It Must Be Finished When I Say It Must Be Finished!

At the start of the shift on Monday, March 30, Ronnie Wilson picked me out of the shape up meeting and told me I was going to another job - - a job outside the yard at a nearby Naval base.

That morning, before work, as some of us were sitting around the lunch table in the fabrication shop, Kenny the burner said they were sending him to that same ship, and I said, because Kenny always kids around about not wanting to work with me, "Well, I'm going down there with you." I meant it as a joke, but Kenny didn't know that. So you can imagine my surprise when Ronnie gave me the news.

Well, not real surprise, because I seem to have an uncanny knack for making a joke about something and then having it come true. I wasn't sorry to be sent on a job outside the yard. For one thing, the Naval base is closer to where I live so it means less commute time. And the atmosphere is always freer outside the yard - - not so many big shots and would-be big shots walking around. Not so many rules.

The thing that kills me, though, is that they sent me off without even asking for any turnover on my job - - that is to say, without my briefing my replacement on where things stood. The diagonal aluminum bulkhead. The job wasn't finished, and who knows who they might have given it to. I took it upon myself to pass on to Vince where I'd hidden two parts they'll need (so they wouldn't grow legs and walk away), but there's no telling if he'll remember, or even if he does, whether he'll tell whoever takes over the job. More wasted time while whoever it is figures things out.

Anyhow, now I'm down at the Naval base on a 'hot' job. Kenny and I are installing two new watertight doors. The supervisor there is Mack, an old fitter who they made a supervisor a couple of years ago. Last year he had a heart attack and had to have multiple by-pass surgery. He's supposed to take it easy, so he usually spends his time hanging out in his truck in the parking lot. He calls his people on their cell phones. Only neither Kenny nor I have cell phones - - I think we're the last two holdouts on Earth. Well, they've been worrying him to death about these doors, and he's been making us nervous, coming up and hanging around on our job. We thought he was going to have another heart attack right there on the spot. What the big rush was, I don't know, because the ship isn't going out to sea, in fact, it's getting ready to come into our yard to be drydocked. He kept telling us, "We've got to be done here by Friday." That was last Friday. And he meant the doors had to be welded out, too. And what's more, somebody's started counting beans, so they wouldn't let us work overtime on this job.

Here's the way it works: some bozo in some office comes up with a date he wants a job finished, regardless of the realities of the situation. Then they tell you it has to be done by that date. Well, of course we work by the hour and we know the realities, so our attitude is, it'll get done when it gets done. (At least some of us see it that way. There are always some assholes, or newcomers, who are either scared or trying to suck up, who get themselves bent out of shape by these dictums.) But that's not the way the supervisors react. They're yes men, remember? They wouldn't dare try to explain why a job can't get done when the big shots say it must be done, or they wouldn't be supervisors for long. So what happened is that the bozo who came up with this completion schedule forgot that the ship had to de-fuel before coming into the ship yard, and when they are transferring fuel the Navy won't allow you to do any hotwork - - burning/plasma cutting, grinding, or welding. They've had hotwork cut off now for three days. We finally managed to finish fitting up the doors today, but they haven't even started welding them yet, and this afternoon Mack told me that now they won't do it until the ship comes into the yard, which means finished a week late - - three weeks instead of two - - if they're lucky.