Friday, February 09, 2007

Is It Real Or Is It Memorex?

Yesterday I got the big blow-off from my old company. It caused a tremendous effect where I now work. I am left wondering if it was driven by a personal reason or not.

We have an equipment failure at work that could cost us a lot of production time. A left over problem from previous dolts has finally come to bite the company in the nards. Bite hard. Even though they have been warned and warned.

So the old company where I worked previously has the systems and capacity to help us out. They do it as a regular thing, part of their business. So when we verbally set up things so we could make our production, everything seemd to be working out. They were very enthusiastic about creating a closer tie with my current company. Talking about how they want to build cooperation and trust between us. All that kind of verbage. The VP there even verbally guaranteed that our stuff would be done over the weekend. I just had to wait until they gave me an official cost quote to ship things.

That was the morning.

By 3:30 things changed. Suddenly they had a team meeting and decided that they didn't want to help us out. They didn't want the distraction. They blew us off.

On our end, the production plan was rewritten. The materials were prepped and ready to go. We had our immediate future planned and organized.

That verbal guarantee screwed us. I guess we now see what their word is worth.

What I don't get is that what we needed done was something they do every day. They do it for others too. We use the exact same components they use daily. It wasn't as if we wnated to do something off the wall. We needed about 4-5 hours of equipment time and we would have been out of the way. We even planned on doing it over the weekend. I just do not get how that would have been a distraction. Granted, I do not know what challenges they currently have but still, it was not a tough nor unusual request. Besides, they would have made good money on it.

I can't help but feel that it was a bit personal. That they chose to change up because they just didn't want to do it. I know there is one senior member who has snowed the big cheese and definitely has a major influence. The nose is so far up the butt that it has to be stained dark brown. That person is also the one I could not get along with and unlimately the reason I left.

It may be just that they made a business decision. It may not be personal. Even if it isn't personal, they still screwed us badly. Never, never, never guarantee something and then just do a 180. The worst part was that they didn't even have the courtesy to give us a decent, professional explanation. I got a voice message from the VP. "Nope, we changed our minds. Sorry."

So much for building a relationship between companies. If they knew the reaction here they would be cringing right now.

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