Thread regarding Dean Foods Co. layoffs

Your post gets deleted for bad language clean it up it will not be deleted

Stop deleting post. we can't tell the truth about how bad the work environment has become? Bullsh*t

To the manager who replied again, I apologize because like there are SOME hourly employees that care, there are SOME supervisors and managers that care too. So I was too harsh with my statements. It sounds like your a manager that actually cares, and I am envious if you have a better overall team at your plant. And even though you are not my manager, I appreciate you being a manager at this company that cares. I wish you the best of luck also, on whatever happens to your facility. Honestly, if I could find a better job right this very second locally, I would leave here out of uncertainty of what's going to happen. But nothing else here pays better (which is also why most of the hourly employees haven't jumped ship yet.) If we are lucky, someone will buy our plant with no layoffs or shutdowns, but we will see.

Nice to hear a local manager give their perspective. appreciate the message. All we can do is see what happens and then make a decision unless it's made for us

WeAllScreamForIceCream, let's get one thing straight. I'm definitely NOT a Dean Foods apologist. But yes, I am a manager. I'm not trying to censor anything from anyone on this thread. This forum is one of the very few outlets we have to voice our concerns and frustrations because we sure as hell can't express them to our uppers (myself included). I can only speak in regards to what I see and know and do at my facility. I will apologize though for saying that no one gives a sit because I know most of you guys do. It really pisses me off to hear that other management teams aren't a resource to their people. I really do wish all you guys luck in whatever happens with this bulls*t. All I can say is try to hang in there. Keep your heads up and hopefully when someone ends up buying us they come in and completely clean house and rid us of these lazy POS's.

For the last few years here, raising issues (not complaints, legitimate concerns about safety and sanitation) results in being told "if you don't like it leave, you're replaceable". Raise an issue enough and there will be an attempt to make your life miserable so you'll quit. We deal with what we can on our own, but there's no point in going supervisors or management with anything.

This is in response to the poster who said we "don't give an ish" about anything. OK, you are sorta right, and sorta wrong too. There are some people that work at my plant that truly do not care. They show up to work, and do the absolute minimum amount of work possible so they don't get fired. There are a few of us though that really DO care about what's going on, but let me explain the bigger problem. When we see other employees doing something at work which is unsafe, or we see an unsafe work condition, or we see equipment malfunctioning, or we see violations of GMP policy, etc... We actually DID try to do something about it at first, because we cared, and we still do! But the problem is, supervisors and management don't care! When we voice any concern to them, no matter how legitimate it is, they just become upset. They will tell us to go complain to someone else, tell us there's no budget to fix that broken machine, tell us that we just whine and complain too much. So they completely blow us off! If management actually CARED, we would gladly put in the extra effort to work with them to make the work place safer, more efficient, and ensure we are producing a quality product. But... We don't have their support! We never have! You are obviously some kind of Dean Foods apologist who is trying to defend management. I wouldn't be surprised if you're a manager yourself coming onto these forums trying to monitor and censor what's being said. Stop being so fake, and just admit that management at Dean Foods is a BIG, FAT, F*ing FAILURE!!!

CANT FIX STUPID

That's just it. None of you people gives a ish about anything. If you saw that that guy in the restroom why the hell didn't you say something to him before he walked out? I know the ELT team has screwed everyone over, we all get that. What we can do and need to do is work together to make sure we're all doing what needs to be done so we can keep feeding our families. If we see stuff like that going on, speak the hell up. We need to fight for one another because we're all we got. Work together to control the things we can control so if/when we're walking out the door for the last time at least we can say we tried to make things better. Posting ish like that doesn't help anyone, it makes it worse.

Ive seen guys take number 2’s with no hand washing proceed to mix and batch in blender area before. No gloves either. Because. They said it makes hands sweat too bad and slip when cutting the 50lb bags of mix.

You should see all the c-ap that goes on at our ice cream plant. I don't know who is in charge of hiring, but it's as if they purposely, and deliberately selected the most unqualified people they possibly could for almost all positions at our plant. Deans only cares about money, they do not care about safety or quality. They do not care about properly training employees. One day our plant ran out of paper towels, and they set toilet paper rolls on top of the paper towel dispensers in all the bathrooms, and told us to dry our hands with that instead of paper towels. This is just one of many sick, disgusting things wrong at our facility. I could make a whole laundry list of the problems at our plant. I can only imagine the things that go on at other facilities owned by Deans.

QA in Le Mars too busy walking around with clipboard spying on everyone and turning names into the boss or Ed.

There was a time when everything that the FDA found would have been dealt with immediately with discipline. What the QA Director did would have gone straight to a suspension or even termination. Now, well, it's not as blatant as what the DFA saw, but really just as bad. Sanitation procedures not being followed and wrong brushes being used and stored places they shouldn't be is common. But most managers and supervisors don't even know what they're looking at when they see it, so new company coming in is gonna have a lot of training and setting expectations.

lol

How about all of them?? Would be a good idea I'd say

which plant should QA check?

That’s nothing compared to my plant. I just started here and QA should check under the upper floor cage by our culture filler. You will find cottage cheese that has sat there for at least months and has turned to yellow vasoline.

This doesn't surprise me at all and Not Just This Plant, GMP's have went so downhill and hiring inept managers and supervisors that have never worked in foods didn't help them out any, moving unqualified workers to positions they had NO business being in just to say they filled the spot is an accident waiting to happen, I doubt this will be the last hearing about other plants having similar problems

Corporate QA Director...LOL...sad, but not at all surprising. Probably making $100K+ and doesn't know jack about the food industry. Ralphie hire I bet.

The QA employee who was seen touching food products with their bare hands and later licking ice cream off of their hands was a Corporate Quality Assurance Director so that tells you the level of competency Deans now has in their Corporate positions.

I just read the article and came here to see if anyone posted a comment about it. You know things are really, really bad when you have a QA employee licking ice cream off of their bare hands. Licking your hands is bad enough, but to do it in the presence of an FDA inspector screams incompetence. I was shocked when I read the list of deviations found by the FDA inspector. In my opinion this further clouds Deans’ already bleak future. It seems they are unable to retain enough qualified and quality people to continue running an operation that provides safe products to consumers.

Search dean foods friendlys plant for an article explaining the mess