Bad Idea

Just when I think my place of employment can't come up with a more stupid idea, they manage to outdo themselves.  

Today, Supervisor came around and told all the brazers that he was going to start a new thing.  Whoever ends up being the "lead brazer" -- the one who brazes the most headers that day -- gets an extra 10 minutes for lunch the next day.  Sigh...It's meant to motivate us to work harder, but it's actually going to have the opposite effect. 

As soon as he walked off, we all kind of looked at each other and said, "Yeah, we know who is going to get that every day!"  For those of you who aren't brazers, it's that one particular brazer who never seems to run out of work, and somehow always ends up with the big orders of easy parts.  And every brazer knows exactly who it is. 

A few minutes later, I went up to his desk and told him, "This isn't a good idea.  All it's going to do is build resentment among the brazers, I mean more than there already is."  He said, "Life is full of resentments, though."

I said, "Yeah, but in sub brazing, all things are not created equal."  It would be different if everyone braze the same headers all day, but some headers are harder to braze than others.    Not only that, the one brazer who has to do the Kit orders will never even have a shot at getting that extra 10 minutes.  Those are usually one or two unit orders, so she'll spend more time setting up, confirming, and filling out paperwork than actually brazing.  Or the ones who get sent to the back every day...and the one who has to braze and part stage.  They won't have a shot.

He said he understands it's not going to be fair, but he's going to do it anyway.  He also said he's just trying to encourage us to choose different orders.  Um, what?  Not one person over there wants to do the crappy orders.  We all want to choose the easy work, but we can't pick and choose what we want to do.  We have to go by the schedule.  Well, most of us do, anyway.  His little pet doesn't.  If the schedule dictates I have to do 27 four piece orders in a row, then that's what I have to do.  

This morning, for instance, I had a whole bunch of small orders and every single one of them had something wrong with it.  I kid you not, it took me two hours to braze 30 headers, because I had to fix all the problems with them before I could even start brazing them.  That means I don't have a shot at the long lunch break, so why should I bust my hiney the rest of the day? 

If you really want to motivate us, how about you solve some of the problems we complain about day after day after day after day?  Like for example, when we complain that the holes in the headers aren't re-rounded, don't just grunt and walk off.  GO TO TUBING and tell them to start re-rounding the holes. Or when we complain that the adapter tubes are flattened.  GO TO TUBING and make them adjust their machines so they aren't squishing the tubes.  

 And how about taking some of those extra, non-brazing tasks off of our shoulders?

We were just reminiscing not too long ago about the good old days when all the brazers had to do was braze.  ALL we had to do was braze.  We didn't have to confirm orders in the computer.  That was done before the work was even brought to us.  We didn't have to clear milestones (which is what happens when someone didn't confirm a component part.)  We didn't have to fill out stacks of useless paperwork, we didn't have to go hunt down our partials, or walk them down the line in tubing, and we certainly didn't have to go over to tubing and help the machine operator set up because she doesn't know how to check a part.  

All we had to do was braze.  Let's get back to that, and you'll be amazed how much our production increases.   

In knitting news, I finally decided to tink my sock toe back to before the hole and just re-knit it all. This is as far as I got. 

I'm past the frayed and broken yarn, only now I don't feel like knitting it back up tonight.  I'll do that tomorrow.  

And finally, that big, scary test of the emergency alert system that had so many people wrapping their phones in tin foil happened.  I didn't even hear it. 

None of us heard it.  I thought it was supposed to be loud.  It wasn't.  Weatherman Matt yelling about the weather is a lot louder than that thing was.  Oh well, it's over now and none of you got a microchip secretly inserted into your butts, or turned into zombies,  or whatever else nonsense was supposed to happen.  You can take the tin foil off now.  

P. S.  Weatherman Matt doesn't really yell, but somehow hearing his alerts always manages to startle me.  Especially when they come across in the middle of the night. It's a bit disconcerting hearing a man's voice right in your ear -- when you live alone...