Although this story is not exactly in the same vein as Albert's I'd like to offer it as an example of everyday insanity from working life,sometimes when I think of this story it's seems even funnier than when it first happened,it is 100% true and probably is repeated worldwide on a daily basis in different forms.
It's a bit long winded but...........
I work as a manager in a large chemical plant,I used to work in an older plant a few years back,breakdowns were commonplace and part of my responsibilities was organising repairs.
There's always been a large political devide between engineering and production,what goes with that is a long history of mistrust and lack of respect for each others roles,needless to say the engineering staff thought production were on the whole pretty dumb and by definition I was not much further up the totem pole than my production operators especially since I had the combination of being reasonably young and pretty new in this role.
Also as a member of shift production in general our own day shift managers tended to look down on us.
The history of this annoyed me, as a logical kind of guy I thought we were all working for the same goal.
Anyway at the start of shift one morning I arrived to discover on of our lines were down,I prepared the permit for the job and soon the problem was discovered to be a large industrial magnet-about 8 inches high.
As I watched through a window I saw a bigger and bigger delegation of engineers and my own superiors gather to look at this magnet which had been brought up as evidence to prove production shift incompetence.
The magnet had clearly been damaged,it had score marks.
Soon strips were being tore off production.
"It's been forced in" remarked the engineering manager.
"Complete morons" remarked the plant manager "why do we play these guys £18k a year?"
On and on it went,some of our magnets were handed and by definition could only fit in a certain way-it was designed to interlock but only in one direction.
Although the magnet had been buckled the main damage had been done to it's housing which needed to be replaced.
Clearly it was the repetition of forcing that had caused the housing to eventually fail.
This tirade of scorn went on and on,and on.
It was again clear that I was managing a bunch of morons and not doing a very good job at that.
I was bored and annoyed,I took the magnet to be cleaned and refitted.
Eventually I tracked down two of my team and asked one of them to refit the magnet, I was so exasperated I could hardly speak "Pat,get this magnet back into slurry unit 7 would you?" he duly left to fit the thing.
About half an hour later I checked my computer screen and saw the line was back up and running,good I thought ........
Leaving for lunch I popped my head into my team's canteen...
Several faces peered up at me.
"Ben what was wrong with that magnet?" Pat,the guy who refitted it asked.
"Pat it's a long story,too painful to go into,why do you ask?" I replied.
"Well" he said "it's just that I had to knock the fu*& out of it with a scaffolding pole to get it back in"........................................
As Homer Simpson said "it's funny cause it's true".
More amazingly we are are number one in the world at what we do
It's a bit long winded but...........
I work as a manager in a large chemical plant,I used to work in an older plant a few years back,breakdowns were commonplace and part of my responsibilities was organising repairs.
There's always been a large political devide between engineering and production,what goes with that is a long history of mistrust and lack of respect for each others roles,needless to say the engineering staff thought production were on the whole pretty dumb and by definition I was not much further up the totem pole than my production operators especially since I had the combination of being reasonably young and pretty new in this role.
Also as a member of shift production in general our own day shift managers tended to look down on us.
The history of this annoyed me, as a logical kind of guy I thought we were all working for the same goal.
Anyway at the start of shift one morning I arrived to discover on of our lines were down,I prepared the permit for the job and soon the problem was discovered to be a large industrial magnet-about 8 inches high.
As I watched through a window I saw a bigger and bigger delegation of engineers and my own superiors gather to look at this magnet which had been brought up as evidence to prove production shift incompetence.
The magnet had clearly been damaged,it had score marks.
Soon strips were being tore off production.
"It's been forced in" remarked the engineering manager.
"Complete morons" remarked the plant manager "why do we play these guys £18k a year?"
On and on it went,some of our magnets were handed and by definition could only fit in a certain way-it was designed to interlock but only in one direction.
Although the magnet had been buckled the main damage had been done to it's housing which needed to be replaced.
Clearly it was the repetition of forcing that had caused the housing to eventually fail.
This tirade of scorn went on and on,and on.
It was again clear that I was managing a bunch of morons and not doing a very good job at that.
I was bored and annoyed,I took the magnet to be cleaned and refitted.
Eventually I tracked down two of my team and asked one of them to refit the magnet, I was so exasperated I could hardly speak "Pat,get this magnet back into slurry unit 7 would you?" he duly left to fit the thing.
About half an hour later I checked my computer screen and saw the line was back up and running,good I thought ........
Leaving for lunch I popped my head into my team's canteen...
Several faces peered up at me.
"Ben what was wrong with that magnet?" Pat,the guy who refitted it asked.
"Pat it's a long story,too painful to go into,why do you ask?" I replied.
"Well" he said "it's just that I had to knock the fu*& out of it with a scaffolding pole to get it back in"........................................
As Homer Simpson said "it's funny cause it's true".
More amazingly we are are number one in the world at what we do