9.18.1996

I'm angry again at the idiots I have to work with. I'm kicking ass on this instrument line and I am working hard at the final assembly job so we can keep up with the planned order schedule management has for each month. We are always behind on the order schedule for a variety of reasons, but I don't want one of those reasons to be due to the fact that we don't work fast enough. Today J2 wanted to talk to me. He pulled me aside and said he wanted me to start cross training in other areas of the instrument assembly so I might slow down on my final assembly job. His excuse was that I have backed up so many completed instruments on the test area that they can't keep up. It's making him look bad. The real situation is J2 doesn't want to start working on any of the instruments. He wants to kick back and every once in a while test a power supply so he looks like he's doing something. J2 is just being plain lazy.

Testing a power supply takes J2 about 25 minutes, he said. I know for a fact one of the only capable techs on the line can do the same job in 10 minutes. So I don't see what J2's problem is in the first place other than he just doesn't want to do the work. I didn't see any sense in cross training anywhere else in the assembly area because I already know most of it. When The Troll burned me out of my desk job the first thing I got dumped on me was all the sub-assemblies on this product. I told J2 this, then he suggested I train on Slobbering Mouth Kid's job.

Slobbering Mouth Kid works on VCOs (voltage controlled oscillators). Each one of our boxes needs a matched set of these VCOs or the whole unit is essentially worthless. One of the main selling points is the product's extremely low phase noise specs. Nothing else out there in the test and measurement world can touch what this box does with regard to phase noise and this design of VCO is unique. It's like nothing I've ever seen before. Each VCO has to be hand built, tuned, and tested. None of it is easy. The construction consists of two paper thin copper plated boards that have sets of matched pin diodes soldered into one section. These boards have to be precisely bent to form a box shape and inside will be placed a few clear acrylic blocks. A lot of skilled soldering has to be done. Outside plates are mounted to the assembly and then a PCB is added to the top. Threaded copper slugs are loaded in the bottom and they are run up and down inside the acrylic blocks to cause the frequency ranges to shift. From what I've seen so far working on VCOs is a job I don't want. It's a king sized headache, besides they already have The Squirrel slated for training on that job.

I'm frustrated at the lack of motivation these people show on the job. All of them with few exceptions screw around way too much. They wander around the building aimlessly, bullshitting on the phone, and taking tons of smoke breaks (in addition to all the other breaks they get around here). The Drunk is pretty weak as far as a supervisor goes. I suppose I'll start training on the power supply job tomorrow. Fuck 'em. I'll learn this job on top of all the other shit I'm already capable of performing and I'll still manage to keep the pressure on them. Lazy shitbags.