I'm sure there are people who genuinely find that kind of work to be really cool, but I'm with you. It wasn't enough for me.

I just could not get motivated over my projects being "Maybe we should store the pallets right here in packaging instead of 100ft away on the other side of the building" or "Let's replace the screwdrivers in assembly with drills to increase productivity". Who the fuck needs an engineering degree to tell them that drills are way faster than screwdrivers?

Let alone the bullshittery around monitoring every minute of each employee's day and trying to squeeze every ounce of productivity out of it. One manager gave an entire presentation about how if every operator is 1 minute late coming back to their station from break it adds up to like 2 full weeks for 1 employee by the end of the year.

Like...I saw that manager gossiping with HR for anywhere from like 15-45 minutes every day. But here we're trying to harass our employees for taking ONE EXTRA MINUTE of their 30 minute lunch break.

I just couldn't. Continuous Improvement can be cool but not when it's that kind of stuff, not to me anyway.

Just wanted to say that if you feel similarly and it's making you miserable there are cool engineering jobs out there. Even Continuous Improvement can be really fun if the manufacturing process is complex and requires actual engineering to improve.