A Week of Easy Overtime

It's overtime, true... But it's fairly pleasurable work. To me anyway. It's definitely not for everybody though.

I've been on a priority job shift at work. While my regular job is "on hold" and the inbox is piling up I've been put on a special project. Myself and Elaine are the only two people there that seem to have what it takes to do this job because it's very, very tedious and yet requires a the utmost attention to detail. We've been gluing 1/8" foam onto parts. At the risk of going into too much detail, imagine an aluminum suitcase about one foot high, one foot deep, and 1.5 foot wide. Inside are all kinds of little compartments and areas to hold tools or equipment captive while in transit. Our company buys the boxes, but we make all the stuff for the inside. After all that, Elaine and I build them. When they are finished they are works of art, but boy are they tedious. As I said before though, we're working in a nice, comfortable environment that's warm and quiet. Every day when I get off work my fingers are covered with glue residue. I feel like a poster boy for an eczema commercial.

I'm just about to the Boeing application process. I've pretty much finished my resume online but haven't submitted it yet. I just got an email from Steve yesterday that said he had talked to one of my coworkers and told him I was thinking of coming back. He said, "Yes, we need planners badly! Tell him to call John!" and gave Steve the boss's phone number to give me. John was my boss when I was there too, and probably still remembers me. It's sounding better and better.

Boeing is a company that gives their employees about 2 weeks off over the Christmas holidays every year, and according to Steve, they cut off employment from now until the first of the year so they won't get someone hired on and immediately give them 2 weeks off with pay. Makes sense.

I just know that things sure seems different where I work now than back in May of 2002 when I was first hired on. Everything seems to have gone "loose" and is disconnected. The owners (brothers, remember?) run pretty much the whole show, but Phil (he's the one that runs the shop aspect of the company) seems to be losing his grasp. I think the company has gotten to big for him to handle. Everything is always in a disarray and things are constantly "falling through the cracks" and not getting done or done correctly. There needs to be real change made around there, but I don't see it ever happening. They are both getting up in years, and frankly, I don't see a future for the company. There is no "new blood" being groomed at the top. There has never been any sign of any successors or heirs to ever take over the company. If either Phil or Bernie ever strokes out it's all over.

I like to work efficiently and I like to see plans and guidelines and criteria. There seems to be none existing any more there. There is no redundancy there. For example, there is only one guy there that writes purchae order's. If we need something shipped or bought or whatever, we have to wait for him. His schedule. Hardly any of the computers in the company are networked. One or two are on the internet, one is hooked to the PO printer, etc... You get the idea. It's just a sad state in today's world. They actually print their house orders (that's the what we call our manufacturing plans) using Microsoft Word instead of using dedicated software. Poor Sue up at the front desk uses Windows 3.1 on her computer! I kid you not.

See what I mean? Time to move on. It's been a good run and I've learned a lot about the manufacturing business. It should serve me well at Boeing.