A lesson learned about anger at work

[road]

I just read this else where.

A discussion about anger management .


I just wanted to share my reflection to you about people getting angry and how they deal with it.


Here is the my reflection.


Reminds myself of a situation in one of my first factory jobs.
I ( 20 yrs old ) was one of 3 new junior machine operators. Blow - molding plastic bottles.
The factory was full of line workers, operators, electricians etc roughly 50-60 people per shift...

About 6-8 months later, one of the senior operators, ( lets call him John) was doing a change over to a new set up with the help of a junior operator ( lets call him Bruce ).
Things were not going so well , John was know for his temper and tossing his tools.
I was working on my machine adjustments a few stations away and the shift was going well for me.

A few hours go by with a lot of cussing and some Drama. The foreman spoke with John about the attitude. This made things worse.

After the foreman's "meeting" with John, John was sent to work in another department for the remainder of the shift.
Bruce continued to work on the set-up with another operator.
Suddenly every one heard a long series of curse words with a loud bang. Then a ladies Scream

Bruce had learned the wrong way to "express his frustrations " weather it was directly from John or some where else in his life.

Bruce had threw a 3 ft pry bar across the plant . The ladies scream, was from when she was impaled in the back by said pry bar.

By the end of that shift,
with the police , fire and ambulance in the plant.
John was terminated,
Bruce was terminated, charged with assault
The lady was in emergency surgery,

I learned a lesson.

The lady happened to be an innocent bystander just doing her job.
She survived and returned to work in a year.

I continued to work there for 13 years.

 

[Ulma Doctor]

The innocent always pays the price for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.


When i was younger my temper was not good.
I'm no saint now, but i was a guy you would want to miss on a bad day.
i never tried to take frustrations out on people , although it did happen-sad to say.
as a new employee, one day i was having a bad day trying to install a transmission in a forklift at my employers' shop.
if you have ever worked with forklifts or seen one opened up,
you'd see that they literally have 10 lbs of shinola stuffed into a 5 lb bag.
the job was not going well for a multitude of reasons, compounded by multiple service calls scheduled for the day in the field.
all of the repairs were not going to be completed that day to my satisfaction, which created even more stress.
as things snowballed downhill, i grew increasingly enraged.
My Boss who really was a good guy saw that i was going bezerk gave me a simple command-
go kick the bucket.
i had no idea what he was talking about.
He pointed his finger at a galvanized pail he had way over in a corner of the building, all by itself.
puzzled, i went over to the bucket and retrieved if from the corner.
my boss said,"i want you to kick that bucket until you can act right again, and i don't want to see you until then"
feeling stupid, but still pretty PO, i laid into the bucket pretty much as hard as i could.
it made all kinds of noise, dented the pail like a pails' never been dented before-
it would have a hard time holding air from the damage inflicted from my rage.
after i was done with the tantrum, my boss was laughing on the other side of the shop.
he asked if i felt better.
i said yeah
I realized at that point that my zeal to accomplish must be met with great temperament.
i still have moments of weakness,
but i'll always remember the bucket.

 

[GA Gyro]

IMO there is some truth in Post #2 above...

Sometimes the 'most productive' person (maybe just the fastest)... may well be the one that is on the edge of anger. I remember that all to well (grew up in a seriously dysfunctional family... that is a different thread). It took some years of being an adult (and paying for bad choices)... to learn to manage oneself... :talktogod:

IMO... part of maturity is to realize ones own strengths and weaknesses (I believe most of us have both)... and manage them to the better of ones life as well as one's surroundings.

I feel sorry for the lady that got stuck with the prybar... innocents are usually the victims... sadly.

 

[savarin]

I had two very close shaves as a 19 year old commis chef.
One of the older chefs had been on my case all day without let up as was his usual modus opperandi. Eventually I decided I had had enough and threw a long tined meat fork at the block he was leaning on spearing in between his finger and thumb. It penetrated so deep it took two of us to remove it. My comment of "next time I wont miss" kept him quiet for months.
The second one scared the hell out of me.
In this hotel it was the custom to earn overtime on saturdays turning spuds (cutting and shaping them into all the same size barrel shapes).
The knife we used was a small thin blade razor sharp shaped to fit the curve of your thumb and as this hotel would sit 2000+ in the great room and 400+ in the ballroom and 3 pieces was a portion that was tons of spuds to shape by hand. Boring and monotonous but at time and a half was worth it.
Again an older chef started on, no let up for over two hours till eventually I lashed out with the knife.
As soon as I did it I started to panic as I watched his jacket, apron and trousers start to part at the slash point and any second the carmine shower would pour out.
It didnt (phew) I just scratched a very faint line across his belly.
All the other chefs in the room couldnt stop laughing and he stopped riding the younger chefs from that day on.
I realised what a narrow escape we both had and have never lost my temper with another human since that day.
Now, inanimate objects is a whole different ball game.:shush::lmao: