Is this workplace negligence “normal”?

I’m getting pretty fed up with how things are being handled at my workplace and I’m curious how other people deal with this kind of situation.

There are people being put into jobs they are clearly not qualified or capable of doing, while the people who actually know the work are left trying to clean up the mess or carry everything. Management on one side of the business is extremely weak. It honestly feels like whoever talks the loudest on the floor ends up making the decisions. (Honestly this may be the most damaging part of the whole situation, never have I seen or heard of that happening before.)

We have a manager that rarely, if ever, comes onto the production floor. Any question has to go through him, then get passed to someone else, and the answer usually seems to be whatever is easiest in the moment instead of what actually makes sense for production, quality, or the long term.

For the last year, it felt like we were making work just to stay busy while waiting for better product or more consistent work to come in. Now that we finally have good product and real work to do, it has swung completely the other way. There is more work than five people could reasonably keep up with, but it is being piled onto one person. That person is stretched so thin that there is no realistic way to do everything properly.

The owner does not seem too concerned with productivity, but from the floor it is obvious the lack of planning, leadership, and focus has put the company in a bad spot.

I’m not looking to complain for the sake of it. I just want to know how people handle a workplace where the issues are obvious to everyone doing the work, but the people in charge either do not see it, do not understand it, or do not want to deal with it. Do you keep your head down, document everything, try to bring it up professionally, or start looking elsewhere? At what point do you stop trying to care more than the people running the place?