I don’t usually rant about my job because, well, because I love it. I work in a small machine shop, owned by my dad. I get a great sense of accomplishment from working there: at the end of the day, I’ve actually created something useful, instead of spent it sitting through interminable meetings or being abused by pin-headed customers. Plus, there are a lot of great perks: I can play whatever CDs I want on the stereo there, work days are extremely flexible, and I literally love my boss, ('cause he’s my dad). The only down side is that the pay sucks and the work isn’t constant. We get cycles where we’ll go two or three months with no new orders at all, followed by an overwhelming flood of jobs for another two or three months, and then back to the doldrums. We’re just coming off a really bad dry-spell. Consequently, I haven’t seen a paycheck in close to three weeks, and I’m not going to see one until we get paid for the stuff we’re currently making, which is going to be at least two more weeks after we ship it. If we’re lucky. Which, as much as I love my job, makes getting motivated to do it a little tough. And today, it got tougher.
It started off with me waking up a good hour early because my Faithful Dog, Ajax, entered into a fifteen minute barking jag, which is impressive, even for him. From past experience, Ajax could be barking for any number of reasons: someone could be approaching our front door. Or one of our neighbors doors. Or the door of the guy across the street. Or simply passing by on the street. Or thinking of passing by on the street. The only thing I know it’s not is a housebreaker or some other kind of ne’er-do-well, because the one time we had an actual criminal on the premises, (some cops chased a fence-hopping perp through our back yard) the damn dog hid in my bedroom and didn’t make a peep. Although he did later bark at the cops who came to the front door to explain what had just happened. Anyway, I give up on that crucially needed extra forty-five minutes of shut-eye, get up, yell at the dog, and get ready to go to work.
I’m at work, using the drill press. This drill press is a great machine. It’s the oldest machine in the shop; my dad’s had it longer than he’s had me, and it’s never broken down or needed anything other than the most routine maintenance. I’m using it to counter-sink a couple of holes in a piece of aluminum (counter-sinking is when you widen the top of a drilled hole so that the screw head will sit flush with the rest of the part). This is an extremely easy job. The only thing you have to watch out for is the counter-sink catching the aluminum and whipping it around at several hundred RPM. Which is precisely what happens. The corner of the aluminum catches my left index finger and tears (not cuts, tears) a half-inch gash in my fingertip. I do the Ritual Dance and recite the Liturgy of Pain. In other words, I hop up and down, shaking my hand vigorously and chanting “Owfuckowfuckowfuckowfuck”. Then I wash off the cut, put on a band-aid, and go back to work.
After about an hour, I take the band-aid off; I’ve stopped bleeding, and it’s hard to manipulate all these little metal bits with a piece of plastic wrapped 'round my finger. I’m also done with the drill press, so I go to turn it off… and the power switch snaps off in my hand. Holy shit! I just broke the fucking drill press! I unplug it so it’ll stop running, and tell my dad. He looks at it, looks at the clock, and says “Let’s break for lunch.”
We go to the deli down the street. It’s about 12:30. As usual, there aren’t any seats, because the place is packed with people from the local Chevron refinery. We get our food to go. Back at the shop, I start off on the bag of salt and vinegar potato chips. Of course, I’ve forgotten that I’ve got an open wound on my left hand. Ever gotten salt and vinegar into a cut? It’s certainly an… experience. I carefully finish the chips with my right hand and unwrap the sandwich. I ordered a club, hold the tomatos. I got a BLT, extra tomatos.
I really hate tomatos.
I finish my bacon and lettuce sandwich, and head back into the shop. I can’t finish what I was doing until we fix the drill press, so I start on the next item, which is made out of G-11 fiberglass. I hate working with fiberglass, because you get all of these microscopic glass splinters on your hands, much like you get from nettles. But, at least, I complete the parts with out breaking them, myself, or the machines.
Next up is a small, stainless steel cube, about a quarter of an inch to a side. Stainless is a real pain to work with when it’s for something this small. Plus, this part has to be made with greater than usual precision. To give you some frame of reference, out usual standard is plus or minus .0050 inches, which is about three times the width of a human hair. For this job, this is insufficently exact.
I take my time, get the part exactly the right size and, more importantly, perfectly square. The next step is really bad: I have to drill and blind tap two holes in it. Tapping is when you take a special sort of drill bit and use it to cut threads into a hole, so that you can screw something into it. A blind tap is when the hole doesn’t go all the way through the part, so you have to make sure to stop the tap before it bottoms out and strips out the threads it just cut, or just snaps itself in half. Either way, the part is ruined. The smaller the hole, the harder it is to tap.
The tap breaks on the first hole. “Fuck.” sez I, and I throw the part into the plastic fifty-five gallon barrel we use as a trash can. My dad asks what happened, I tell him, and he says, “We have to ship this thing today. We don’t have time to make a new piece. We’ll hand tap the other hole, cross bolt it to the G-11, and ship it as is. They’re only keeping it a week for evaluation, we can fix it when they send it back to us.” Which I knew, and if I hadn’t been so pissed at ruining the part, I would have realized myself. I look in the (very full) trashcan, but the part has slid off the top layer of garbage and lost itself in the bowels of the barrel. “Fuck!” sez I again as I haul over another barrel and start to transfer garbage from one to the other.
I go through soiled shop rags, obsolete diagrams, remains of lunches past, crumpled paper towels, large chunks of lumber (left over from dad’s on-going home improvement project), and every part I’ve fucked up in the last four months. Finally, I get down to a noxious melange of garbage water, WD-40, stale beer, cutting oil, and a few random industrial solvents… but no part. With a sinking feeling, I realize what’s happened. While transferring fifty-five gallons worth of shop waste from one barrel to the other, I managed to throw out the part I’m looking for, again. “FUCK!” sez I, and I start the process all over.
Eventually, the part is found, at the bottom of the second barrel. A hand-tap is produced and employed, the part is bolted together, the project is boxed, labeled, and mailed. I come home. Now I’m sitting here, hands itching from the fiberglass, reeking of WD-40 and worse odors, picking aluminum chips out of my hair, and wincing everytime I forget and hit a key with my left index finger.
And it’s only Monday.
It’s gonna be a loooong week.
