REVscene - Vancouver Automotive Forum

Hondaracer · 10-13-2016, 08:12 AM

I'm gonna share some stories here that have been relayed from a friend who works for the VSB, i'm going to try and stay relatively vague as to not directly incriminate them lol..

however, some of the shit I hear it's absolutely fucking disgusting to think this organization is constantly in the media begging for money, handouts, help, then refusing to make cuts and close schools when they are so blatantly wasting the tax payer and government funds provided to them.

Before i get into the individual stories regarding the waste caused by all levels of this organization, i will describe an average day for this worker (who, has worked in numerous different areas of the VSB)

Show up at the yard, shift starts at 7:25 as opposed to 7:30 to bank that extra 5 mintues per day in order to make up for the "flex days" that the teachers take, pro-d days, stats, etc.

They then get together as crews and discuss work for the day, take out tools, etc. this can run anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours. Almost never does a truck leave the yard prior to 9AM.

For people who cut the grass and do general clean up around the schools, they drive their own vehicles to the schools they are going to cut, getting big time $$$ for milage, they then wait at the school until the truck which delivers the lawn mower shows up, this can be between 30 minutes and 3 hours, of waiting for the equipment to do your job.

Once you've completed that school, you must phone and get the equipment picked up, however, you cannot leave the equipment alone, so you pack up, and wait for the same guy, or another guy with the appropriate truck to pick up said lawn mower, if there is enough time left in the day, maybe you will get to another school, but probably not.

If there is not time left in the day to cut another school, the equipment will be picked up, brought back to the yard, and your only duty is to show up at the yard at the end of the day to fill out a time card and leave. Other than that people are driving around, doing errands, taking 3 hour lunches, reading books at spanish banks, etc. This is every day for these people.

So onto the next situation..

crew is building a small bike rack, they build the bike rack, upon completion a teacher who had ordered it be built comes out and says it is wrong and must be removed. spend an additional day removing rack, and then having to bring in an entire dump truck of good material to lay down below the rack as requested by the teacher.

a back hoe is brought in, dump truck dumps an entire load of good, pricey, material to underlay the rack with. the crew and backhoe end up using less than 1/4 of the total load brought from the Vancouver works yard for their project. It is recommended that they use the backhoe to load a dump truck back up and return the remaining material to the yard, after all it is an asset.

after this recommendation, the person in charge outright refuses that and simply gets the crew to "spread" the remaining material out onto the dirt/field, 3/4 of a dump truck of material unused, is simply spread out and wasted.

Example 3:

The VSB uses tones of shipping containers or "sea cans" to store equipment etc. Sea cans are always in demand from various industries, however, of course when one becomes old and worn, a public organization like the VSB has no interested in keeping around old, worn down goods.

If your average person had a sea can in their back yard, and they phoned a scrap removal company, the scrapping company would take the can away for free, perhaps even pay you, it's shitty metal but theres ALOT of it in a sea can.

The VSB deals with their old unwanted sea cans in a slightly different manner.. they take it upon themselves to dispose of the cans..

over 2 days, FIVE people, and a backhoe dismantle 1 sea can..

5 peoples wages + a back hoe/operator. they cut holes, cut peices off, the back hoe turns the sea can, cut come more off it.

somthing they could dipose of or get rid of for free, takes 6 peoples wages two days to do..

Example 4:

some employees have access to the VSB charge accounts, they primarily use acklands Grainger as their tool supplier (red flags anyone?)

guy goes in, needs some large, over sized, crescent wrenches, 5 of them in different sizes.

orders them, bill comes to sign, it's approx $650 for the 5 wrenches.. ok.. they are big specialty wrenches, maybe thats the normal price.

Guy goes to a different acklands grainger two days later with the same part numbers for a quote as a private person, no account pricing, no discount.

The same 5 wrenches for a guy walking in off the street were $360..

Honestly, shit like this probably goes down in most public sectors. However, you almost never see "city of burnaby" "city of new west" etc. in the media begging for funds and bail outs.

Somthing to think about if there are ever referendums and votes on school closures when you see how money is being spent within the VSB.

minoru_tanaka · 10-13-2016, 08:22 AM

Anyone else read this and went straight to the VSB site to check for job openings?

murd0c · 10-13-2016, 08:24 AM

sounds like a typical school board or city job to me

dat_steve · 10-13-2016, 08:49 AM

this makes my blood boil lol the worst part is that most of those guilty of this type of work ethic almost feel entitled to it. fuck off man, i wish i could bank my morning shits too.

westopher · 10-13-2016, 08:54 AM

No different than the City of Vancouver road crew with one guy shovelling, 6 guys watching, 3 smoking flag girls (not smoking hot, smoking fucking cigarettes) twirling their signs, and 2 guys on the curb eating sandwiches.
Its not a problem with the school board, its a problem with the allocation of tax money and little to no accountability in the public sector.

Hondaracer · 10-13-2016, 08:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by murd0c

sounds like a typical school board or city job to me

The difference is, like I said in the post, almost none of the other local public sector are in the media/public constantly begging for funds, nor do the other groups have such incompetent management.

westopher · 10-13-2016, 09:03 AM

Maybe its a deeper rooted problem that a road crew has the money to pull that fucking bullshit and schools don't?

320icar · 10-13-2016, 09:23 AM

I would blow my brains out in a job like that. I earn my keep by the sweat on my brow

Traum · 10-13-2016, 10:01 AM

The OP needs to contact a TV crew of some sort and arrange for some investigative journalism. Getting this stuff exposed and generating public backlash is the only way to stop this bullshxt.

tonyzoomzoom · 10-13-2016, 10:26 AM

Incompetent management and minimal accountability always breed this kind of shit. Can't blame the workers.

Hondaracer · 10-13-2016, 10:38 AM

Your average worker yea, the middle management though, I think they have enough control to effectively make change yet most are so stuck in their ways they would rather go in the opposite direction.

Oh and here's another gooder I forgot about

So they are working in south Van somewhere, probably around this time of year. Buddy is sitting in his car waiting on tools/equipment as usual when he sees a storm drain backing up. The water has become so backed up that it's encroaching on a guys property, if it continues to collect, my friend figured it would soon be going into said guys garage, and maybe worse.

So he gets out of his car and finds a peice of rebar and walks through the puddle and begins trying to unplug the storm drain

Shortly after he begins his charge hand shows up and sees what he is doing.

The charge hand fucking SNAPS on him, asking him what the fuck are you doing? Buddy says this water is going to he running into this garage if it's not taken care of.

Charge hand says he doesn't give a fuck about the water and your job is in jeopardy if you are "stealing work from others" ...

XplicitLuder · 10-13-2016, 10:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by westopher

No different than the City of Vancouver road crew with one guy shovelling, 6 guys watching, 3 smoking flag girls (not smoking hot, smoking fucking cigarettes) twirling their signs, and 2 guys on the curb eating sandwiches.
Its not a problem with the school board, its a problem with the allocation of tax money and little to no accountability in the public sector.

youre missing out on the girls who are actually hot

maybe drive somewhere else other than slurrey. jkjk :P

Recon604 · 10-13-2016, 10:43 AM

quasi · 10-13-2016, 10:46 AM

One of the major problems is the way the money is allocated, ie: if you don't spend your budget it's going to get cut. Until they change the way budgets are derived and funds are allocated things will remain the same.

meme405 · 10-13-2016, 11:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by meme405

Our government is just fiscally irresponsible, as many are. They simply don't care to make an effort to ensure tax payers are getting the most for their dollars spent. The money flows into their departments free and clear every year, they don't have to work to earn that money, they just spend it willy nilly.

Whereas me as a business since I have to actually work to earn every penny for my business before I can spend anything, I am much more careful about how I spend.

Government is setup in such a way that it buttfucks you. Get used to it, or go join them, become a civil servant. That's what most people do. If you can't beat em join em.

Posted in another thread, relating to ICBC, however it's the same issue when dealing with anything relating to the government. When you don't have to work to earn your money, you go complacent with the managing and handling of it, and when you realize there are absolutely no repercussions and you can just go out and beg for more money, then you become reckless and possibly even corrupt with the usage.

EDIT:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

Charge hand says he doesn't give a fuck about the water and your job is in jeopardy if you are "stealing work from others" ...

This is a union problem, Unions usually have specific task lists for each position, doing tasks from other workers task lists is a huge deal within unions. Just another reason unions are useless, and set up to just benefit the lazy and incompetent.

Great68 · 10-13-2016, 12:17 PM

More like a PUBLIC UNION problem.

I work in the private industry, my labour force is unionized but they act nothing like union employees in the public system. If they did, then we wouldn't be in business and they would all be without jobs.

mikemhg · 10-13-2016, 12:20 PM

School Board is one of our clients. Let's not even talk about the abuse of the long term disability plan by some district employees, or as we call it "early retirement". It's quite mindblowing if you see the waste behind the scenes.

VSB is definitely having issues right now in terms of budget, their 4 of their trustees have gone on stress leave (disability of course). So that tells you what's going on right now.

westopher · 10-13-2016, 12:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by XplicitLuder

youre missing out on the girls who are actually hot

maybe drive somewhere else other than slurrey. jkjk :P

I haven't been to Surrey in 3 years.

Eff-1 · 10-13-2016, 01:27 PM

Yeah, I see some faults with management, but reading that whole thing leads me to believe the unionized employees are more the ones forcing the waste. Stuff like this:

Quote:

shift starts at 7:25 as opposed to 7:30 to bank that extra 5 mintues per day in order to make up for the "flex days" that the teachers take, pro-d days, stats, etc.

And this

Quote:

other than that people are driving around, doing errands, taking 3 hour lunches, reading books at spanish banks, etc.

Or this

Quote:

somthing they could dipose of or get rid of for free, takes 6 peoples wages two days to do..

And this

Quote:

Charge hand says he doesn't give a fuck about the water and your job is in jeopardy if you are "stealing work from others" ...

Using that first example, if your workers feel it's necessary to bank FIVE minutes, then face it, your whole system/culture is messed up, and both the management and the union are to blame for that.

Personally I don't mind the idea of unions, but the fact they are often SO incredibly resistant to change and being adaptable is why I can't stand them.

freakshow · 10-13-2016, 02:48 PM

I hate unions with a passion. They may have served a purpose 100 years ago, but the only thing they do now is stifle productivity and innovation. Imagine if the tech industry was unionized, we'd still have rotary phones. Government unions are absolutely criminal and are purely a waste of tax-payer dollars.

flagella · 10-13-2016, 04:26 PM

This is bound to happen when you are an organization that simply receives funding from taxpayers money. I'm pretty sure inefficiencies like this exist across most public sector jobs (I hear way too many stories). People don't have the incentive to work hard because you don't go out of business from lack of innovation and hard work.

Auditors are probably incompetent as well to catch anything.

DragonChi · 10-13-2016, 04:28 PM

Government jobs. Full of Cush~.

Adorkami · 10-13-2016, 04:34 PM

System won't change. The union will always push for giving the employees as much as possible even if it affects performance, and the managers of those members have their hands tied. If management tried to force real changes that would increase productivity they would just strike. Maybe someday it will be privatized and a lot cheaper.

RRxtar · 10-13-2016, 04:35 PM

public service unions.

brb going on strike for more money and better working conditions

tiger_handheld · 10-13-2016, 04:41 PM

I hate wasting money, but at the end of the day, it's about the budget in public sector.

Example:

The higher level government or organization will fund the school board say 5 million based on an operating budget.

At year end, the bean counters show up and make sure said entity has spent 5mil+ -- ie going over budget.

The next year said entity requests 6mil because last year they asked for 5mil spent 5.5mil so they need 5.5mil + inflation this year.

Faliure to spend more than budget will mean less money next year.

This friends is public sector in a nutshell. It's not about the union, it's not about wasting materials. its about making sure the society will exist in the coming year at the same level as the year before. Inefficiency is rewarded in public sector - hell its encouraged. The more over budget you go, the more "needed" your organization seems and thats what all government org's want - to be needed.