I would just like to take a moment to recognize an indispensable and valuable sect of society: Idiots! I love idiots! Correcting the actions of idiots account for >50% of my paycheck. 32 hours of overtime last pay period, all of them I owe to idiots.

Here's an example, from Saturday:
Idiot production supervisor gives idiot operator the passcode for high level parameter access screen on a wire drawing line. Idiot operator does exactly what you would expect an idiot operator to do with that information. Production line comes to a grinding halt. In lieu of proper troubleshooting (including interrogating the operator), Idiot maintenance guy frantically starts replacing sensors and actuators in what he perceives to be the affected area. Nearing the end of his shift and he still hasn't got the line running, idiot maintenance guy calls me in, and times his call so that I arrive 5 minutes after he and the idiot operator have left for the night.

So I have no first-person witnesses to interrogate. I go look for clues and due to the amount of dust settled on this machinery, I can clearly identify a few places where idiot maintenance guy has been. I inspect all the squeaky-clean looking sensors and find some of them are the wrong P/N (0-10mA transducers where there should be 4-20mA sensors). I open up the panels and covers where I see his hand smudges and find that the incorrect parts he replaced, he wired backwards. I correct everything I found so far; basically undoing everything the maintenance guy did, but still no dice.

I talk to the night shift supervisor and tell him I need to speak to the idiots that were involved in the previous shift. Idiot maintenance guy can't be reached, but idiot operator is brought in. He can't speak English, and my idiot translator doesn't seem to understand the role of a translator - that is, to ask the operator exactly what I asked, and tell me exactly the operator said. I know enough Spanish to know that I have an ineffective translator. He seems to think that exercising artistic license with my questions is a good idea; asking things vaguely related to what I asked, but with totally different implications. But my perception from observing the interaction between the operator and the translator is that, as expected, the operator is putting up a wall because he senses an cloud of accusation in the air. I've seen it enough times to play my own English voiceover to the conversation that I can't fully decipher - "What did you touch here on the screen?" ... "Nothing, dude. I didn't touch nothing. This stupid P.O.S. just quit working, bro."

I call the machine OEM's 24hr service line and am graced by the voice of the first intelligent person I've interfaced with all night. He walks me through the various screens, with my operator there as we go to enter passwords that he isn't supposed to know, telling me the typical values that should be in the hundred-something various fields. Every time we encountered a non-standard value, the operator was questioned and he either didn't know how that value got there, or said that the existing value (that he now admits to entering, despite previously stating that he hadn't touched anything at all) is correct and that the value that the OEM is instructing me to enter is incorrect (I entered the "incorrect" value anyway).

So I get all the correct values in, and whadd'ya know, it works! 8 hours of overtime for something that should have been sorted out by a supervisor before maintenance ever got involved. And then the night shift maintenance guy, being friends with both the idiot maintenance guy and the idiot operator, asks me in a hushed voice if I can lie on my Field Service Report and say that I found some burnt components or something, so that the other two don't get in trouble. I told him "I won't lie, but I'd be happy to word things in such a technical way that a bean counter will be too ignorant to assign blame" - after all, I need these idiots to stay right where they are. Good for repeat business, ya know.

 

Good Gawdfry !!! Different circumstances, different Idiots, tho' I know EXACTLY what you mean !!

 

I fully understand ...


Personal I hate bailing people out ..

 

Most of us have stories like this.
The guy that pressure washed his air conditioner? So many fins were flattened that he was burning out a fan motor every 10 months.
Many people that rinsed all the oil out of their bearings with WD-40.
The amateur that mixed up the 240 volt power with the 24 volt controls and blew the thermostat off the wall.
The guy who tried to use a wire brush to clean the contacts in the meter box on his house.

and these are only the things that I expect all of you can understand.

 

Many people that rinsed all the oil out of their bearings with WD-40.

Please Explain this ??
When I worked at the Gun Store the gunsmith hated when people used WD-40 Automatic guns cause it turns like into a gum sustain and jams the action ..

 

WD-40 is not, "oil". It was invented to push water out of controls. Water-displacer, attempt #40. It simply won't pretend to be oil in a motor bushing/bearing.

 

I'm waiting for one now.

Call from a good cx. (small manufacturing company)

Looking for an AB B110 contactor.
Has to be Allen Bradley. Doesn't know what size or coil. Or aux's.

I called back telling him I have another look alike brand, (benshaw) here now. Nice used condition $110

By the time I get a call again they will be into it over $1000. I can guess what it's for. 40-60HP compressor.

There is no one there qualified to work on this.
I'd be surprised if this is the problem. And if it is, there is more to the story.

 

WD-40 is not, "oil". It was invented to push water out of controls. Water-displacer, attempt #40. It simply won't pretend to be oil in a motor bushing/bearing.

But labels say it does ????

 

But labels say it does ????

I don't know. I have never bought any.

 

:O

WD40 is the best stuff ever.

I have learned that if something is moving and it shouldn't, use duck tape. If something isn't moving and it should, use WD 40.

Also has a nice smell.

 

and operators that have been on a machine forever? most machine controls with tool changers do not take kindly to manual tool changes when running part programs. if you do change a tool, or take it out to check it and put it back, you have to specify which tool you put back in. if you dont, it zeros out all the compensations in use. usually putting the tool (cutter, drill, or whatever) through the part into the bed of the machine. but thats the way he has done it for years.

 

Sadly though it seems that the percentage of "idiots" is increasing at an alarming rate.

A small "part" of my job is technical support for our products.. I'm AMAZED by the level of stupidity in the questions I get from what should be "highly trained installers".

 

Thank God for IDIOTS! They are what keep people like you and me in business

 

my dad heard about wd40, and how it is supposed to protect metal. he sprayed his shotgun and rifle, and stored them in his barn. after a while, there were droplet shaped rust spots all over them. aperently it holds moisture against metal too.

 

32 hours of overtime last pay period, all of them I owe to idiots.

What about them idiots who work piles of over time not taking into account that after X number of hours they lose proportional take home pay because of tax and deductions jumps?

Fortunately I learned that early on in life. At some point X hours on a paycheck equals Y dollars take home however at a specific point X +1 hours equals Y- 5 to 10% take home pay which takes more hours to break even at X again.

I don't know about the rest of you but I live on the take home pay not the gross pay on my paychecks. No point putting in more hours to make more money for someone else plus the tax man. (Unless you're really into bragging up idiotic actions you regularly partake in.)

 

That's where substantial pre-tax retirement investments come in.

 

WD-40 is not, "oil". It was invented to push water out of controls. Water-displacer, attempt #40. It simply won't pretend to be oil in a motor bushing/bearing.

Or back in the day of DOS. I repeatedly had to visit a certain customer with memory issues on his computer. I replaced the memory several times, system boards. He was just always running out of memory on small spreadsheets.

So I made another call. I sat down at the PC to run diagnostics on the computer. Lotus 123 was running so I typed /Q to quit. Lotus 123 pops up. Type /Q again. Lotus 123 pops up. Repeated several times until I got a DOS prompt. The fool was shelling to DOS then typing 123 to load another copy!

 

The fool was shelling to DOS then typing 123 to load another copy!

Reminds me of my sister. Symantec was taking about 30 minutes to allow the computer to boot up. Then I found over 10,000 emails that she not only hadn't deleted, she refused to delete them and I couldn't teach her how to move them to another partition.

So I did a temporary. I dragged them to D:

 

Sounds like a problem with the scanner though. Have you considered what a 3 Tb drive would look like? My current machine has a 2 Tb.

 

Bill, are you talking about trouble with the virus scanner scanning 10,000 emails before it will allow a boot-up? No need to diagnose the problem on a machine that died in 2005.