Wasted Hours

Tuesday, February 10.

Starner, my supervisor, has a large mouth shaped like an upside down crescent, so that he is permanently scowling. He looks like a bulldog with a bad case of indigestion. For some reason he’s the one who talks most at our morning shape-up meetings, even though he’s not at all articulate and talks in a bark or growl. The thing of it is, he never has anything to say beyond repeating platitudes about safety and production and threatening us over various alleged infractions. He talks like a prison guard. But he always ends his rant by telling us to have a “nice and blessed day.” This has become something of a joke, with some of the workers saying the words for him. I will say this for him, at least he has enough sense of humor that he tries to grin at this.

Anyhow, this morning he told me to go to the drydock and work for Ronnie Wilson. They’re getting the ship ready to come out of drydock and we would be working on the shrouds that cover the propeller shafts, which have been removed from the ship for rework. But before I tell you about that I need to explain what I did yesterday.

You’ll recall that I was working with Joe. That was up topside doing some structural modifications to the aluminum superstructure. We’d been waiting for a new bulkhead to be fabricated and hoisted by crane onto the ship. It finally arrived over the weekend and the riggers brought it into the space. But we had to get it in place so we could trim it to fit. Normally, hanging it in place would be the job of the riggers. We also needed a welder to get ready for the riggers. The bosses were in a big rush to get this bulkhead fitted up so they could show some progress on the superstructure work. But they were incapable of getting us the welder or the riggers we needed. So, apart from a little preparatory work, we had done hardly anything until after lunch, when another guy, Kenny, happened by. Kenny had nothing to do at the time, so he and Joe got the idea to “manhandle” the bulkhead into place rather than waiting for the riggers to do it with their chain hoists.

Now the bulkhead measured about 7 ½ by 9 ½ feet and had tee-bar stiffeners attached. Even though it was aluminum it was pretty heavy to move by hand, especially since we had a number of obstructions to get over or around. I was against our trying to move it because of the danger to ourselves and to some electrical cables that were in the way. If someone got hurt or a cable was damaged they’d blame us moving the bulkhead without the riggers. But Joe and Kenny were determined, so I did what I could to help, more or less directing them, but lending a hand when necessary. I improvised a lever to raise it over one stubborn obstacle. So we managed to get it into position despite my misgivings, and I came up with a way to raise it the 4 inches or so that we needed it to be off the deck so we could trim it. Then we found that the layout department, which had been in charge of fabricating the bulkhead and had sent their people at least three times to measure for it, had made it rectangular, when the hole wasn’t a true rectangle. And they hadn’t left enough added material to cover their screw up. This would have left an unacceptable gap in one corner. We were talking about what to do when I realized that if we rotated the bulkhead slightly on its horizontal axis and trimmed out a pie shaped sliver from the top, we could make it work. I marked out the cut and we lowered the plate. Joe made the cut with a reciprocating saw. That was as far as we got at the end of the day. We were just getting started fitting the bulkhead, and up to that point my help had been critical in getting the job right.

So this morning they took me off that job, leaving it to Joe, and as it turned out, Kenny, while they put me down in the drydock with a helper. It took Ronnie Wilson a full hour to come and to show us what he wanted. Then it turned out that the machinists and riggers were still getting the shaft back into place and weren’t even ready for us. So for the most part we stood around and did nothing. Sounds pretty dumb, huh? It only makes sense if you understand shipyard logic. The big shots were on our department to get the drydock work finished, so Ronnie Wilson charged our time to drydock work, even though they it was just wasted hours, so he, and our department, could be seen to be doing what they were told. In order to be in a “supervisory” position you have to be a yes man who doesn’t ask questions or make objections.

Wednesday, February 11.

Today they put me back on the aluminum job with Joe. Yesterday while I was in the drydock Joe and Kenny had finished fitting up the bulkhead. They had had to cut some more of the piece of pie we had cut out the day before, but the fit-up looked good. There was to be a check point at 10:30 where QA and the government inspector would come to inspect the fit-up and weld joint design before the bulkhead could be welded in place. But there had been another screw-up. We found out that we hadn’t been given the right blueprints – apparently there was a later version that none of the many supervisors had bothered to tell us about. So we had to partly remove the bulkhead again to fix problems with the joint design. The check point finally came off in the afternoon. But because they had to verify the joint design, we had to leave part of the bulkhead loose; that is, not tack-welded in place, and for that reason the government inspector would only sign off on the joint design and not the fit-up.