That was at the Circle W. You want a taste of really running a crane, go get a job at US steel, in Raw Coil.If you dont't make 300 to 400 lifts per shift, you are screwing the other operators.
You do not know what work is. Period. Nor does your alterego, OD.
You sound, George, like you shoveled thirteen tons of coal and owe your soul to the Company store. You had to sit in a cab and be vigilant?
I know a bit about being vigilant, George. Worked with biohazards, dangerous chemicals, lethal voltages. As far as I know I'm not incubating Hep or other nasties, and aside some scars I have no evidence of ever working in dangerous places.
What do I know of work?
Scubbing toilets, buffing floors, moving supplies. No union steward, no strikes, minimum wage.
Flipping burgers. It's Tuesday, "Special Night", crank out a couple hundred of them, a dozen at a time. Add to them Big Macs, Filet of Fish, McRibs, those nasty turnovers that blow up in the grease, and Chicken McNuggets. Special orders. Heat. Grease. Mop floors. Hustle after special orders. Clean up after bratty kids who dump stuff in the eating area. At the end of the day, wash it all down with sterilant and leave stuff out for morning. Hustling. No union steward, no strikes, minimum wage.
In Dialysis I had to do reprocessing along with repair and maintenence. That means some unpleasant character hands you a "soiled" dialyser. "soiled" is a euphemism, it's really loaded with clotted human blood, just teaming with viruses, bacteria, prions and God knows what else.
Look
here for a description of what I"m talking about.
Note the "end caps" which are colored red and blue. You take hold of the dialyser and remove 'em. Use a water hose to flush out the clotted blood. Fish the clots out of the sink and toss 'em.
Dip the O rings in a sterilant. Replace and carefully torque - not too much or they break, too little or they leak. It's a "feel" thing. If you have line reuse coil the lines carefully.
Take the dialyser and rinse it out. They have robots to do it today. Back when we used high pressure ultra pure water.
Place it onto a machine. Manipulate the machine, do things to the dialyser. Test the dialyser with chemical tests and high pressure air and water. Check its volume and reject if it's too low. Wipe it down, record data and numbers. Do it wrong and someone can get seriously messed up. You get written up or worse.
Of course that's not the bottom line. I've watched people go to the hospital, George, because someone screwed up a dialyser and let it back out.
Do them in groups of ten. Ten should require an hour's time or more, and you'll do forty to sixty a day. Lots of noise, the sight of human blood, the stench of bleach, formaldehyde or a wonderful chemical called "peroxyacetic acid", which smells like nasty salad dressing.
That, my Man, is work. However I did more than those forty to sixty dialysers, but since I mainly did reuse at this clinic I was paid like it. They got all of that hard work for eight bucks an hour.
Tote solutions here and there, each one in a twenty five pound jug. Or you can move a 500 pound barrel of solutions. Mix bicarb, hefting fifteen pound bags over your head and carefully pouring the bicarb into the mix. Don't go too slow or it will "Gas out", or too fast and it lumps to the bottom.
Did I also mention that at any time I could be interrupted to fix something that some moron broke on the floor? One time I was fixing a machine while watching one of the Nurse Supervisor's pets breaking the next one.
After I followed her to the third machine I started crying inside of my suit, I was so frustrated. I was told to be "patient", my boss thought it was funny at least until the pet broke something expensive. Once she cost money they were less indulgent and it wasn't funny.
Did I mention mopping out bathrooms where a patient puked or bled? Helping clinicians dump a patient on the floor because they had coded. A dead body is heavy, George, and I didn't have a crane to help lift it either.
Once or twice a week a shipment of supplies comes in. Take 'em and stow 'em, record 'em, count 'em and all the while nurses and techs are trying to steal them before you're done counting them. An "order" is about ten to fifteen thousand pounds, George, all on pallets. No cranes, no special motorized pallet jacks. Your back provides the motion, with a regular pallet jack.
Did we run out of something? Get into my own car and go fetch more. Don't worry about my work, it'll be waiting for me when I come back from the trip. Sometimes I even got paid mileage for my trouble and parking too, sometimes I didn't. I paid almost $1,000 to park in one locale in a year, all at eight bucks an hour (I got screwed).
Of course, George, since I didn't hold a Union Card I was not a "working person". Union people are workers. Everyone else, well, they're either bosses or they're potential working people.
I worked in the IBEW, and I know about the breaks, the loafing and the games we played. I know about "don't work too hard". I got the notes and mailers that called me "Brother and Sister" even after they dumped me because I was a "scab with papers".
George, you wouldn't have lasted a week in Carnegie's steel mills. The Foreman would have sent your militant ass out the door. You wouldn't have lasted a turn with your "You owe me" attitude.
I did two years in manufacture as a "temp". I worked 480 "turns" of eight to ten hours each. Each day I had to prove that I could do the job. I watched people fall by the wayside, George. Each day I checked, tested and repaired twenty boards. Ask your tech friends how much work twenty boards at day takes, George.
I know what hard work is, George. I have it easy today.
Gene
