I work in auto manufacturing in the US. Not directly making cars but making parts that go into cars.
The amount of work we’ve been doing is insane - overtime pretty much every day for the past two months to keep up with orders.
But that makes no sense. All these cars we’re helping to produce, who the hell is buying them? Nobody has money for a new car. Most people in my city seem to be driving cars that are at least a few years old rather than brand new.
I do the math in my head and it doesn’t make sense. Who is buying all these cars? Are they even selling? It seems like a scam of some kind.
Overtime daily for 2 months? Sounds like some manager bullshit to me.
Maybe. I can at least vouch for the plant manager; he hates the overtime too as he’s required to come in and since he’s salaried he doesn’t get overtime pay.
It’s more likely a corporate decision.
Hence the manager bullshit. This is probably trying to hit a performance target. Poor manager has to “come in”! Oh no!
I was on an engineer project where the team had to do a month or so of 6-7 days/week to hit our “important” deadline. Once the project was completed quite a few of us were made redundant.
Lesson learned: never fix anything unless you create two more problems that need fixing.
I sincerely doubt the plant manager is behind it. He isn’t the one releasing orders nor does he create the schedules.