One thing that became toxic to me at Boeing was the pervasive action of the cronies covering each others' asses and doing some very bad schitt. A rather benign one was one of the production managers on the 777-FWDSI would be gone for some period of time beyond the usual half hour dinner break (second shift) and then come ambling back in "quite happy" along with a few cohorts. They had been out somewhere smoking some weed and - they reeked of it. I am not sure if it was the fact that the manager was black and thought he was untouchable due to his race, or what - but the fact that he was allowing ANY of that kind of thing to go on under his watch and then encouraging it with his underlings - was beyond the pale. And we wondered why we had quality issues at Boeing... You could have told him that he had just been fired, car re-po'd and his wife was sleeping with his best friend and he would have just laughed it off. Let alone dealing with serious issues on the 777. Around that same time, I had witnessed and was investigating a bolt that snapped in half and fell on the floor overnight (third watch) after it had been torqued to spec. No big deal right? Nope, it was on the steering mechanism for the nose landing gear. Me and one other employee were sober-minded enough to chase that one to ground and discovered a faulty case hardening process at a vendor and released a Service Bulletin. A bunch of work on our part - but necessary to keep a plane hurtling down the runway at 160mph from going up in a fireball at the end of it. The worst of it was that the head of the bolt was facing down, so a very little movement of the mechanism in flight (possibly even first flight) would have dis-lodged this particular bolt and all hell would have broken loose in a split second (no warning). So, I also had to drive a drawing and assembly change. Simple things; huge results and benefits. What I am saying here is that intoxicated people could really have no cares in the world about serious schitt. But this was the good old boys system at Boeing. If you were on the inside, you could literally get away with murder. If you asked too many questions or ruffled too many feathers, it was schittsville for you.
I already talked about how I had to threaten my manager to do the right thing when it came to a 40 year old employee who was one of the level 5 engineers and was the wing to body join guru on the 747-8. He totally accused me of screwing up a database and basically putting the name of a fellow engineer on a non-conformance that was a Britishism for "penis". Who knew what a "knobhead" was? Thankfully, the false recording showed that I had done it at 1:47am and I was clearly off shift and resting in the arms of my wife at that time. I had multiple cameras, gate entrances to prove it, etc. I had left a few hours before. But, when the crony engineer with 40 years experience is on his third strike with HR for making sexual references to women who were just around the corner of the cubicle farm, my strike would have been his third and last even though I was just trying to NOT get walked out by security when this very 40 year schmuck had accused me of messing with an official FAA record. He (the guy with two strikes) actually had the gall to tell me he could have me fired (the guy who had never been to HR in his life) for my supposed indiscretion. All of this happened around the time my wife was also falsely accusing me of diddling the kiddling after she snapped during a two week power outage where we were heating our house with the gas fireplace only and cooking on our camp stove in the kitchen. This was the event where my Bishop went to pains to put me on two deep leadership in my Scout calling when there were no others in the program who were two deep. I was pretty much, blow-a-fuse pissed off at the whole mess and went on the warpath.
When others from around the Everett factory came to me asking me why I had been so stupid as to pull a stunt like the "knobhead" affair, I fired off an e-mail and told my boss that he would comply with a list of five of my demands (correcting the narrative) within 72 hours or I would blow the whole thing sky high and possibly take legal action. At that point, he had gone completely radio silent on my attempts to reach out to him via e-mail to resolve/reverse the situation. I had received multiple visits from past 777 managers asking me to just drop it. My response was that "asshole" needed to learn to apologize or he would just continue his entitled and atrocious behavior. At about hour 70, I got a response with reversing actions on all of my demands and I walked away from that brink. The guy who mis-judged a situation got to continue his 40 year career while still maintaining his reputation (among all engineers) as "resident asshole" and I was left with the very uncomfortable prospect of having to deal with S. Israel as my boss until I decided to leave the company with a golden handshake (half a year's salary as severance) along with 12,000 other engineers.
Needless to say, I despise cronyism. The good old boys... I just had a Boeing contact reach out to me and let me know that the company may not recover because of favoritism in appointing engineers to a Tech Fellow position within the company. Apparently, it is more or less granted as a political favor instead of being based on merit. A very dangerous thing - as the Tech Fellows are usually Phds and are the brain trust of the company. The elite of the elite. They are tapped to drive future innovation within the org. But that may not be important any more where the bean counters are only focused on stock performance and care little about what the stock performance may be beyond their tenure on the Board or before they can cash out their options from the compensation/severance packages.
But I see it here in Cardston in spades. There are those who are connected. And those who are not. If you have a contrary opinion of one who is connected, his brothers rise to protect and defend and you will quickly find yourself on the outside. For example, if you work in the temple and your boss who sets your officiating schedule accuses someone of polygamy (namely me) and the person who was actually snogging on other married women (in the hopes they would be one of his multiple wives) are best (eat Sunday dinner together regularly) friends, then you take your cue and drop the lesser friend for fear of damaging relationships within the clique and whom you are really trying to impress and upon whose ladder you are attempting to climb. And this was how Jesus got crucified. The filthy priests in the temple were held in such reverence and awe due to position, that they could call on the simple-minded (low-IQ) crowd to chant "Crucify Him!!". I used to marvel at this ability of the Priests to have a hold over them people to take out the very Son of God. I no longer hold that same level of marvel - because I have witnessed it firsthand. I no longer marvel that 70% will end up in body bags. I am now quite certain. Because people cannot stand on principle and follow the Spirit to arrive at a correct conclusion - but will follow popularity over principle. This has gone on at largely LDS beer bashes in high school. Once the most popular crowd is in, everyone is in except for those who are principled. I had to navigate this on the outside during my time in high school. It is a lonely road. One I am fine with - but baffled how adults do not get past the high schoolish behaviours.
So many other examples that I do not have time to list. But fascinating to witness nonetheless.
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