I was at one job and we all knew I wasn’t going to return for the next term due to mutual conflict of vision. Yet at that final meeting they insisted I was coming back even after I asked should I turn in my key (that’s how obvious it was). They said no no no no, you’ll need it for the next semester. The next day I got the email that I was not coming back and could I drive all the way down there and turn in my key. I responded that I offered to turn it in yesterday while I was on campus and you refused to take it so I’m not driving back and you can drive to my house to get it.
Answers to simple questions via text: $20 per answer
Answers to questions that are in the document I left: $100 per answer
Telephone queries: $40 per minute
The plant manager went ahead and ordered an electropolishing system. This is a good financial decision, as doing it in-house, conservatively, cuts half the per piece cost. Because of the nature of the process (high amperage current, multiple biologically corrosive acids, and heat), the safety of the personnel running it must be paramount.
The button to start the process is on the back panel, so the operator must reach across a 3’x3’ vat of acid topped with 1.5" copper rods carrying 175+ amps to start the process.
The parts are loaded on to a rack, then picked up and put in each tank through the process. Except the rack weighs ~40 pounds and is just under four feet tall. Most of the vats are five feet deep, so there’s room on the bottom - but the ceiling is ten feet. So there’s about 16" of clearance from the edge of the tanks. Don’t forget to add in the 1.5" of copper on top as well.
Nothing is insulated from the operation side, and ventilation in the room is minimal.
There’s an elevated platform for operators to stand on, but the fact remains operators must be six feet tall and able to lift 40 pounds above their heads several hundred times a day. Significant current is completely exposed without any protection, and the most insulation provided is a coat of paint. And electropolishing itself produces small amounts of hydrogen and oxygen gasses through electrolysis.
None of the safety concerns were taken into account. Engineering wasn’t involved at any point, and maintenance was told to just get it done. When the operator asked about getting some assistance lifting the racks from the tanks, my boss actually saw the (literal) time bomb involved, and now it’s chisquirrel’s job to fix it. When I gave them a five-figure solution that will solve the safety issues but hamstring the process in the future, and a low six-figure solution that will solve the safety issues AND make the entire process efficient enough to save even more money, I was asked to “just come up with something cheap and quick.” But the project’s now been handed off to someone else, who doesn’t have any experience with the concerns, so I’m fairly certain nothing is going to be actually fixed.
But safety is our number one priority, and we’re really proud of that board of “Days Since Last Lost Time Accident,” given we went over two years without one. I understand workplace violence is frowned upon, but some plant managers really do need some sense (figuratively) slapped in to them.
Has nobody done the math on what it will cost them when the next person gets zapped by 175 amps and falls into the vat of acid? Can you say 20 million dollars?
My job was to maintain various machines that used very high voltages, high temperatures, concentrated acids, and toxic gases. All those machines were far safer than that electropolisher. The purchase of that hazard would never have gone past the idea stage. It would be rejected by Production, Maintenance, Engineering, and Safety.
That actually already happened, before anyone in engineering knew anything about it. OSHA accepted the rationale of “it’s still a work in progress, and no one is actually working in the room yet,” with the caveat that they’ll be monitoring the situation and requesting an update at a future time. I’m still hoping to browbeat the plant manager into submission before we double that one up.
I ran into this issue many times in my career. Typically starts by someone purchasing a piece of equipment (like an electropolisher) without giving any thought to how and where the equipment will be installed. When they find out the cost of what it will take to install it, they are caught off guard because they never considered items like service clearance, electrical system requirements, ventilation, life safety, and a myriad of other stuff that a bit of planning before buying the equipment would have identified. But at this point, they spent the money on the equipment so their ass is in a sling if it can’t be installed so they look to cut any corners they can. My job consisted of making it difficult for them to do so. Being able to point out that they were idiots was icing on the cake.
Kind of a minor workplace rant but jeez, I wish they could get the thermostats figured out in our office building. Our office is comfortable, but when you walk out of our suite into the main corridor, it’s about 50°F. Then you walk into the restroom and suddenly it’s around 90. I told a coworker the other day “Now I know why George Costanza takes his shirt off when he goes to take a dump.”
A natural gas main is being replaced next to my office. There are 3 ways to get into our parking lot. The workers regularly block all 3 just because of lazy parking - why park in a lot when you can just stop on the road and leave your truck there?
As a bonus, when they do use our lot they drop cigarette butts on the ground.
My job continues to suck. The director is very committed to not managing. She’s also delusional and has a very firm belief that she is never wrong about anything. That, combined with one of the worst coworkers I’ve ever had, is not working out very well.
One of my coworkers paid someone to create something that is not going to work for what we need to use it for. I feel like it’s partly my fault because I could have given a little more guidance on what we needed, but I made the mistake of thinking this person was a professional who knew what she was doing. After I looked at the product, I realized that this was probably her first time doing something like this. I think she probably should have mentioned that. It has problems that go so deep that there’s no way it can be fixed.
Corporate IT is doing a “PC refresh,” meaning they’re sending new computers to those whose computers have been deemed scrap-worthy. (Since I’m the last one in the department using a computer with an optical drive, and the shitty USB DVD drive they bought for Document Control won’t read half of the discs in our extensive collection, I’ve been given management’s blessing to stash my old computer somewhere far away from any scrap heap.) My new computer is actually nice, and IT did a great job installing all the software and drivers I need.
They also installed Windows 11.
May I ask what in the almighty fuck Microsoft’s developers were thinking regarding the taskbar? It’s locked in place at the bottom of the screen, and the icons and text are ridiculously tiny at high resolutions. The taskbar’s elements don’t seem to respond to scaling (which doesn’t seem to do much of anything other than making the graphics look crappy), and the text is immune to the font-resizing accessibility option. And whoever destroyed the functionality of the To-Do list in the “new” Outlook can go suck eggs. Gee, why would anyone still want the option of viewing their regular tasks and tasks created from emails all in one place? And let’s force users to view the whole To-Do section in a browser now! Won’t that be useful!
On the plus side, apparently I can set different backgrounds for different desktops now.
We have an off-site call centre for work orders, and I’m convinced that there’s a carbon monoxide leak over there, because I have to correct so many work orders that come through. Wrong floor, missing floor, wrong tenant, wrong name, wrong building (there are three in our complex). Every tenant in the building has employees with profiles set up so they can create service requests; the call centre creates duplicate profiles with misspelled names practically every day. I imagine they guess wrong at the spelling, and when they can’t find the person in the database they figure it’s their first time and add 'em again (if you open up some tenant profiles and look at the list of callers, it’s like "Jennifer, and Jeniffer, and Jenifer, and Jennefer…all for the same person). Some days I long to drive over there with a cricket bat, but management refuses to divulge their location, dammit.
I think she probably should have mentioned that. It has problems that go so deep that there’s no way it can be fixed.
And let’s force users to view the whole To-Do section in a browser now! Won’t that be useful!