When I started work at NuSTAR, Todd, who is the Assembly Engineer, and therefore the person to whom I report, taught me what to do. After a week he asked me to write up the procedure so he could review it. My standard operating procedure, as is known by all my employers (not always happily, I confess), is to inject a little humor into things like that. So I added a couple of statements like, "In case of shattering glass, stop machine." When I handed it in I thought, "Heh, heh. This is hilarious. They'll get a couple of laughs from it."
What I'd forgotten to take into account was that I was a new guy. They didn't know me at all. I hadn't been a new guy since Lam Research hired me in 1983, so I kind of forgot. Now I can imagine them reading my procedure: "Who is this doofus who's been here a week and is making jokes about shattering our $2M optics?" At the time it never entered my mind, but I did notice that Todd became somewhat aloof. "Todd's not very friendly," I thought.
In September we started FM1. The spacers for the first few layers are 1.6 mm x 1.5 mm, so the procedure was to measure them with calipers before inserting them in the strongbacks. After a while I realized that I could tell by looking at them which side was which, so I stopped using calipers. No-one seemed really happy about that, but they didn't demand that I use calipers, they just made strong suggestions. I kept the calipers handy in case I was in doubt about a spacer, but I was always right.
A couple of days later I came home from work and learned that my father had died that morning, so my emotions were frazzled. Then I got an email from Todd saying that at least five spacers had been inserted incorrectly. I knew that couldn't be the case. I was confident I hadn't made any errors, much less five. It was disturbing, and I became angry. Fortunately I calmed myself and resolved to answer only when I'd composed a proper, business-like response. Well, that's what I should have done. What I actually did was fire back an email saying, "That's bullshit!"
I knew the techs, Tom and Iliya, would have measured the spacers correctly, so it was a complete mystery to me. All I was sure of was that I didn't make a mistake orienting the spacers. Then I had a terrible thought. I wrote back to Todd to make sure that 1.6 mm was the height. He wrote back and calmly said, "All of the spacers are 1.5 mm in height. 1.6 mm is the width." Oh, brother. I'd installed ALL of them incorrectly.
Prudence, humility, intelligence, and sanity dictated an apology at this point. What I actually did, however, was to write back to Todd and accuse him of not training me properly. (Needless to say, I hope, I am truly embarrassed about that now.) Somehow I kept my job.
Two milestones occurred today. One is that January 15 is the date to which I originally agreed to work. The other is that FM1 is at Layer 100. I know now that Todd is a good guy, and I am behaving myself. I'd like to be around for the next milestone.
3 comments:
Someone needs to invent a slow motion taser. It could be sold to interested parties (husbands, wives, bosses, mistresses, parents) everywhere to zap people just as they were rushing to their computer keyboards to rip someone to shreds. The slow motion taser would slow them down so that by the time they got to the keyboard they would be mellow and rational.
A good idea, however it would need to work over long distances. Like many states distances. I'm impressed though, most folks won't admit to stuff like this.
First she quit the blog, now she wants to tase me! :p
Post a Comment