Headache Volunteer List

Last Saturday I had a good job, so it figures that yesterday I would have a bad job. Yes, I signed up to work on Saturday again. Even though I’m not really hurting for money, I am paying out of pocket for materials to complete an extreme makeover of my house, and I can use more of a cushion than I have, especially in these uncertain times.

Although the job I had yesterday wouldn’t win the academy award for worst job in the shipyard, it might easily be a nominee. They sent me to another ship for the day, down in a ballast tank with half a dozen contractors (temps), needle-gunning paint. The ship must have run aground or hit something because the bottom shell was dented in and a number of the web frames – the ribs of the ship – crumpled. Our yard will scrap out and replace the damaged steel.

For safety reasons having to do with the danger of fire and fumes, the paint around the affected areas must be removed before the steel can be cut out with burning torches. To do this we use needle guns. These are compressed-air-powered tools weighing about 10 pounds, the business end of which consists of about 30 steel “needles” about 3/32” in diameter. When you press the trigger these needles vibrate and pulverize the paint. They are extremely loud, even with earplugs worn, especially when you’re in a tank echoing with 6 or 7 needle guns going at once. And the vibration is enough to shake the fillings of your teeth loose. Actually, few of the needle guns were going at the same time because there was no supervision in the tank. In fact, when the supervisor assigned me to the job, he didn’t even show it to me himself, but told one of the contractors who’d been working the job to show me where it was. No one had even marked up the paint that had to come off. Still, I found a place that I knew had to be needle-gunned..

My productivity goes way down when they give me a job that isn’t commensurate with my experience and skill level. In my opinion, for what it’s worth, assigning work appropriately is one of the criteria for a good supervisor, and placing people in the jobs they can do best is a precondition for efficient production. Needle-gunning is some of the least skilled work we have. That isn’t to say that all of us don’t have to hew wood and draw water once in a while. If a house is burning down no one should be exempt from passing a bucket unless they’re the only one who knows how to get the pump working. Of course if I said this stuff to management they’d go berserk and howl about how we have to be ready to do whatever job they assign us, etc. etc. But that’s just laziness on their part.

As it happened, I doubt I did 2 hours actual needle gunning during my 8 hour shift. Add to that an hour or so to check out a needle gun from the tool room and get set up. But get this: even though there is temporary lighting in the tanks, we’re required for safety sake to carry a flashlight in case the power goes out – which happens for one reason or another more often than you might think. Well, in the morning the cheap storeroom issue flashlight crapped out. So after lunch I went to get some new batteries, for which I needed a supervisor to write me an order. (You’d think that when they have a lot of people working in tanks they’d plan ahead and have batteries on hand, but they don’t.) I found one supervisor but he didn’t have any stores order blanks with him so he told me to go back to the supervisors’ office in the structural shop and find the other supervisor. Well, I had just come from there and wasn’t about to make the trek back again. Luckily I found a welder supervisor who had a blank. I filled it out myself and took it back to the first supervisor to sign. But then it turned out that the storeroom trailer by the drydock was closed, so I had to go all the way to the main storeroom, which is even farther than the structural shop. There, there was only one guy behind the counter and by the time I got back to the ship with a working flashlight nearly two hours had elapsed. But I don’t think any of the contractors did any more needle-gunning than I did. Still, I did enough needle-gunning to give me a headache. Don’t think I’ll sign the overtime volunteer list next week.