Yesterday at work, I helped others without them actually deserving it. I just did it, because it was the right thing to do. There is a story behind why I feel they don’t deserve my expertise.
Everything started almost one year ago when I began a recycling project for the foundry sand. I called the right people outside our company and arranged the first meeting. At the beginning, my co-workers felt quite sceptical about this new project. After some time they saw some light at end of the tunnel and it wasn’t a train. The recycling of used foundry sand is a huge thing both economically and environmentally. Normally, used sand is going directly to landfill and we are using only brand-new sand. That combination is not cheap.
Everything went relatively well for some time now and the project was developing in the right direction. Then I had a few disagreements with some people including my boss. The disagreements were about other projects and duties that should have been done but they weren’t. To be more exact, my boss and a couple of other co-workers weren’t motivated enough to do their job so I had to do their work as well in order to make things happen.
Then my summer vacation was approaching and I planned to use one-month for parental leave after my summer vacation. During those two months, they stopped sending the project e-mails and meeting invitations to me. I didn’t get any information about this project even when I went back to work. Since I didn’t hear anything about the status of the project, I decided to call the company who’s doing the recycling of the sand.
The recycling company told me that they are now starting a meeting and there are many people from our company including my boss. I was quite surprised when I heard the news. I decided to ask my boss why I wasn’t informed or invited there. The answer was quite short, “Why would we need your assistance anymore, we have the right people here and we will let you know if you have to do something for us”. My response to that was, that I’m the expert of this area and I’m also the person who started this project. In my opinion, he was really disrespectful. However, they still didn’t share their information with me and I didn’t get any details.
Some months passed and our factory finally got the first test sands. The sand worked relatively well and they decided to order another batch of the sand. The second test was a total catastrophe. The mechanical properties of the sand were not even close to what they should be and the sand was useless. When I heard the quality problems of the sand, I made a small investigation and I knew exactly what had gone wrong.
I decided to write an email to our project group and to this company who is doing the recovery of the sand. I explained what happened in details and what should be done to avoid the problems next time. It turned out, that the problem was exactly the one I mentioned. After sharing the information, I didn’t get any gratitude but, I did get an invitation to the next project meeting.
Somehow, I can't help but feel unhappy that they sent the invitations after several months though I am glad that at least things are moving forward in a better direction. Have you ever been in this kind of situation in the workplace?
-markos86
