how many of you out there go to work everyday and have to put up with complete idiots for 8-10 hrs a day..i work in a machine shop with HUGE machinery in it(nothing is cnc)...the engine lathe i run has a swing of 20" and a bed 110"long..we have everything under the sun in there..we have 1 guy there that only had to drill 6 1-1/2 holes in a piece of 3/8 cold rolled plate..(takes about 1/2 to 1 hr to do..) well its been 4 hrs now and its still not done..then num num goes to take a huge roller out of the grinder with the hoist that was just ground within +-.0003 (for a newspaper) and proceeds to drop it in the bed of the grinder and dented the crap out of it..now i have to weld in the dents and re-turn the o.d. and get it re-ground again...if i was the owner it would be the BOOT and thats that..everyday its something new...anyone else?...zap!

 

Sorry zap but I got you beat. I have to deal with car salesman all day long...need I say more??

 

lol sorry to read that...zap!

 

I know what you mean Zap.

If it wasn't for the customers and the employees, my job would be fantastic

 

Reading your tales of misery dealing with 'Public Idiot #1' makes me thankful for my situation. I've run my own business before, spent lots of time doing yucky stuff I didn't enjoy. The worst part was dealing with customers. The second biggest downside was that I ate, drank, slept and breathed my business 24/7.

I've also been an employee. Most tree companies employ 70%-90% drunks and drug addicts. I do not wish to associate with those types. Because I was ALWAYS the most competent treeman on the crew, I became crew foreman. I refuse to oversee drug addicts, and in general do not wish to manage others.

I'm a freelance now. I'm the 'hired gun' that other tree companies call in when needed. I get paid very well to do exactly what I love (climbing trees, technical removals and proper tree care) but I don't have to do the grunt work. No cleanup, no employees, no dealing with customers, no trips to the dump, no collections issues, I just climb and get paid. The worst part is when I want to take a day off, the phone keeps ringing. I can have 10 days worth of work in the next week if I could do it.

 

I'm a freelance now. I'm the 'hired gun' that other tree companies call in when needed


ahhhh hence the name rocky...good one...i do tree cutting as a hobby...and for the free wood ..what kind of saws do you prefer?...zap!

 

We have our share of idiots and slugs but I predict they will be on their way out in the very near future. I use to design, develop and build automated electrical test equipment. Everything from developing the software (in LabView), designing the interfaces and then designing and building the actual test equipment itself.

I loved doing it in the beginning, the challenge of designing something efficient anyone could use. I have to say you can only go so far to make something “idiot proof”. It would seem the more complex piece of equipment I designed the more stupid of a person they put on it to use.

Let me put it this way, an individual simply connected a motor to a dynamometer and then connected the wires to a test block and then hit the “Enter” key and the software and equipment did the rest. In the beginning all the parameters (i.e. current, RPM, watts, torque, etc) where on a screen. If the backgrounds of all the parameters where green the motor passed, if any backgrounds were red the motor was a reject.

Not simple enough I would still get called out and asked what is wrong with the equipment because a background was red. I would explain that IF THEY LOOKED AT THE GOT DAMN PRINTS they would see a particular parameter was out of specification or in others words NO GOOD.

Ok, so now edit the software so a simple MOTOR IS GOOD or MOTOR IS BAD is flashed on the screen. That seemed to work for a while.

Moved over to Industrial Engineering and really like it. Now we are implementing Lean Manufacturing and it is quite rewarding because instead of some estimated time from engineering as well as some half assed procedures from engineering techs we do time studies and then evaluate the complete process and make changes to procedures, process, equipment and tooling when needed.

We now know how many items an hour we should get from a process and the operators own it. They have to mark on boards that can be seen by anybody walking by how many items an hour they get and if they don’t meet tact time then why? Could be issues with parts etc.

Some people like it and some don’t. The slugs don’t like it because now they are accountable and if they can’t meet the standards they helped to set as a team they will soon be out of here. We have a union shop and the union supports us because they know if we don’t go to Lean Manufacturing all our jobs are out of here…

 

Hey '01,
I still do what you used to do, kinda.

The attitude of the test operator seems like they are using the product to test how the test equipment.

If things pass all day, there's nothing wrong the equipment,
If anything fails then there's a problem with the test equipment.


My favorite line the idiot gives me at a place that works 3 shifts is....

"It was like that"

It goes something like this as I'm walking by.

DA;"Hey, my station is broke"
Me;"It looks like a blown sensor, what happened?"
DA;"It was like that"
Me;"How long has been this way?"
DA;"It was like this when I came in"
Me:"When did you come in?"
DA:"At 7:00 O'clock"
Me:"It's now 10:00 O'clock, that means you have done nothing for 3 hours, perhaps we need to talk to your boss."
DA:"No,no wait, I hooked it up like this and....."

The rest is history, 3000.00 to 8000.00 dollars of damage.

Now I am an Apps. Eng. for a test equipment company.
DA:"

 

Don't get me started.

I once flew from Houston to the North Slope of Alaska because somebody had a switch in the wrong position after refusing free training on a product because they were "experienced"

 

Well, when i was in the Army there were Boneheads in every platoon. So much money and time was wasted because of these people They could not be fired so most were promoted to a postion where they couldn't mess anything up. Atleast not as much.

 

Canyonslicker,

I know exactly what you mean. It use to be such a pain in the butt to troubleshoot equipment. There would be an issue and I would ask the simple question ”What was happening right before the issue, or more specifically, what were you doing before this problem”.

I would get answers of ”Nothing, it just happen, or it was already like this” Damn did I hate those answers because now instead of getting a lot closer to the problem I would have to start at the very beginning…

It was the same in the Navy. I was at SIMA (Ship Intermediate Maintenance Activity) in Long Beach for shore duty. We would have to go out to the ships when the ships electricians could not repair something.

Same thing, go out and ask what the problem was, and what if anything they did to try and repair it and the majority of the time you would get the ”Nothing, just stopped working”

You could spend hours and sometimes days troubleshooting with all the technical manuals only to determine that the boneheads had actually tried to rewire a controller, or piece of equipment but weren’t man enough to tell you ”Well we had a problem, tried to do some wiring and now it don’t work, here is the circuits we tried to rewire.”

I am sure there were some Captains that would have loved to throw some of these turds overboard while out at sea but didn’t want to face the fines the EPA would have given them from dumping highly toxic waste at sea…