this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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Wondering if it's just me and my own legitimate fuck-ups at work or if this is possibly part of a broader trend. I've been at my current blue collar job for almost two years. For the first few months I was just training and not touching anything, but I've been on my own for about a year and a half. Starting maybe six months ago, my managers have called me into meeting after meeting, usually every few weeks, to talk about how I suck and how they're going to fire me. In their defense, I was legitimately fucking up. And before you tell me to unionize: I already talked about it with my coworkers (white males on the older side) and they aren't interested. I'm on my own at this job for 99% of the time I'm out there so I barely talk with them anyway.

One manager called me recently to thank me for my hard work. Two meetings ago, he basically said I had nothing to worry about, with regard to one of my recent fuck-ups; then we just had another meeting yesterday where he and another manager once again threatened to fire me (over the same fuck-up). We have regular safety meetings with my coworkers—a few safety meetings ago, the managers gave us a list of items all of us needed to have in our work vehicles. One meeting later, they told us we had too many items in our work vehicles. They're just kind of all over the place, and I'm wondering if this is because they're under pressure from their superiors or market trends or they feel emboldened by Trump? What do you think?

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[–] mrfugu@hexbear.net 14 points 2 days ago

It sounds like you’re suffering from management bloat. When you fuck up juuuuust enough to report the issue, bad number go up. When bad number go up people you’ve never met are saying “we must do something about this!” So they do a meeting about it, record the fact that they scolded you, send out a memo, etc etc whatever they can do to prove they did “something” aka superfluous managers trying to justify their existence.

Anecdotally, we do safety meetings first thing every morning. I think it’s a good concept even if it’s often an AI voice over video or a quiz on slips and falls. A few weeks ago I was coming into work closer to lunch time since I was only needed out there for lab work which wouldn’t be available to do until the afternoon. My field manager got pretty upset with me for missing the daily meetings. He straight up told me he was worried that if something happens while working out here someone will ask “well what was the morning safety meeting about??” 😑. At the end of the day most safety culture is about avoiding accountability 100 times over before it’s about keeping people safe. That’s capitalism for ya 🤗