This morning was our monthly safety meeting, held in the structural department fabrication shop, a building about 200 feet long by 100 feet wide and maybe 35 feet to the roof. 350 or so workers standing on the concrete and steel plate floor for 40 minutes listening to the company safety manager drone on with his cordless microphone. Or not listening (or not hearing) because either the mike wasn’t up to the task or his mike technique needs work, because it was impossible to hear anything he said except an occasional snippet. In one of these audible snippets he informed us that our eyes wouldn’t grow back if we lost them. (Did we think we were salamanders?) That was enough to satisfy me that I wasn’t missing anything by not being able to hear.
Starner, my supervisor, came back to work today after laying out Monday and Tuesday. He’s the one who last week lectured us on not missing time. Must have been some of his problems getting the best of him, because he showed no sign of being sick when I last saw him on Saturday, nor did he show any sign of being ill today.
Speaking of seeing him on Saturday, he did something strange. He was really pushing the part of the job that Vince has been working on, such that on Saturday he told me to help Vince rather than working my own job. Then, while I stood there, the two of them spent a long time reminiscing about an out of town job they had worked together, where Vince had paid a Hooters waitress $50 for her outfit - - top and shorts - - and how she had gone right then and there to the bathroom and changed out of them for him. What he did with these togs he didn’t say and I didn’t ask. But he insisted on pulling up a photo of himself with her on his cell phone. Well, this whole thing was weird - - both Vince with the Hooters outfit and Starner wasting all that time shooting the bull about it. During this same interlude, Starner showed that he, too, was no stranger to sexual weirdness. He was talking to Vince about doing something that required him to get into a tight spot, and Starner said by way of encouragement, "I could get in there with my 275 pounds," or something to that effect. Then he added, "and 50 pounds of dick." This comment came out of the clear blue. There were no women present (who he might have imagined to be interested in this information), and I’m reasonably sure Starner isn’t gay. Or maybe it was a delayed response to the Hooters discussion. Fortunately, Joe came in late Saturday and Starner put him with Vince. He sent me back to my own job.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
Not Well
This morning Starner didn’t come in to work at all. My mate, Elmore, didn’t come in either, nor did his son. Among the contractors, that is to say, temps, I've seen many good, skilled shipfitters. But for some reason or other, no matter how solid they seem, you can’t depend on them to show up every day. Maybe that’s why they don’t hold permanent jobs. Not that the permanent yard workers don’t have plenty of problems. They have them all - - alcoholism, broken marriages and the burdens of child support, sometimes to more than one ex-wife, and of course, serious health problems for themselves and their spouses. On the subject of health, I've known very few shipyard workers who take care of themselves. Bad diet, smoking, failure to use protective equipment at work - - all of it. They have diabetes, high blood pressure, heart conditions, breathing problems. I don’t know what the average age of shipyard workers is, but I’d guess it’s around 50. In any case, it’s an ageing workforce. It seems like every year somebody in our yard dies of heart attack.
A couple of weeks ago Kenny, a burner, was showing around a real estate agent’s flyer with a photo of a house up for sale. What’s this, I asked. He said it was the house of a worker on night shift - - a guy whose name I didn’t recognize, although I must have recognized him if I’d seen his face. This guy, Kenny said, had hung himself in that very house two years ago. Apparently he was despondent over his deteriorating health - - diabetes and other conditions. Kenny himself is about 50. He has long, unkempt hair and mustache, always seems to have gone several days without shaving, and looks like a very big sack of potatoes. He’s also a heavy smoker.
Many shipyard workers work all the overtime they can get to pay their bills - - sometimes necessary bills, sometimes frivolous spending - - $40,000 pickup trucks and the like. I know people who’d work 12 hours a day seven days a week if they could. They don’t seem to have any lives at all outside the yard. When they get older all they think about is retirement. But 6 months or a year after they retire many of them are dead. So what’s it all for?
A couple of weeks ago Kenny, a burner, was showing around a real estate agent’s flyer with a photo of a house up for sale. What’s this, I asked. He said it was the house of a worker on night shift - - a guy whose name I didn’t recognize, although I must have recognized him if I’d seen his face. This guy, Kenny said, had hung himself in that very house two years ago. Apparently he was despondent over his deteriorating health - - diabetes and other conditions. Kenny himself is about 50. He has long, unkempt hair and mustache, always seems to have gone several days without shaving, and looks like a very big sack of potatoes. He’s also a heavy smoker.
Many shipyard workers work all the overtime they can get to pay their bills - - sometimes necessary bills, sometimes frivolous spending - - $40,000 pickup trucks and the like. I know people who’d work 12 hours a day seven days a week if they could. They don’t seem to have any lives at all outside the yard. When they get older all they think about is retirement. But 6 months or a year after they retire many of them are dead. So what’s it all for?
Friday, February 20, 2009
"Progress" - - At A Tedious Pace
Thursday, February 19
Yesterday I was working on another aluminum bulkhead with a contractor named Elmore. Elmore is a tall, skinny black man with a hatchet face and a goatee. He has a 24-year-old son who is also working on our ship and is a dead-ringer for his father - - or at least a dead ringer for how his father must have looked 24 years ago - - right down to the goatee. Elmore Sr. is quiet and not articulate, but a good worker, a "self-starter," and a competent, knowledgeable fitter.
Well, we got in a couple of hours work before we came to a dead stop because we needed some tack welding. We had a welder assigned to us, but no firewatches, so the welder couldn’t even strike an arc. Some bean counter had cut the number of firewatches on our ship. They are short of aluminum welders, but because of the lack of firewatches two aluminum welders spent the entire day idle. Makes sense to cut costs like that, right? Should I have been surprised to see this kind of incompetence and disorganization? I see it nearly every day. Well, Elmore Sr. and I joked that today we would have the firewatches but no welder. We were wrong. They still hadn’t resolved the firewatch problem and one of the aluminum welders laid out, so we had neither.
We had just come up with a couple of things we could do without a welder, when Starner, who was late again this morning, came and threw a monkey wrench in our plans. He said that because we didn’t have a welder or firewatches he was going to put us on another job for the day - - a job helping Vince. Vince is working on another part of the aluminum job and he already has a helper. Starner said some things had to be finished on that part of the job for the 50 percent progress review, which is coming up in a few days. Just to refresh your memory, a couple of weeks ago he told us they’d already had the 50 percent review and we were over our quota of hours. Obviously, that was bullshit, at least the part about the 50 percent review having taken place.
There are two related motives for wanting to show certain progress for this review. Starner and the other supervisors are under pressure from their bosses to show progress, but in the end it’s about money. (Surprise!) For one thing, if the ship isn’t completed on schedule it means big fines for the company. But also, the government pays in installments based on the percentage of work completed. The problem here is that what Starner wants done can cause disruption of the production plan. That is to say, of Vince’s production plan.
Vince, or Vicente, is a Chicano from California, close to retirement age and hard of hearing. He is an affable, humorous guy, but he’s very plodding and methodical in his work and he is going to do things his way come hell or high water. He’s also a pack rat. He spent at least two weeks assembling materials and tools for the job before he began any work at all. He’s got I don’t know how many fish boxes containing every tool known to shipfitting and then some, as well as hoards of every kind of supply from earplugs and respirator cartridges to saw blades, grinding wheels, and extension cords. As I watched him marshal this war chest it reminded me of Gen. George McClellan during the Civil War, who built up a huge, well equipped army around Washington for a never-to-happen invasion of the South. (It was this that prompted Lincoln to make his famous quip, "If you’re not going to use this army, I’d like to borrow it for a week.")
Unlike McClellan, Vince did eventually get under way, but at his own pace - - a tedious pace - - and with the help of several assistants. But Starner’s attempt to dictate a faster and the order that Vince would do things resulted in almost nothing getting done today, either by Vince and his helper, who I call "Glitch," or by Elmore and myself, since we weren’t about to step in and take over Vince’s job.
Yesterday I was working on another aluminum bulkhead with a contractor named Elmore. Elmore is a tall, skinny black man with a hatchet face and a goatee. He has a 24-year-old son who is also working on our ship and is a dead-ringer for his father - - or at least a dead ringer for how his father must have looked 24 years ago - - right down to the goatee. Elmore Sr. is quiet and not articulate, but a good worker, a "self-starter," and a competent, knowledgeable fitter.
Well, we got in a couple of hours work before we came to a dead stop because we needed some tack welding. We had a welder assigned to us, but no firewatches, so the welder couldn’t even strike an arc. Some bean counter had cut the number of firewatches on our ship. They are short of aluminum welders, but because of the lack of firewatches two aluminum welders spent the entire day idle. Makes sense to cut costs like that, right? Should I have been surprised to see this kind of incompetence and disorganization? I see it nearly every day. Well, Elmore Sr. and I joked that today we would have the firewatches but no welder. We were wrong. They still hadn’t resolved the firewatch problem and one of the aluminum welders laid out, so we had neither.
We had just come up with a couple of things we could do without a welder, when Starner, who was late again this morning, came and threw a monkey wrench in our plans. He said that because we didn’t have a welder or firewatches he was going to put us on another job for the day - - a job helping Vince. Vince is working on another part of the aluminum job and he already has a helper. Starner said some things had to be finished on that part of the job for the 50 percent progress review, which is coming up in a few days. Just to refresh your memory, a couple of weeks ago he told us they’d already had the 50 percent review and we were over our quota of hours. Obviously, that was bullshit, at least the part about the 50 percent review having taken place.
There are two related motives for wanting to show certain progress for this review. Starner and the other supervisors are under pressure from their bosses to show progress, but in the end it’s about money. (Surprise!) For one thing, if the ship isn’t completed on schedule it means big fines for the company. But also, the government pays in installments based on the percentage of work completed. The problem here is that what Starner wants done can cause disruption of the production plan. That is to say, of Vince’s production plan.
Vince, or Vicente, is a Chicano from California, close to retirement age and hard of hearing. He is an affable, humorous guy, but he’s very plodding and methodical in his work and he is going to do things his way come hell or high water. He’s also a pack rat. He spent at least two weeks assembling materials and tools for the job before he began any work at all. He’s got I don’t know how many fish boxes containing every tool known to shipfitting and then some, as well as hoards of every kind of supply from earplugs and respirator cartridges to saw blades, grinding wheels, and extension cords. As I watched him marshal this war chest it reminded me of Gen. George McClellan during the Civil War, who built up a huge, well equipped army around Washington for a never-to-happen invasion of the South. (It was this that prompted Lincoln to make his famous quip, "If you’re not going to use this army, I’d like to borrow it for a week.")
Unlike McClellan, Vince did eventually get under way, but at his own pace - - a tedious pace - - and with the help of several assistants. But Starner’s attempt to dictate a faster and the order that Vince would do things resulted in almost nothing getting done today, either by Vince and his helper, who I call "Glitch," or by Elmore and myself, since we weren’t about to step in and take over Vince’s job.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Tit for Tat
Wednesday, February 18
After lecturing us on attendance Monday, Starner was late to work yesterday and today, no doubt because some of those problems were catching up with him. Anyway, for two days we have been deprived of his words of wisdom at our shape-up meetings. Amazingly, however, after three months, somebody has finally noticed the time being wasted at these meetings, because this morning Ronnie Wilson told us that from here on out we are going to be on our jobs within 15 minutes of the start of our shift. But he tried to blame the problem on the stragglers who don’t show up at the trailer until 5, or in the odd case 10, minutes after the start-of-work whistle. Of course he made no mention of the fact that usually most of us are there waiting for the supervisors to arrive, or of the time wasted on their unbelievably slow roll-call, or their rambling, pointless speeches, or their disorganization in dispatching us to our jobs, which in most cases we don’t need to be dispatched to anyway, because we are continuing with the same job we had the day before.
Yesterday, while we were standing around waiting for the shape-up meeting to start, I "got into it" with Sanjay. Sanjay, a contractor, is an East Indian who comes not from India but from one of the Pacific islands. He is also a born-again Christian and a self-styled preacher, of which we have many in the shipyard. Normally, I am tolerant of these Jesus people -- that is, so long as they leave me alone. But Sanjay is self-righteous and annoying, so I was baiting him. "Hey," I said, "What's the 'H' stand for in Jesus' name?" "What? There is no 'H'" Sanjay replied. "Sure there is," I said. "Jesus H. Christ?" Sanjay was apoplectic. Lana, of course, jumped in to bail him out. "It stands for 'Hosannah'" she said. "'Heaven,'" another quick-witted Christian offered. Lana is a black woman, short and stout, probably somewhere in her 50s. She is another of the Jesus people. Nominally, Lana is a burner.
Burning is support craft. Burners aid the shipfitters by cutting steel with gas/oxygen torches -- scrapping out old steel that is to be replaced and trimming new steel to fit. Lana came into the shipyard 30 or more years ago, when the feminist movement was opening up industrial jobs to women and companies with government contracts were under pressure to add women to their workforces. But Lana is no feminist. Far from it. She is content to do any work they give her that is not burning. At the moment, they are keeping her in the office trailer doing paperwork. This she is good at. She is also intelligent and articulate. But she doesn’t have a good reputation as a burner. (In my opinion that’s because she does so little of it.) There’s no shortage of supervisors who’ll give her other work either because they don’t trust her to burn or because, especially in the case of the black supervisors, they regard her as a mother figure in need of protection.
Lana has been assigned to work with me a couple of times on past jobs. The last time I tried to get her to do the work believing that she was competent, or would be competent if only she would get some practice at her trade. But my efforts were frustrated by another -- male -- burner who was hanging out on our job and insisted on burning for her. Not only didn’t Lana object to this, she told me it was a woman’s place to defer to a man. Lana can be annoying for other reasons. She’s always good-humored, even "chipper," which is sometimes hard to take, especially first thing in the morning when you really don’t feel like being there. And then she’s obsessed with cleaning. Now we are supposed to clean up our work areas at the end of the day, because the Navy demands it. I comply with this. But Lana is always cleaning, not only the debris that we make, but everything else as well. The other job I remember her working for me, before she would cut anything for me I had wait for her to finish cleaning whatever it was she had taken a notion to clean. Very hard to take.
So, yesterday at lunchtime, Lana tried to pay me back for giving her pal Sanjay a hard time. She invited me to their lunchtime bible study meeting. Sure, I said, I’ll be right there. Then I plunked down in my usual spot, an unused corner of the office trailer, opened my lunch pail and got out the book I’m reading.
After lecturing us on attendance Monday, Starner was late to work yesterday and today, no doubt because some of those problems were catching up with him. Anyway, for two days we have been deprived of his words of wisdom at our shape-up meetings. Amazingly, however, after three months, somebody has finally noticed the time being wasted at these meetings, because this morning Ronnie Wilson told us that from here on out we are going to be on our jobs within 15 minutes of the start of our shift. But he tried to blame the problem on the stragglers who don’t show up at the trailer until 5, or in the odd case 10, minutes after the start-of-work whistle. Of course he made no mention of the fact that usually most of us are there waiting for the supervisors to arrive, or of the time wasted on their unbelievably slow roll-call, or their rambling, pointless speeches, or their disorganization in dispatching us to our jobs, which in most cases we don’t need to be dispatched to anyway, because we are continuing with the same job we had the day before.
Yesterday, while we were standing around waiting for the shape-up meeting to start, I "got into it" with Sanjay. Sanjay, a contractor, is an East Indian who comes not from India but from one of the Pacific islands. He is also a born-again Christian and a self-styled preacher, of which we have many in the shipyard. Normally, I am tolerant of these Jesus people -- that is, so long as they leave me alone. But Sanjay is self-righteous and annoying, so I was baiting him. "Hey," I said, "What's the 'H' stand for in Jesus' name?" "What? There is no 'H'" Sanjay replied. "Sure there is," I said. "Jesus H. Christ?" Sanjay was apoplectic. Lana, of course, jumped in to bail him out. "It stands for 'Hosannah'" she said. "'Heaven,'" another quick-witted Christian offered. Lana is a black woman, short and stout, probably somewhere in her 50s. She is another of the Jesus people. Nominally, Lana is a burner.
Burning is support craft. Burners aid the shipfitters by cutting steel with gas/oxygen torches -- scrapping out old steel that is to be replaced and trimming new steel to fit. Lana came into the shipyard 30 or more years ago, when the feminist movement was opening up industrial jobs to women and companies with government contracts were under pressure to add women to their workforces. But Lana is no feminist. Far from it. She is content to do any work they give her that is not burning. At the moment, they are keeping her in the office trailer doing paperwork. This she is good at. She is also intelligent and articulate. But she doesn’t have a good reputation as a burner. (In my opinion that’s because she does so little of it.) There’s no shortage of supervisors who’ll give her other work either because they don’t trust her to burn or because, especially in the case of the black supervisors, they regard her as a mother figure in need of protection.
Lana has been assigned to work with me a couple of times on past jobs. The last time I tried to get her to do the work believing that she was competent, or would be competent if only she would get some practice at her trade. But my efforts were frustrated by another -- male -- burner who was hanging out on our job and insisted on burning for her. Not only didn’t Lana object to this, she told me it was a woman’s place to defer to a man. Lana can be annoying for other reasons. She’s always good-humored, even "chipper," which is sometimes hard to take, especially first thing in the morning when you really don’t feel like being there. And then she’s obsessed with cleaning. Now we are supposed to clean up our work areas at the end of the day, because the Navy demands it. I comply with this. But Lana is always cleaning, not only the debris that we make, but everything else as well. The other job I remember her working for me, before she would cut anything for me I had wait for her to finish cleaning whatever it was she had taken a notion to clean. Very hard to take.
So, yesterday at lunchtime, Lana tried to pay me back for giving her pal Sanjay a hard time. She invited me to their lunchtime bible study meeting. Sure, I said, I’ll be right there. Then I plunked down in my usual spot, an unused corner of the office trailer, opened my lunch pail and got out the book I’m reading.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Double Talk
This morning at our shape-up meeting Starner exhorted us to come to work every day. “I got more problems than any of you,” he said. “But I’m here at work every day.” I turned to Summerfield, who was standing beside me. “I’d like to know what work he does,” I said. “Chasing pussy,” he replied. Summerfield, a redneck with snaggle teeth and long gray hair, is about 6’3” tall and 240 lbs. He’s got a waterfront home on which he’s struggling to make $1700 a month mortgage payments, so he doesn’t need a pep talk about coming to work. He also told me he’s got a gun collection including, I think, 39 hand guns and three AK-47s.
Later in the day Summerfield asked if he could borrow my firewatch. I said yes, because Joe and I didn’t have a welder and couldn’t do any hotwork. He said Starner had assigned him to cut some steel pads off the deck of a fan room with an angle grinder. But the firewatch coordinator had no firewatches to assign him, so Starner told him, “You’re your own firewatch today.” Starner, who always says “Safety first” (the official company line), knows very well that not only isn’t Summerfield qualified to firewatch, but firewatching for oneself is both against company policy and a violation of government rules. Luckily Summerfield wasn’t dumb enough to fall for that one, because if he’d been caught Starner would have denied telling him to do it.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
A False Step
Monday, 02-09-2009
Today was another example, although a minor one, of how my survival skills aren’t the best. It’s a comment I made to Joe. But first let me tell you about Joe. I’ve been working with him, off and on, for the last couple of weeks.
Joe is a big guy. I don’t mean “big” as a euphemism for fat or obese. Joe is about 6’ tall, 210 lbs., affable, always smiling, always kidding around. But he’s nervous when he has nothing to do. Can’t stand still. So even though he jokes around about doing as little as possible, he’ll make work for himself. He also happens to be one of those guys, common in the shipyard, who don’t drive a car because their license is suspended for D.U.I. But the bosses consider him one of the go-getters. I’d say he’s average as a shipfitter in terms of ability. He’s neither precise nor careful. During the time I’ve been working with him I’ve caught him in several mistakes. He will also work unsafe frequently, like today, when he was working straddling a stepladder – one foot on a step, the other on a cross brace. And he sometimes uses an angle grinder without wearing a face shield. That kind of thing. Not really serious, but enough to get him written up if a safety inspector saw him. I didn’t like Joe at first, in part because of his tendency to kiss up to the supervisors, but now I’ve come to like him. We complement each other, sort of. I let him be the go-getter, because I have a Bad Attitude. Meanwhile, I keep my eye on him and make corrections when necessary. Oddly enough, though, it’s often me who makes a suggestion that moves things along while he’s just spinning his wheels.
So, for what I said. In the morning our nominal supervisor, Starner, seemed to be camping out on our job. He just stood there, saying nothing. It gave me the heebee jeebies. I kept waiting for him to leave, but he didn’t. After a while, right outside the space, I said to Joe, “Is he going to hang out here all day?” Later, Joe told me Starner said to him, “He knows I heard him, doesn’t he?” And I thought, “Uh oh, I screwed up.” I didn’t think he could hear me. But then, as I thought it over, I remembered having this split-second flash as I said it, that was like, maybe he can hear me, but I don’t care. Well, it wasn’t really a big deal anyway. Joe said, “He did get off our job.” But somebody else suggested the real reason Starner left. There were no women there for him to hit on. The week before he’d hung out for a couple of days on Joe’s job, first trying to hit on a woman electrician, then on the firewatch.
Today was another example, although a minor one, of how my survival skills aren’t the best. It’s a comment I made to Joe. But first let me tell you about Joe. I’ve been working with him, off and on, for the last couple of weeks.
Joe is a big guy. I don’t mean “big” as a euphemism for fat or obese. Joe is about 6’ tall, 210 lbs., affable, always smiling, always kidding around. But he’s nervous when he has nothing to do. Can’t stand still. So even though he jokes around about doing as little as possible, he’ll make work for himself. He also happens to be one of those guys, common in the shipyard, who don’t drive a car because their license is suspended for D.U.I. But the bosses consider him one of the go-getters. I’d say he’s average as a shipfitter in terms of ability. He’s neither precise nor careful. During the time I’ve been working with him I’ve caught him in several mistakes. He will also work unsafe frequently, like today, when he was working straddling a stepladder – one foot on a step, the other on a cross brace. And he sometimes uses an angle grinder without wearing a face shield. That kind of thing. Not really serious, but enough to get him written up if a safety inspector saw him. I didn’t like Joe at first, in part because of his tendency to kiss up to the supervisors, but now I’ve come to like him. We complement each other, sort of. I let him be the go-getter, because I have a Bad Attitude. Meanwhile, I keep my eye on him and make corrections when necessary. Oddly enough, though, it’s often me who makes a suggestion that moves things along while he’s just spinning his wheels.
So, for what I said. In the morning our nominal supervisor, Starner, seemed to be camping out on our job. He just stood there, saying nothing. It gave me the heebee jeebies. I kept waiting for him to leave, but he didn’t. After a while, right outside the space, I said to Joe, “Is he going to hang out here all day?” Later, Joe told me Starner said to him, “He knows I heard him, doesn’t he?” And I thought, “Uh oh, I screwed up.” I didn’t think he could hear me. But then, as I thought it over, I remembered having this split-second flash as I said it, that was like, maybe he can hear me, but I don’t care. Well, it wasn’t really a big deal anyway. Joe said, “He did get off our job.” But somebody else suggested the real reason Starner left. There were no women there for him to hit on. The week before he’d hung out for a couple of days on Joe’s job, first trying to hit on a woman electrician, then on the firewatch.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
