Overstaffed

One of the issues you frequently face with, if you work in a public workplace in the old country, and that is seen in the country I was born and raised in, not sure whether it is a problem in the neighbouring countries or not, is over-staffing. I've been to the places where I saw workers sleeping under machinery or in the locker. I saw that almost every time we were in Paxan. I and my buddy spent a few months in that company, would go once a week maybe, to interview people and collect date for a final project we had for our degree. While this is not the subject of this post, now years after what we accomplished, I can see many flaws in what we did. 

Nevertheless I never imagined that I would see the same problem here where productivity is emphasized upon a lot and due to high wages, it is almost insane to have a worker or employee who contributes nothing and only consumes oxygen and occupies space(!) but I have seen that here as well. Perhaps not to the same level as what is considered normal in the old country but here it depends where you are looking at.

There are restrict safety rules in work places and many companies use unionized workers. If any injury even minor happens, the company has to keep the employee and put him or her on light duties until he or she is recovered and able to go back to regular duties. That would automatically add extra staff to the system. At the same time there are places that use low wage employees and because they earn good in their business, adding one or more extra would not hurt them. So you at times see overstaffed places which leads to chaos because there's usually no supervision and management or if there is, it's just formality. A good example of that is McDonald's and Tim Horton's. There's barely any of these two locations that you go and you don't see people doing nothing while there are many undone jobs left: Overflowing trash cans, delayed orders, wrong orders, beeping cooking or heating machines, dirty tables and there are people who are doing nothing and wandering around and there are others who show themselves busy while their existence make no difference in the business. 

Big companies have the same problem. There has been news of companies which all of a sudden decide to get rid of a bunch of mid-level managers. So what was that the people doing when they were hired? Nothing?! 

(Photo: Public and general service companies such as ATCO, Enmax, City of Calgary and such are amongst the ones which always are overstaffed. They have most of the times, high-paid employees with least amount of work! Here, I don't want to name this company, you see as many as 5 employees hanging out at the sidewalk while the same number are working on the street! Must be a hell of a job and the company must be doing really well which could keep these many employees on while the others are getting kicked out on daily basis!)