You are getting an education - in how NOT to do things. A shop that is too apathetic, stupid and cheap to maintain the equipment that pays the bills is not a place you want to stay for too long. If they don't care about their equipment, they sure as hell don't care about YOU.
Not sure how long they've been in business - I'm guessing a long time - but it kind of sounds like you're dealing with an entrenched culture of "that's how we've always done it" and/or "no one gives a shit anymore".
That last bit seems to run right up against your work ethic -you care and want to do things the right way. Don't let them beat it out of you.
The key is to choose your battles. Fix the stuff you
can, and learn to say "f'it, if they don't care, I don't care" to the stuff you
can't. Not easy, but it's the key to sanity. Look out for #1.
In the meantime, use this as a learning experience. Every bit of experience you gain - good and bad- goes in your "toolbox". <points to head>. Some of it might not come into play for a long time, but you never know.
As others have said, develop your own habits, procedures, ways of doing things, and stick with them. That doesn't mean be resistant to change, but the things you learn to do on autopilot will free up "processor cycles" for the other stuff. My own little habits include stuff like (in no particular order):
- DO NOT let anyone or anything interrupt you when setting zeros and offsets. I tend to be fairly scatterbrained, so sometimes I even have to defend myself against myself! "Oooh! Shiny.....!"
- If there's ever a doubt whether you set zero correctly or remembered to indicate something or tighten something or whatever....take the extra two seconds to check it.99 times out of 100, it will be fine, but that one time..... Before I push the "Go" button on a CNC, one of the last things I do is grab the workpiece or clamp and give it a yank. If it's ok, fine, I "wasted" two seconds. If it moves, I may have saved myself hours and a lot of aggravation.
- On a CNC, I always do two "reality checks": I tell the machine to go to X0 Y0. If it's not where you think it should be...see above. The second is tool offsets - slow the feed down and when you get some distance above the part, stop it and look at the readout. If you're 1/4' off the material, and the readout says "+1"", you might want to double check your offsets.
- I like to do a mental purge between jobs - when I'm done with one job, I clean up and put everything back where it belongs before starting another job - even though I will probably use some of those items again. This allows me time for a mental reboot and when I start the next job, I don't have to look around for my calipers and waste (very limited) brain power, I KNOW where they are. I can focus on the job.
- In the same vein, don't underestimate the power of being organized. Have only what you need to do the job on hand. Not having to paw through a pile of extraneous crap to find something is both a time saver and a mental benefit. Keep your toolbox organized. This may be an evolving process - and will surely change from workplace to workplace.
...you get the idea. As others have said, develop your own workflow. Until it becomes automatic, it may seem cumbersome, deliberate and time consuming, but once it becomes subconscious, it will smooth things out a lot.
In the meantime, educate yourself, educate yourself, educate yourself - even if it means doing stuff on your own time. Read. Watch videos. Take a vocational course. Take a program home and take it apart. Look at it line by line. Try to understand what it's doing (and maybe you'll even spot errors). Do mental exercises - "
If I was going to make that part...how would I go about it?" Most shops frown on "government jobs" but sometimes they can be pretty instructive. If they'll let you do stuff on your own time, do it. Be willing to do things that are outside your job description. Everything you know looks good on a resume. Learn other skills that may or may not be directly job related. About 30 years ago, I could see that CNC was the coming thing. I didn't know how to get involved, but I took a course in basic computing (DOS!) and started farting around with computers on my own time. When the shop I was working in got their first CNC, guess who got asked to learn to run it? And guess what? Over the years, every time there was a layoff,
other people got the axe...because I knew stuff that they didn't. I'm doing the exact same thing now, with 3D printing - even though I'm only a couple of years from the door.
And above all, never, ever, ever compromise on safety, no matter how much time you think it might save,
Relax - it's a marathon, not a sprint.