Two and a half years ago in February, accusations of not harvesting data plots, taking inaccurate data, and actually not harvesting an entire field had come up the line to the CEO. Serious accusations coming from people within the main office that weren’t even a part of our research side. They are glorified salesmen.
True. Some plots did not get harvested that year. There was detailed notes as to why they didn’t though. That year at the beginning of harvest a major wind event had ripped through Nebraska. A wind event that knocked over most of the corn. Farmers’ yield had gone from 250 bushels per acre to less than 100 in some cases. Major wind event. See, we harvest 2 rows for data and when wind knocks corn over our two rows get all tangled with the rows next to it. When that happens and you can’t tell if the combine is pulling from your two rows or other tangled rows you can’t harvest that for data, that would be inaccurate data. We notated the plots that this happened to. These notes were available to all salesmen and the CEO and anyone else who needed to know. The idea a whole field didn’t get harvested was just stupid.
Why the CEO would think for a minute a whole field didn’t get harvested is laughable to me even now, because the dumbass had the harvest results. We had delivered the results of harvesting the plots and the field we were accused of not harvesting at all, results we couldn’t possibly have without actually harvesting it. I could go on and on about that display of idiocrasy but I’ll spare us all….
So the CEO and COO came to our office for a visit. CEO did all of the talking and the COO just stood there looking more like a mafia enforcer than anything else. These guys are both huge fellas. They’re as wide as they are tall, and they are TALL. They look more like henchmen rather than operators of a successful Nebraska Coop.
CEO made a huge speech of telling us that with all the misinformation he was getting he was taking the reins on us and we would report to him directly so he would know exactly what was going on. He didn’t like that the research the coop was giving us wasn’t yielding what they thought it was (assuming it was our fault that the coop products weren’t performing well) and he wanted to change that.
CEO also made comments about how much he was going to pop in from time to time unannounced and whomever was there was expected to know how all the fields were doing, what notes needed to be taken on all of them, and any and all issues associated with those fields. That we would be leaders in our field and the cutting edge of research. What with our 40 year old combines and antiquated techniques of doing everything. He wanted cutting edge research the cheap way.
We had 17 locations spread from Colorado to Iowa and 6 people to manage them. His visit solidified the suspicion I had developed, he had no idea what we did nor did he have any interest in learning. All I could think of was a harvest incident from 2 years before his visit where I found out he was mad at me.
What happened was the system on our oldest combine was out of date and needed updated. The company that provides the computer system in which all of our harvest data is processed would no longer be providing support for the old software. The upgrade was a few thousand dollars so to save a few bucks CEO decided not to do the upgrade since the old system wasn’t broken. After that I was harvesting in west Texas where we used to have locations, a small field that should have taken less than 4 hours to complete. My partner and I were there for 10 hours as I was losing plot after plot by not having the updated system. The old was failing and losing our plots, I was on the phone with the guy from the company associated with our account for hours doing reboot after reboot.
I had the most experience with that system and had I not been the one harvesting a lot more of that field data would have been missing. However the CEO was not pleased with me at all when he learned almost half of it was lost. My boss’ boss had to go to bat for me and explain for me that the reason so much data was lost was because the upgrade wasn’t done, not because I wasn’t doing my job.
I thought of that and how he actually believed we simply just weren’t doing our jobs. I thought of how he didn’t ask one question how we took all those data notes or even what kind of notes we took. I thought of how he was more interested in getting good results instead of accurate results. All of a sudden I no longer felt secure in my job. I felt I was always just a breath away from being let go for something out of my control.
That’s how the next 2.5 years played out after the CEO’s visit. Our jobs being threatened was a constant after each season. For every act of God that played out amongst our fields our employment was challenged. For every innocent human mistake we made we were reminded we could be replaced.
When the CEO wrapped up his visit he left with promises he’d be stopping in soon and would be making contact with all of us.
We never saw him again. In the 2.5 years since that hostile visit I never saw him once. Not through all the threats nor through more accusations. Not even on the day this August when he fired me.
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