Noodle Seizure
One of my many jobs was to make noodle dough. Once per week we made rice noodles. They were tasty little things that went into the fryer after my machine cranked them out.
All I had to do to make them is to push a barrel of rice noodle flour under the vacuum which sucked it up into the mixer. Then I had to watch the amp gage. The amp gage would tell you if you had the correct amount of water in the mixer. If the gage was running too low, that meant the mixer was turning too easily because it was too wet. Conversely, if the gage was running too high, it meant the water was too low.
Never, I mean NEVER, let the mixer run out of water! If the mixer ran out of water, the screw in the machine would tie up.
There were paddles that kneaded the dough, then the clumps of dough would drop down into a long screw, which would thoroughly mix the dough and force the dough through a die. The die had tiny holes and allowed the noodles to squirt through.
A rotating blade would cut the noodles off. I had to watch the speed of the blade, which controlled the length of the noodles.
One day I was merrily watching the gage and vacuuming the barrels of rice flour. The gage went high, so I opened the water valve some more. I did some other tasks and noticed the amps was higher yet. Wow. I better open up the water some more.
I watched the gage and it still kept going up. What the. . .
With a real sense of urgency, I went up and added water directly into the mixer with a bucket. But it was too late! The dreaded screw soon groaned to a halt. I tried to manually turn the screw with a steel bar at an access point. It was frozen into place as if it were concrete.
Then I let my team leader know about the unfortunate event. He could not get it going either. He knew the screw would need pressed out with a jack. "AAAAAAAG!"
Unfortunately, the mixer was bound up exceptionally bad. No jack there at the company would get it broken free. All of the downtime and expense of everyone involved was my fault. Of course, some of the jokers thought it was a real hoot.
After spending hours on the situation, maintenance went out and rented a 60 ton jack. That could not get it out either! So they went back and got a 100 ton jack. This was the difference in weight between a medium sized army tank and a heavy army tank.
"Crap!" This was getting on my nerves in the worst way.
Fortunately, with the monster jack, the thing finally gave way. I had to clean up the entire line afterwards.
I was called into the office. I contended that I was watching the stupid thing when it jammed up and tried to add water. The shift manager contended that if I was it would have never tied up. So I was written up for poor job performance. That was a crushing blow to me. I had never had that kind of negative feedback for any of my work.
The next week it was time to do rice noodles again. Same product, same equipment. It only ran on second shift for some reason. I was determined that the problem would never happen again.
It wasn't too long after I started the machine that the gage was going up. I opened the valve, but it still went up. . .up. . .up. Bullcrap! I stood right there and opened it all the way.
The needle stayed up, so I shut everything down and got the crew leader. The water was put into the mixer by a pump so it could be regulated. I told the crew leader that the water pump was not working. He didn't believe me. We turned it on and it worked fine. Huh?
So I recovered from the mess and started again. Then it started going wrong again. I got the crew leader back for a second time and he confirmed that the pump was not working. Evidently it was working intermittently. At times it would not feed any water.
I went straight to the office and demanded that the write-up on my work record be rescinded. The shift manager agreed and did so immediately.
I did learn a lesson that night that served me well on many subsequent occasions after I had become the one evaluating other people's work. I used an extra measure of caution with the facts before I wrote anyone up.
As a supervisor, I was the least afraid to write up an employee who was caught not following the rules. It was either their pain or mine. No thank you.
But I was steadfast in the defense of those who were assumed guilty by mere conventional wisdom, or just to make an example of someone who wouldn't fight back as a scapegoat because they "all deserved it".
If I was unsure at all, even when the heat was on me to do something, I would hesitate. Sure enough, a couple of times I was right to investigate further on an incident, and I let the other supervisors know it.
The other supervisors were all big talkers about discipline when it was my people, but they were chickens when it was their turn, even when action was warranted.
Recycled Report: Another supervisor was complaining to me in the mail room that he had to compile massive reports and he knew for sure that no one read them. So he took a couple of pages that he had written and pulled an inch thick stack of random papers out of the wastebasket and put them behind his papers. He put the whole massive thing in the boss's mail slot.