Mysteries Revealed

I had one of those moments today at work where you realize you've been duped. Maybe not purposefully by everyone, or someone in specific, but a duping has happened. I suppose you could say that something is not what it seemed. Why am I surprised though. At this point in my life, I'm finding that out around every corner. The trickster has been falling down on his job lately as the blindfolds just keep coming off.

Ever since I started working where I work, items have turned up missing, seemingly overnight most of the time. I was told there are operators who steal here and there, or have been prone to stealing in the past. I also found out at some point last year that our employment seems to be a "second chance" employment (meaning there are a lot of operators who once were in jail). All this to say, there's plausible reasoning for suspecting them.

Today however, I found out that Mr. Puerto Rico looks to have been the thief for some of these items. While working around his area when he was on the floor blending, I looked through his toolbox (a three leveled set of metallic drawers, and no I wasn't looking for something to steal) and saw that he had more debur knives than he should need, two boxes of pens and quite a few of what looked to be the missing gauge blocks (there's a story behind each item).

Ok ready... story time...

Debur knives: These are red handled with a curved removable blade at the end, made for the purpose of taking excess metal off the edges of parts. Upon becoming the main CMM Operator on first shift, I decided I wanted things to be more orderly and neat, with things having a proper place. I actually went to the tool crib and got two debur knives, because ours had went missing too many times to count. I put these debur knives in the second drawer, and hoped to see them there on a regular basis. Unfortunately, other people don't see the order you've created, and seem to live to make a mess out of it, and there were plenty of times after this that I saw the debur knives left out on our carts (areas used to stage and clean parts). So naturally I thought the knives were disappearing into the hands of operators because of being in plain view. It turns out this may or may not have ever been the case, as the alternative may or may not be the case.

Two boxes of pens: So the amount doesn't matter, but what does is that pens are always in short supply where I work. People are always asking to borrow pens, and the supply we are shipped seems to run low extremely fast. Well, up til now I blamed you know who, when it may have actually been you know who. (Way to make a long story short eh?)

Missing gauge blocks: Thee blocks have numbers on them representing how thick they are. They're used in calibration of some of our instruments, or in tandem with our instruments to help measure a part. Well, I had used a .150 and a .125 gauge block to set up a part with. These blocks went missing overnight. The next day I resorted to using a .145 and .120 gauge blocks, with .005 shims as substitutions for the missing amount. well, these two go missing (or seems to have in my mind at this moment) soon afterwards. Operators use gauge blocks in helping to calibrate/set up their machines sometimes, so I naturally thought one of them may have taken them... well, I was probably duped on that one too.

A few other things that go on, that seem... just not right to me: Ms. Y is supposed to check the finish on parts after blending gets through with them. She's also supposed to check the rework, then get us to check after her. Two things: A) Mr. Puerto Rico's handwriting tends to be on many of the shop orders I look at, before rechecking the part. He leaves out indications of which areas may be thick, how thick etc. and instead puts generalities like "thick walls, recheck in QC after blend." Wonderful! Now which walls. You see now I have to check them all. Problem is, why am I checking something that he should be checking... answer: because he's rude enough to scare Ms. Y into trying to spread it around in QC, getting Opp. J to check something for a few months, and apparently its my turn now. Problem B) She should check them before getting me to check. Within those words lies a misconception. She thinks those words means that everytime she checks something that's been marked thick, she needs to bring it in for me to recheck. What she's missing is that she needs to get blending to take that thickness off if she knows it's obviously thick. She doesn't need me to see that. I'm there to check after she thinks it's good, so I can find a spot that she may have missed.

Thanks for tuning in to Mystery Theater tonight. I hope I won't have to do this more often. Maybe next time I'll have something positive to talk about, or just something different.