Just Like That

I got to work bright and early this morning, and I went to my brazing stand to begin setting up the day's work.  No scraps of paper today.  I checked.  After a few minutes Group Leader Theresa comes up and says, "I need three more headers (manifold assemblies) for this order."

I went and ran off a pick ticket (bill of materials, sort of thing), and a print of what she needed me to order. I thought, "That looks just like what I'm setting up on now."  I check the work order numbers and said, "Hey, that is what I'm setting up on now."

I went and found Group Leader Theresa and showed her.  "This order you said you needed three more of is what I'm setting up on now."

"No it isn't," she said, showing me the order that was on the line.

I showed her the print I'd run and said, "That's the wrong header on that unit."  Sure enough, the brazers on the other shift had gotten two orders mixed up, and had put the wrong headers on one of them.  We had to work that out, and Theresa said, "I'm going to talk to [the boss] about you coming in early.  Too much stuff is messed up."

Just like that, I'm back on 10 hour shifts.

A few weeks ago, I'd posted about the department looking like a tornado had hit it.  The next morning, a coworker who reads my blog stopped me and said, "I read what you wrote.  Isn't that every day?"

Pretty much.  The only difference is whether it's an EF-1 tornado or an EF-5 tornado.  Today was about an EF-4.  Not only that, one of our builders quit a couple of weeks ago.  I know most of you don't know who our builder is or what he does, but you don't really need to.  Just roll with it.  As I was saying, a couple of weeks ago, one of our builders quit, and they haven't given us anyone to replace him.  I guess they figure since it's the temp line and is only going to run for another month or so before they shut it down for the Fall, they think we don't need a replacement.

That leaves us shorthanded every day.  What Theresa usually has to do is to move the other brazer to the vacant builder spot, which leaves me alone doing a two person job.  The sub brazing schedule requires us to do 250 headers per day on average.  Some days it's a little more, other days a little less.  These last few weeks, I've been brazing around 450 per day.  By myself.  Today, I said I'm just not doing that again.  I'm going to braze at my pace, and if the line goes down, then they'll figure out they need to get me some help.

So I brazed at a nice, comfortable pace -- fast enough so that the line didn't go down, but not so fast I wore myself out.  At the end of the day, I thought, "Heck, I'm going to add this up and see how many headers I brazed today."

Supervisor Mike told me once, "You don't know how to go slow."  I guess he has a point.  When I added up all the orders I'd brazed, it came out to 442 headers.

Four hundred and forty two.

I give up.  I just give up.

Look at the flowers, Lizzie.  Look at the flowers.

By the way, I took Terrance's paper back and intended to leave it for the person on 2nd shift.  When it came time to do so, however, I found myself strangely reluctant to part with it.  I find the idea of having a secret admirer to be just a bit exciting.  I guess it's not a secret, since he signed his name, though, is it?

On the other hand, since I have no idea who Terrance is, it still counts.