Great workers. Outdated equipment. - Electric Arc Furnace Operator bei AMETEK: Mitarbeiterbewertung

Mandated OT. First couple months I worked I never had a week that wasn't 6-7 days of work . The idea of working a 5 day week was crazy. And they expect you to ask for more OT when you first start to learn. You won't work on the job you was hired for when you start. Instead you will be cleaning crew/ice man. Hope that someone is hired on to take your place. This can be weeks or months before you start the job you were hired to do. If you want to learn the job you where hired to do you are expected to ask for OT or do your job very fast. Zero say on what days you work or shift. Expect to be asked to work a different shift out of the blue and have no say in the matter. I worked 4 different shifts in a year. More then likely you will be on morning shift to start with "training" then moved to another shift. Don't expect to ever work the morning shift ever again after your "training" is done. You will be thrown into a shift where it is needed, most likely midday. This shift no one wants and will not have many veterans to help you. You will likely be partnered with someone who themselves just got out of training. On job training. You are paired up with another worker who has been marked as able to work on that furnace by another worker. On one furnace I was trained by someone that was just "signed off" the day prior. You are expected to make your own documentation on how to do your job. Suck at taking notes? Too bad. Have a bad teacher? Oh well. Are you better learning by reading then doing? Sucks to be you. Tests to get raises. To get a raise you must be there a set time and take a test. The first few tests (3 month and 6 month I think) are just to see what you need to work on and have no fail state. While I don't think this is a bad idea in theory, it is bad in practice. You have no clue what you need to learn to pass these tests, you just have to hope you learned the correct things from the other workers. Some of the questions are about things outside the scope of your job or about furnaces that are no longer being used. Unless your on them they will "forget" to give you these tests that give you a raise. Very old equipment. Most of the furnaces are from the 70's or later and are rarely, if ever, updated or checked out. Each one is different and has there quirks that you must learn. One may heat up faster then another. One might have a gauge that doesn't quite work or give false readings. And so on. I would say on average I would have to call someone to tell them something needed fixed about once every 4 or so days. The fix is often times just a bandaid to keep the furnace going. I do not blame the people doing the "fix", the idea of a furnace being down for any amount of time is crazy to management and they are not given replacement parts unless absolutely necessary. Given that your life depends on the equipment being safe to use, this is unacceptable. And the main reason I quit. Finger pointing. They are always looking for someone to blame if a problem comes up. Don't mind the lack of training materials or that the equipment needed fixed or that the person you was working with was slacking that day or you had to train a new person. If you don't make your numbers you will be blamed for it. And if you don't have another person to point at, your partner or the maintenance or a team lead, you may get written up. This leads to everyone pointing at everyone else. Paper work. I did not mind doing the paperwork. But how it is used is what made me angry. It is implied that you are keeping track of what ore is used so that they know how much they have in stock and what amounts were used to melt that particular blend, and that is true. But more often it is used to keep track of you and used to pin the blame on you for not doing things at the amount of time they believe it should be done. Every worker I worked with lied about the times on the paper work so that they would not get into trouble. I eventually started doing this myself, I pride myself on being an honest person and doing this killed me a little inside. Some workers will look down on you until you have 2+ years under your belt. Until you get your green helmet (showing you have worked for over 2 years) some workers will not even bother talking to you unless they have too. While there are not many people like this, they do exist. And until you get that green hat you will likely be the one getting most of the blame. Tools. You might be given tools when you start. Guard these with your life because you won't be getting any more. You will need to replace these out of pocket if they are lost/stolen. That is if you are given any at all. These are not very expensive tools though, you won't need power tools or anything. But you will need them to do your job. If you are there long enough you will learn where the "hidden" tools are on each deck. The tools should be on every deck but are not because reasons. Very hot. I don't really consider this a con per say, it should be expected when you take the job. You are working over a furnace that runs 3000+ degrees of course your going to be hot. Strangely, now that I no longer do it I kind of miss it. There is something strangely cathartic about sweating over a furnace. Revolving door. About 2 in 10 workers stay for longer then a month. Reasons being what I described above. And they have no issue firing anyone even if you have been there over 20+ years.