Mess #5
Spiraling Out of Control
I was a second shift production supervisor in a frozen foods processing plant. My line was a frozen entrée line, items suitable for microwave preparation.
Product from our line went into a large spiral freezer. It functioned like a large escalator. The product in the packages would go onto the freezer conveyor, about a half dozen across, then would spiral in an upward direction inside of the freezer. They went up about 20 feet into the subzero air. Once the product got to the top, it would go onto another spiral that would spiral downward. Then the product would exit the freezer on the other side in the packout area.
It was about minus 20 degrees F in there, not counting the wind chill from the powerful fans. When the product came out, it would be frozen as hard as a rock. This process would take a couple of hours. Therefore, there were hundreds of packages, perhaps a couple thousand in the freezer at a time.
Someone form the Research and Development Department wanted to do a study on filling volumes in certain packages, then freeze them. They just used water for the study because it cost nothing.
Second shift got stuck doing all of their work for them. We had some operators filling water into trays and packaging them. Then into the freezer. This activity was a mere sideshow to all of the other problems that were going on. The study did not warrant much attention.
Later in the shift, the crew leader from the packaging department told me that the test packages were stuck and would not come out of the freezer. This made no sense at all.
I went over there and tried to pull them out. You could beat the ice cubes all you wanted and they would not fit out of the exit. The exit conveyor was under the packages as well as over them.
"Oh no!" I realized that they were filled with water. Water expands when you freeze it.
Sure enough. I opened up the freezer and gazed upon the horrific scenario. We were not going to be able to unload anything in the freezer. It was all frozen and expanded too big to run out! Production was supposed to run after the test but we were dead in the water with the icy mess for the rest of the shift and into the next shift.
Immediately I turned off the cooling to the freezer and opened up what doors I could. There I was, mostly by myself since we were always short-handed. I was frantically trying to bust up the thawing stubborn packages on the spirals while freezing rain from the ill-conceived test packages came drizzling down on me.
Bash awhile, then spin the spiral a bit and get at some more product where we could reach it. My job typically made me work about seven days a week, almost every week. I worked 5 hours or so overtime that night trying to straighten out the mess. I was not happy. At all.
This situation made me think about who should have been there helping me. Those individuals did not work at all during any weekend. At least my fury helped me have the vigor to extract the packages.
My effort devoted to recovering the cataclysmic mess was pretty much disregarded by production management as a non-event.
Watch This. . .
We were all crazy about pro football. We knew every person's favorite team at the company. We would taunt each other every time we met if they were from an opposing faction. The most zealous factions were the Browns, Steelers, and Cowboy fans.
One day one of the guys was selling team watches at the company. They were very popular. They were only $5 each. A pretty good deal, we figured. But I doubt if any of them ran very long.
Anyway, one of the Browns fans was among the first to get a watch. He also bought a Steelers watch. I saw him go up to a Steelers fan and show it to him.
The Steelers fan was covetous of the brand new Steelers watch. The Browns fan let the Steelers fan get all wrapped up into looking at the timepiece. Then he slammed it on the floor and stomped on it a couple of times! It was stupid funny.
In reality, the Browns fan probably got more satisfaction out of his purchase than any of the rest of us. Steelers suck.