Just Another

Typical Thor's Day.

I walk into work this morning, and Group Leader Fernando meets me halfway down the aisle with a header (manifold) assembly in his hand.  Whoever brazed that assembly had done a very poor job of it.  The brazing rod wasn't completely melted, and there were large leaks around the adapter tubes. 

"Can you fix this?" he asks.

"Yep," I responds.  "It won't be pretty, but it will be fixed."   I hadn't even clocked in yet.

I go ahead and clock in, then go to the break room to fix myself a jug of ice water.  By the time I get back, Fernando had put two more headers on my table.

"What are these?"

"I need you to take those to the tubing department and drill the hole for the pressure tap fitting, then figure out which adapter tubes you need and have tubing make them for you.  Then braze me one of those assemblies."

Note:  That's not exactly what he said, but I figured if I used the in-house slang we typically use in such conversations, many of my readers wouldn't understand what he was saying. 

I take the header over to tubing, drill the appropriate hole in the correct location, go back to my stand and braze the correct fitting into place.  Then I start sorting through the box of adapter tubes Fernando had brought me, trying to figure out which ones I had and which ones I needed to have made for this particular assembly.

I hadn't even finished doing that when Fernando comes running back over to my stand.  The previous shift, whom we are not allowed to hold accountable for anything, had brazed an entire 80 piece order of assemblies incorrectly, and they wouldn't fit onto the evaporator coils.  Fernando says, "I need you to fix these." 

I had to rework the entire order, which involved heating the metal enough to melt the brazing rod, so that I could remove and replace the incorrect adapter tubes.  Sigh...And all this before 7:15.

By the time I got finished reworking the order, and re-doing the first header assembly (the other brazer did the second project for me), it was after 9:00  AM.  Someone had already written on the communications board about the incorrectly brazed order, so I added in the time it took me to rework it.  Under that, I wrote,

"Somebody owes me a flammenwerfer!"

Group Leader Fernando was greatly amused by this.  That is, until he found out that flammenwerfer isn't German for flaming weenie.

"Good Heavens!"  I exclaimed.  "I wouldn't write that on the board!"

Flaming weenie, indeed.  

The best thing that happened to me today is that I came home and found that I did indeed have some shrimp and sausage gumbo in my freezer. 

Because you know, shrimp and sausage gumbo makes everything better. 

Buuuuurp!!!