The Workermonkey

Thursday, December 22, 2005

t'was the day before the holidays... 

# posted by Supreme Monkey Overlord @ 12/22/2005 04:02:00 PM

holy shit, i can't believe how busy i was today. i spent most of the day trying to find first where we bought a resperator welding mask somewhere between 2-3 years ago and under which company name, then i had to call around to get actual prices on something i've never even seen before. that was hard. our welding supply guy (bob) tried his darnest to help but without really knowing what i'm looking for i wasn't any help either. we finally worked through the OSHA regulations on what kind of mask we needed for working inside a chemical tank. fantastic but by now its 2:00 and almost everyone has left for the day or is just screwing around. I finally get a price on what i'm looking for and its about 2,000$ fuck. i can't just spend that with out asking someone, but of course the man whose wallet i spend from (dave) wasn't here. i finally tracked him down and he wanted to talk to the customer who i visited yesterday about who is going to pay for all this. (the job is repairing a coil we built a year and a half ago that is now leaking). Our customer expects us to just do the work and not have to pay for it. My bosses thought it would be nice if we offered a 50/50 split. Sounded resonable but boy was the customer pissed. what the hell am i supposed to tell him?!? its not my money. the offer sounded resonable but i'm about to spend 3,500 on supplies and stuff specifically for htis job and suddenly around 3:30 its all falling apart. i've got angry customers because they don't want to pay, upset bosses because they don't want to do the work for free and about 30 minutes to figure this all out before everyone leaves for the weekend. fuck.

after finally getting the customer on the phone i explained the whole deal to him and why this was driving me nuts (this wasn't my job, i'm new here, i've been on the phone all day trying to line up equipment and people and now this is going to get hung up because we can't work out who's paying for it? fuck, i don't care, i just want to fix the coil and keep the customer happy). This customer would be a really good client if we can keep them but basically this kind of crap has been going on between us for years so they are hesitant to give us work even though we're less then ten minutes away. I brought my head sales guy/VP with me yesterday becasue, well, i'm not a fucking salesman and i just want to fix our relationship with this guy so i can build heat exchangers for him. Yesterday was a totally different story but long story short, it sucked.

I'm kind of put in a strange position here. a few days ago the owner of my company sat me down for a little heart to heart about what it is they want me to do here and where my position comes from and why i'm stuck solving other people messes and cleaning up after someone else who left even though that guys two kids still loosely work here. it was very nice. i got a chance to explain kind of what i thought i was doing here and what i'd like to see happen, he told me about what his plans were and what he wanted and what he was expecting from the company. it basically boiled down to, we're old and we want to retire, i'm going to set up some stuff and maybe work during the winters but, good luck, i hope you all get rich.

uuhhh... gee thanks.

the way i look at it i'm trying to keep things running smoothly around here while privding some design work, a few drawings and keeping things correct in the shop while at the same time trying to build up a side of the business thats been left to the dogs. i have to sell the heat exchangers before i can design them. i kind of told him that i'd like to hire a few more people but i need to get things straighted out in the shop first before i really try to sell them, i'd like to be able to know i have the guys who can build them with out me holding their hand before i try to sell a bunch of units. but i can't really build the units until i get somekind of drilling capability and have someone who knows how to bend tubes on a machine that barely works and probably also needs to be replaced. but they won't replace machinery until we get the orders to justify it. so its kind of a never ending loop that won't be broken easily until i just blindly push forward and hope for the best. Hey, i can live with that. if i've got someone who is going to spend a little money to help me build a business, while i personally take none of the risk, so be it. sounds sweet and should make it a little easier since i'll have a little support from people who'd like to see me succeed. And if i manage to fuck this one up, well, maybe this is the wrong line of work for me. I've got the shop on my side, which seems to happen most places i go without me trying too hard.

Most the the shop guys just like someone to talk to them who isn't yelling or angry that they screwed up. I try to stop and talk to each guy out there every day but i usually don't have time. i've managed to make friends with most of the guys. I think i might be the only person in the office that knows everyones name in the shop.

the old bastard who's really good out there seems to respect me because i'm not afraid to tell him to fuck off and cram it. he was giving me shit about wearing a mask yesterday, i told him to suck it up and stop acting like a fucking 3 year old. and he did. everything was cool between us after that, i had a nice ride up to the customer yesterday with him and we worked everything out. most of his problem is that he's seen a million guys come through my position through out hte years and most of them sucked at it or were complete push overs. i'm not going to do that. in fact i manage to but heads with my bosses every now and then because i won't just say yes all the time. i'm going to tell them what i think and when i think they're full of shit. look i may be the new guy around here but nothing good happens when i don't tell them NO and just agree with everything they say. and thats part of how i've won respect with the guys in the shop.

so in conclusion, i think i'll be alright here. i'm going to be in VT friday and come back monday night. i'll be in touch.

merry holidays everybody

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