Chapter 34

I woke early this Monday morning, immediately slipped out of bed, and started the inside coffeepot. I showered quickly and turned on the patio light by five-thirty. At ten to six Kevin, Susan and kids showed up asking me if we had any cereal for breakfast. We had a whole cabinet of cereals so they made their choices filling their bowls. I had poured them glasses of orange juice and milk and said I would bring them toast.

The kids ate and by six fifteen we all walked up to the Office turn-a-round to join a bunch of other high school kids including Tammy, waiting for the school bus. We three adults backed off to let the kids mingle and meet each other. Kids seem to gravitate to each other easier if adults are not hovering.

We watched as they all stepped onto the bus. We watched as the bus did the circle turn and headed back out the entrance to the park.

Before we walked back to the house I showed them the building with the mailboxes. Susan said she would make sure all her mail and accounts were being forwarded. She also said she would show Nancy. Charlie and Matty came out of the office and walked down to the patio with us.

The patio people were coming in bunches now. By six forty-five most everyone was present drinking coffee, juice, or milk. Some were eating breakfast sandwiches, some were eating cereal, some just toast and some smiling as they enjoyed a gooey pastry.

A man was hesitantly walking up to the patio. Kevin saw him and hollered, "Come on in Luis. Join us, we're friendly."

Kevin got him a cup, showing him where everything was and began introducing him around. When he was introduced to Sue, Mercy and me, Juanita was sitting next to Sue. You could see the interest flicker across Luis' face and the flash of Juanita's eyes was impossible to miss. She even grabbed Sue's leg and squeezed.

Sue told me later that Juanita said she had seen Luis many times but had never had the opportunity to meet him. Sue, Susan, Matty and Juanita were soon in a huddle discussing everything they knew about Luis. Poor guy, the vultures were circling.

It didn't take Kevin long before he had Luis sitting with Crystal and himself discussing what kind of experience Luis had, what he wanted to do, and would he be interested in a job he could walk to work at. The conversation was going well as I heard from him, "I'll borrow someone's pickup and go get my tools this morning. I'm just being paid piecework at that store so I don't have to give them notice. Thanks. This is going to be great."

Crystal told Luis that he didn't need to borrow a truck, they could take the parts truck to go for his tools. "Kevin can drive you and you both can load it. Get on over there so you guys can get to work. We are always covered up."

When they had left for the dealership, Crystal said to me, "I like your bother in law. The man's sharp and is going to be a real company man, a real asset. Pretty slick; his second day on the job and he's already scrounged up another mechanic. That's good thinking."

"How did it go out at Bear's clubhouse?" I asked curious.

"Good," answered Crystal. "They are trying to build some cluster housing along with a barn and some other outbuildings. It's going to be a while but they should be looking good in a few months. Bear says getting the place built and making the guys self-sufficient is his responsibility. He's finding jobs for his men as he goes. I think that's been pretty difficult. I probably saw more out there than I should but he may not know I grew up with a Dad who was a one percenter. I'm not telling him right now either. It's better he thinks I'm a novice."

I told Crystal, "Be nice and be careful. Bear's a good man but he's still a guy committed to his club first and everything comes after that."

Crystal smiled, "I know. He'll come around. I don't think that man has even been to bed with a woman who wasn't either paid or a pro before me. He had absolutely no clue as to what to do with a real woman. I'm gonna teach him though."

The day began fast and got faster. Everyone was doing their jobs but there was a constant stream of people going over to check out the El Camino. When I walked over to see Jeff about how he was doing traveling back and forth between the shop and the park, I noticed an engine on a mobile stand and a big tool chest had been set near the truck. There was white grease pencil writing on the glass and X's in various places on the body. One of the transmissions and the rear end was missing. It looked like this was going to be a group project.

While I was looking at the truck, Abe walked in, "This is a sweet little toy you picked up Steve. Kevin's boy is going to be one lucky kid." Abe sorted through a stack of parts and picked up a power steering pump, an alternator, starter, and walked back to his shop.

I finished up with Jeff walking back through Abe's shop curious as to what he was going to do with the parts he had picked up. He had the power steering pump and the alternator in pieces. He was replacing the brushes on the alternator and had a note pad with parts listed for the pump and starter.

Abe looked up and said, "This stuff will be better than new with good bearings and seals. The alternator looks good, just needed new brushes. The bearings are good. The starter could use some new bearings. I think I have that size so I'll just press some in. When I get done with these I'll send them over to the chrome shop. We're going to chrome everything that's exposed. Say did you hear what Tim's going to do with the front end?"

"Should I ask? Are we going to lose a lot of time on this project or is this going to be one of those team building experiences?" I laughed.

Abe looked at me over his glasses and said, "This is what all of your people love about you. You dangle a challenge in front of them and they can't wait to show you what they can do. Just sit back and enjoy young man. Your people are getting ready to do you proud. I think they're working twice as hard at their regular tasks just so they can mess with that little truck."

He smiled and said, "You need to go see Robert and Roberta. They want to know if they can do something."

Even more curious I walked over where Tim was busily working with a new guy cleaning up welds on a frame. I didn't have to ask what he wanted to do with the truck, on his bench there was a pad with a couple of sketches showing the entire front end tilted up displaying the engine compartment. He had arrows and notes indicating the raising and lowering of the front end would be electric or hydraulic. He had an arrow pointing under the cab with 'compressor' and another arrow with the words 'storage tank' written in. Wonder what that's going to be for.

In the motor shop I saw Roberta polishing an intake manifold while Robert was working on some valves. On a portable worktable was the differential that was missing from the big warehouse. The two saw me and stopped and began jabbering at once. I held my hand up to slow them down and said, "One at a time, please."

Roberta glared at Robert before saying, "I want to gear the rear end but Robert wants to leave it bone stock. That rear end never was worth a shit and needs to be geared right. Can I redo the gearing? I'll make the posi-traction even better. I already pressed in new bearings everywhere and polished up the main shaft. How about it, can I gear the sucker?"

I winked at Robert and nodded to Roberta. "Do it girl, make it special but save some of the work for the kid. He needs to know how this stuff goes together okay?"

"Gotcha boss, I'll show him how the thing works and let him balance and install the gears."

As I walked past Sandy she nodded toward the two gay girls. I went over to them and the one asked, "Can we do the Turbo 350. I love those things and can make one that is tough as nails. I know the perfect torque converter for it too. Even a kid can't tear it up."

"Sure but make sure you let the kid help. He has to learn how to do this stuff. It wouldn't be right to just give it to him," I said giving her butt a squeeze as I passed. I ducked the rag I knew was coming my way and smiled at her.

"You better watch yourself," She said pinching one her own nipples, "I may decide to play on both sides of the aisle. I'll be lobbying to get some time with you and Sue."

Upstairs, Henry was working with Tiny trying to put together some numbers that didn't mean anything to me at the moment. Ruth said she heard that Dennis would be coming in to work and what did I want to pay him. I told her to make it the same as the other high school kids and to make sure he knew that during his work hours he had to work. After work he could play with his toy. "I'm sure all of the people are going to have him doing work on his project under the pretense of learning to do important work. I just want him to know that work is important."

When I went down stairs I saw Sue's Expedition across the street so I walked over to see what was going on. Sue had some people at a table in the big office with Mia and Stevie on the floor. They were looking very closely at a seam on a couple of garments. Sue called me over to show me what they were looking at. Sue said, "These two pieces came from machines twenty-seven and twenty-eight. None of the other machines are making seams like this. Luckily both of the seamstresses found the weird stitching right away. What do you think?"

I asked, "Do you have the same seam by a good machine?"

Hanna got up, left, quickly returning with another garment that looked just like it. I looked at the two seams real hard but since I am not sewing machine literate I shrugged my shoulders and said, "Can I look at these two machines and maybe one near it that is working properly?"

The thing that was strange was the machines would make a small group of stitches very tight and then progressively looser until they would be very loose before going back to the group of very tight stitches.

There were several regulators on the machine. Mike was there and I had him show me what the different regulators did. Instead of showing me he began telling me how he had tried the machine at all different settings. I asked again for him to show me what the different regulators did and he went on and on into some dissertation of the other things he had done. I asked him to sit down for a minute and motioned for the senior seamstress to help me. I asked her to show me what each regulator did and she carefully showed what each one controlled. I pulled up the guard plates on the one machine then moved the regulator back and forth fast then slow watching what the head was doing. I tried moving the head with my fingers and it didn't have any give. I moved both the regulator and the head at the same time and then felt a slight give as I rolled the regulator. It looked like there was a tiny shim that fit between the plate and the guide.

I looked at the good machine the same way turning the regulator back and forth. It was solid at all the settings. The shim looked about the same but it had to be different. I happened to duck my head under the machine to see if I could see something different from there. What I did see was a paper strip with a date two days before. I went to two bad machines and looked to find the same paper strips with the last date entered being two days before.

I turned to the head seamstress and asked, "Did you guys just have maintenance on these machines?"

She didn't get a chance to answer, Mike butted in, "The factory techs were here for the quarterly inspections. They had a warranty upgrade to do."

I frowned at him for butting in but continued, "Would you call them and have them come right out?"

"Oh nothing those guys did could cause this. It's something we, ah, the girls did to the machine. They will just charge us a big service call," Mike whined.

"Mike, do like I said or give me the number and I will call."

He began to open his mouth again then saw my frown and slammed his hand down and left the room.

The head seamstress handed me a piece of paper with a telephone number and a name on it. "This is the company number and this is the man who was here."

I used my cell phone and called the number. I asked the dispatcher to send this tech right away. If necessary, I would pay for an emergency service call. He said the man was not busy and would be there in twenty minutes.

Sue came in to see how I was coming. I showed her the difference between the two machines and told her about the recent inspections and warranty upgrades. She was puzzled by the warranty upgrade saying the machines were all under a maintenance agreement.

The tech walked in with his toolbox.

I explained what I had found and showed him the shim that appeared to work itself loose. He unscrewed the little head, removed the shim putting a new one in from his toolbox. I had the senior seamstress use some scrap material and repeat the seam we needed done. She sewed two pieces before it began doing the same thing. I moved the regulator around and it acted the same.

"Did you change brands of those shims lately?" I asked.

The tech thought for a second and said, "I was running out of these warranty upgrade shims and grabbed another box before I came out the other day. I only needed a couple and I think they were up here. Hmm, I wonder if it was these two machines."

"Do you have any of the other warranty shims back at the shop?"

He answered immediately, "Sure, we received a case of them not long ago so we could do these upgrades."

"Go get four or five boxes so we have a comparison. Here, give me the box you're using now so I can mark it to keep it separate."

The tech took off meeting Mike as he walked out the door. Mike said, "What are you doing here?"

"I'll be back," the tech said as he left.

"What's he doing here, I didn't call him yet," Mike said sounding perturbed.

"I called him. I think we've discovered the problem," I said then spoke directly to Mike. "Let's go to Sue's office a minute."

The office was temporarily empty so I sat him down. "Mike, the way to do perfect work is to take care of problems immediately. Never let something go that you can begin correcting at that moment. If someone asks you to work with them on a problem, do it now, not later. I'm confused why you didn't respond when I asked you to get the maintenance man back out."

"I'm the plant manager and I'm responsible for costs. Those guys cost a lot of money."

I held my hand up and said, "You have to think like a manager then. Why do we have a maintenance agreement? So when we have a problem we can ask them to hurry and correct it. This line being down is costing money because people can't work. Even if you put them on a different line, the production schedule gets messed up. Each shift this line isn't working, the schedule gets farther behind. If you are being too stressed lately, let's send you on a vacation. If having these three shifts is too much for you, then we need to have some good assistants. Whatever it is that's making you uncooperative, we need to fix it."

Mike slumped in his chair and said, "You're right. I'm really frazzled. I was in and out all weekend trying to figure out what was wrong with those machines. My wife is upset with me not being home. She's been sick and I should spend more time with her but I have this responsibility. And the worse thing is, I have two employees that are not working out and I have to let them go. I hate that but I don't know what else to do."

"Let's take care of one thing at a time. The tech will be back any second with the parts we need. Let's check out whether the manufacturer has a bad run or what, then we'll take care of the other two problems. Let's go to the sewing room."

We went into the room just as the tech arrived. He had six boxes. I looked at all six boxes and compared them with the one he had left. The only thing different was the manufacture date and lot number. Three of the boxes had the lot number of the bad box. The others were a higher number. I pulled one shim from each of the boxes and laid it in front of the box it came from. Next I pulled a shim from the box that I thought had bad ones in it.

I turned to the senior seamstress and asked, "Any chance you would have a tweezers and magnifying glass?"

The tech said, "I have both. Here use these," he said handing me the tools.

I placed the known bad shim next to one of the same lot number and they looked identical. Next I placed the known bad one next to one from the other lot number. There was a major difference in thickness. The higher lot number was visibly thicker. I handed a thicker shim to the tech and told him to put it in the other machine. When he was through I had the senior seamstress use some scrap and sew the seam we needed. She did six in a row and it never failed. I then had the tech take a shim from a different box with the suspected bad lot number and put it in the machine that was just working.

He replaced the shim and the seamstress began doing the seam. On the third seam the machine was surging again with the erratic stitches.

I told the tech that we had found the problem so I had him change the shims in both machines with the good ones. I put the bad shims into the boxes they came from and stacked them separately. On the boxes was the company's telephone number. I used my cell phone to call the number and when they answered with the name on the machine I asked for technical support.

Once the tech was on the line I explained what had been the problem and what we had found. I gave him the bad lot number and the good lot number and defined how we had determined the problem. When he said since I was probably a small user this may not be that much of a problem. When I told him we had about fifteen hundred machines and were anticipating purchasing that many more if we received the type of service we expected, he straightened up.

He said, "You have a maintenance agreement so you don't have to pay for a problem like this."

I told him, "No it doesn't cost me to fix a problem, but my line has lost almost three full days which is nine shifts plus the waste of the material and time of bad garments."

He said too casually, "You can just sell them as seconds or mix them in with your stock."

I answered him very caustically, "We do not have seconds. Our garments come from our line perfect, period, no seconds, no waste."

I was becoming agitated, "Look what your saying is not logical. I've called to report a major problem with a lot number. Make your customers and techs aware of it. Goodbye."

The tech was smiling and said, "They can be some arrogant assholes."

"Okay Mike, we've resolved this one let's go take care of the next."

The tech said, "Thanks for finding this, I'll tell my boss so we can get rid of this lot number completely. I hope our other techs haven't put any in yet, but I'll find out. Thanks again."

As Mike and I were going to go downstairs to get the two people he needed to take action on he said, "You know what, you made me see something that I should have done. These two were working on cutting and were not doing a good job. I'll just give them different jobs. I need both inside custodian and outside maintenance. Let me switch them and see if they do better. It would be a shame to waste someone we have already hired."

"Go have one of your assistants do that and let's take care of the last problem. I'll wait in Sue's office for you."

Sue was back in the office so I explained what we found. She said she already heard that the line was starting back up. She gave me a hug thanking me for taking the time to help.

I told her about Mike's stress level and she said she had noticed he had been stressed out lately. I told her of his three immediate problems and how he was going to handle the second one. Sue asked me, "How are you going to fix up his home problem?"

"Easy, send them over to the Don Cesar for a couple of days and help him work out his time schedule so he can be with his wife more. He says she's been sick, we should probably find out what kind of sick."

Sue picked up her phone and talked to Betty for a second and hung up. "Mike's wife miscarried a couple of months ago. That's why she's freaked out. I don't think they have any other kids. We'll get them to a specialist and get her knocked up and they will be fine."

Mike had been standing at the door and said, "I need some time to get that job done. I've just not had time or the energy."

"Call your wife Mike. Tell her to pack up some clothes and especially her swimsuit. You are on your way to the Don Cesar for the rest of the week, through Saturday night. Come back next Monday refreshed, okay?"

"I can't afford the Don Cesar for a week," Mike whined.

"Don't whine. Just go, it's paid for, if you want to make your wife, Sue and me happy, get out of here. Get!"

Mike's face went from a frown to a grin. He smiled at Sue and me, turned, and left. I told Sue to call Betty to tell her that if Mike calls or comes by she was to be notified immediately. She agreed and called Betty.

Sue walked out of the office and returned with a small Spanish guy. "Sergio, you remember Steve, my husband. Mike is going to be gone for this week so you have to take up his slack. If you need to swap around with the other shift managers, do it. If you have a problem that you can't or don't know how to resolve, call me."

"Thank you Miss Sue, I'll do a good job. I really want that manager job at the new plant. Thank you very much," Sergio said as he headed out the door.

Sue said, "Nothing like a little trial by fire or under fire or whatever it is. Let me get Stevie and you can feed us. I'm starved."

It was already nearing two. No wonder she was hungry. We went to the little Greek place and had a nice lunch. The owner couldn't get over little Steve. He sat in his carry seat and played with a chew toy the whole time we ate. We left in separate vehicles for the house where we stashed Stevie with Juanita and gathered the girls that wanted to go with us to the gym.

Glenda told Juanita to get her workout stuff on as she needed to go too. Glenda said that Martin and she could watch the kids as they would probably sleep anyway.