch, a couple of black American guys came over and watched the machine to help out. When the Hispanic guy that I was working with came back from break saw them explain something to me in English about the machine control screen, he seemed really angry and offended that they were showing me something. My "training" with him was that he would point to his eyes and motion for me to "watch him" and that was basically the training. The machine is computerized with a ton of buttons on the screen. He didn't explain them. He would point to his eyes and to the machine and press various buttons. That told me very little about what was going on. It is very loud in the building due to all of the machines, so you're wearing ear plugs and safety glasses. Everyone screams at each other. To get one another's attention over the machines, they all scream, "WOOOOOOOOOOO!" at each other all day long.
The overall plant manager that hired me was on vacation for the week when I started work. The supervisor under her is a Hispanic lady who barely speaks English. I was told by HR to go in on my first day and wait in the break room for the supervisor. When I went in there and waited, she sort of smirked and said, "I don't have anyone to train you." It seemed like that meant she didn't have an American who spoke English to actually show me how to do the job. She didn't work with me at all and kept her distance all day. I couldn't understand the Hispanic guy who was supposed to be training me. He would constantly act like I wasn't learning, shaking his head and mumbling stuff in his language to the Hispanic coworkers. He left me many times with two machines running and disappeared for quite some time on the first and second day. One machine malfunctioned while he was gone and I stopped it using the only way that I knew how (emergency stop button). He comes back and acts angry that I stopped it. At one point, he left me for 20 minutes and both machines needed attention. The supervisor lady who barely speaks English ran over and fixed one of them, but she told me, "If that happens again, just cut the plastic before you turn it off!" I told her that I was never given the tool to cut it with. It was actually HER job to give that to me according to the HR lady. The supervisor told me that she "didn't have one to give me" and went back to the other side of the plant to do her stuff. I called the HR lady who hired me and did my orientation. She told me that "there is a language barrier with my supervisor" and told me that the overall manager was on vacation that week and would be back next week and "would address the things that I told her" regarding what I was experiencing. She proceeded to tell me, "Take a deep breath. It's your first day. You can only do so much. You have a LOT of training to do. They can only expect so much. Can you ask your supervisor to put you with someone else to train?" I think the HR lady may have called my Hispanic supervisor and told her to put me with someone else to train the next day, as well. I get there the next day and apparently that person that I would have trained with called out. So now there are 4 of these huge machines side by side on my side of the plant. The one we were running, two in between that aren't running and one halfway across the warehouse that the guy I was with also wanted to run. So we're running back and forth about 50 feet one-way all day long grabbing the boxes, putting them through a metal detector, stacking them on a pallet, running to the front and back of the machine to check for issues and then running back to the other machine and repeating all day long. He would still disappear a lot.
When I was in orientation, the HR lady told me that no one should have cell phones on the floor and to tell the supervisor if I saw anyone with one. My supervisor had one (and I saw her on it at one point) and also the guy I was working with. I noticed a ton of people had cell phones on the floor. There were no clocks in the production facility like I was told in orientation that there would be (so that you know when you take a break, etc.). 12-hour shifts of 5am to 5:30pm. It is hot as heck in there. My first day, I went through 5 bottles of water. You're not allowed to have water on the floor and it is hard to get a bathroom break or water break in between. Lunch is 30 minutes and two 10 minute breaks. I was told by HR that no watches were allowed, either (parts could fall into the plastic trays and contaminated them since they're food trays). I walked off from the job 2 hours into my second day because it was miserable and I was frustrated with my lack of training and constantly getting left. The guy wasn't training me, it looked like he was badmouthing me to the supervisor like I wasn't doing my job and I felt hostility all around me. The Hispanic packer ladies on the machines constantly stared at me like I wasn't doing my job. I clocked out and went home. I called the HR lady yet again when I got home, about 30 minutes later. I explained everything to her in a voicemail, because she wasn't in to work yet.
I'm thinking about going to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about this place. I thought I had a job and I could not get the proper training to do it. The few black American guys working there...two of them saw me as I was leaving. One of them said he has been there for a month and nobody has trained him properly. He said that on that particular day, they put him on a machine type that he has never worked with before and expected him to just run it. The other guy also echoed that same thing and said that they "don't train people there" and all of these people are just blindly trying to run the machines. They stated the same thing - that they couldn't understand what any of the Hispanic people were talking about and struggled to learn by visual cues from them. Employment reviews of the company on various websites also reflect this practice of a lack of training and a lot of discriminatory issues within the company and language barriers. Then there are the seemingly endless OSHA violations in 2009, 2012 and probably other more recent years where OSHA came in there and fined the living heck out of them. In 2009 alone, $250,000 for 35 violations. Slip hazards, they had two amputations from machines, guards were off from the machines, employees were getting electric shocks from touching the machines, dust hazards from ground plastic flying everywhere and no respirator program, etc. They were also employing illegal workers at that time. Not sure if they're still doing that. The place is a nightmare.
Do you think I would get anywhere with a discrimination case against them? This cost me my job because I just couldn't deal with it anymore. I expected training and to not be discriminated against. My supervisor didn't want to give me the tools to do the job. It was just a big mess. I couldn't communicate with anyone and they clearly hated me for being American, including my supervisor who barely spoke English. I've never had that problem before. Apart from looking for another job (which I have already gotten a big head start with), do you have any advice? I have never had a supervisor that didn't speak English before. It is even more shocking that she was in charge of that entire plant building.
