Dingbat Hysteria
Have you ever been involved in an emergency that in reality there was no emergency to begin with? Ever been surrounded by women in their late 40s to early 50s that completely freak out over absolutely nothing? I have. It just happened here in our building.
When I got in to work today, I discovered He-Man slaving away at one of the assembly benches. In front of him there were a couple of unfamiliar looking PC boards that he was covering in goop and placing inside metal clamshell enclosures. I checked out what he was up to. The boards were installed in metal shields and had a large amount of small gauge wires soldered in all over the place. He-Man sandwiched the assemblies into the shields drenched in a silicone like adhesive and then he placed both of these things into our VCO oven. We use the VCO oven to heat the completed assemblies up to 50C to age some of the parts and stress test them. Some of the initial tuning has to be done while they're hot. Why I dunno. Anyway He-Man said the oven was off limits tonight due to his little experiment.
The experiment was partially to prove out a new adhesive. I didn't pay attention to the rest of what He-Man explained. He set the oven temperature much higher than we normally use it for and warned me that the adhesives inside might stink up the area later on in the shift but not to worry about it, none of it was going to outgas toxic fumes or anything. Cool. Basically I could forget about what he was experimenting on and just work, business as usual.
Hours later a strange stink did permeate the production area as advertised. It smelled like a pungeant sweet, heavy rubber. Sort of like Dow Corning RTV, but a little weirder. I walked over to the little blue environmental oven and opened up the door. A wave of stink hit me. What I sniffed was definetly He-Man's handiwork. I closed the door to the oven and sat back down to work on some phase mods. Phase mods are tough to build because I have to surface mount some FETs and some really small metal hardline cables. To do the job right you have to have a steady hand and alot of patience. If you're experiencing a coffee achiever moment or having a bad day, your hands probably won't be steady enough to do the work properly. Once in a while my hands are too jittery so I won't work on delicate stuff like that until another day. It's just not worth all the rework I'd have to do if I mangled up a board just because I was unsteady.
As stink from the oven spread out over our floor of the building, some dingbats on the Precision Group began to get nervous. I didn't notice it at first, but their nervousness turned into serious worry and then reached genuine panic. Attempting to nip this in the bud I got up from my seat and politely yelled at them that what they were smelling was a planned experiment to cure some adhesive in our oven and not to flip out about it. A couple of the dingbats saw me, and heard what I said. I went back to work.
About a half hour later, Super Shopper and her crew of female retail warriors came barging through our line panic stricken and told all of us to evacuate the building. When she got to where I was sitting I looked right into her eyes and said to her, "What the hell are you babbling about"? Super Shopper was already flustered and red in the face. Any time someone talks to her like that her rage switch gets pressed and she becomes even more of a maniac than she already is. She shouted into my face "I saw smoke coming out of the heater vents by the windows over there and do you smell it? The building is on fire! We have to get everyone out now"! Fuck me. These broads are so incredibly stupid. I could probably hit Super Shopper right between the eyes with a small hammer and she wouldn't feel it. Maybe she would blink once, that's about all the reaction I would get. I told Super Shopper that she didn't see any smoke. Then I marched her over to the oven and yanked on the door latch. "There's what you've been smelling. No fire, no smoke, no evacuation. Get back to work ya nitwit".
Super Shopper was instantly possessed by demons, or perhaps by Satan himself. I sometimes wonder if the Devil uses Super Shopper's body as a vacation house from time to time because after all, she is pure evil on occasion. She screamed at me to get out of the building or she would have me fired, and some other dumb bullshit that I didn't pay attention to. When I make Super Shopper that mad at me I know I've won, and I bask in the glory of it while it lasts. Doesn't matter what foolishness comes out of her mouth it still puts a self satisfied smirk on my face. I brushed her off and went back to work right in front of her while she stood there hovering between female hysteria and total anger. I guess she left after a minute or two. I didn't notice. What I didn't know until it was too late, was the dingbats called site security.
Fifteen minutes later I got a tap on my shoulder that startled the shit out of me. It was one of the dayshift supervisors. I swiveled around my my chair to face him and it looked like he threw on some clothes as fast as he could to come into the site. He told me to evacuate the building. I shook my head at him in disgust. Nobody listens to me around here. It's so fucking frustrating, let me tell you. Once again I got up from where I was working and opened up the oven containing He-Man's experiment. I said to the manager, "There's no smoke in here, there is no fire anywhere. The women didn't see anything, they freaked out and made shit up because they all have brains the size of a pea. Here's what everyone was smelling tonight. Sniff for yourself, dude". He checked it out and I shut the door to the oven. No sooner did I close the door he looked at me and ordered me to evacuate the building due to a possible fire coming from the window heaters. What the fuck? Was I speaking to him in Russian or something?
I gave up, and walked outside to the parking lot. Fuck it.
When I got in to work today, I discovered He-Man slaving away at one of the assembly benches. In front of him there were a couple of unfamiliar looking PC boards that he was covering in goop and placing inside metal clamshell enclosures. I checked out what he was up to. The boards were installed in metal shields and had a large amount of small gauge wires soldered in all over the place. He-Man sandwiched the assemblies into the shields drenched in a silicone like adhesive and then he placed both of these things into our VCO oven. We use the VCO oven to heat the completed assemblies up to 50C to age some of the parts and stress test them. Some of the initial tuning has to be done while they're hot. Why I dunno. Anyway He-Man said the oven was off limits tonight due to his little experiment.
The experiment was partially to prove out a new adhesive. I didn't pay attention to the rest of what He-Man explained. He set the oven temperature much higher than we normally use it for and warned me that the adhesives inside might stink up the area later on in the shift but not to worry about it, none of it was going to outgas toxic fumes or anything. Cool. Basically I could forget about what he was experimenting on and just work, business as usual.
Hours later a strange stink did permeate the production area as advertised. It smelled like a pungeant sweet, heavy rubber. Sort of like Dow Corning RTV, but a little weirder. I walked over to the little blue environmental oven and opened up the door. A wave of stink hit me. What I sniffed was definetly He-Man's handiwork. I closed the door to the oven and sat back down to work on some phase mods. Phase mods are tough to build because I have to surface mount some FETs and some really small metal hardline cables. To do the job right you have to have a steady hand and alot of patience. If you're experiencing a coffee achiever moment or having a bad day, your hands probably won't be steady enough to do the work properly. Once in a while my hands are too jittery so I won't work on delicate stuff like that until another day. It's just not worth all the rework I'd have to do if I mangled up a board just because I was unsteady.
As stink from the oven spread out over our floor of the building, some dingbats on the Precision Group began to get nervous. I didn't notice it at first, but their nervousness turned into serious worry and then reached genuine panic. Attempting to nip this in the bud I got up from my seat and politely yelled at them that what they were smelling was a planned experiment to cure some adhesive in our oven and not to flip out about it. A couple of the dingbats saw me, and heard what I said. I went back to work.
About a half hour later, Super Shopper and her crew of female retail warriors came barging through our line panic stricken and told all of us to evacuate the building. When she got to where I was sitting I looked right into her eyes and said to her, "What the hell are you babbling about"? Super Shopper was already flustered and red in the face. Any time someone talks to her like that her rage switch gets pressed and she becomes even more of a maniac than she already is. She shouted into my face "I saw smoke coming out of the heater vents by the windows over there and do you smell it? The building is on fire! We have to get everyone out now"! Fuck me. These broads are so incredibly stupid. I could probably hit Super Shopper right between the eyes with a small hammer and she wouldn't feel it. Maybe she would blink once, that's about all the reaction I would get. I told Super Shopper that she didn't see any smoke. Then I marched her over to the oven and yanked on the door latch. "There's what you've been smelling. No fire, no smoke, no evacuation. Get back to work ya nitwit".
Super Shopper was instantly possessed by demons, or perhaps by Satan himself. I sometimes wonder if the Devil uses Super Shopper's body as a vacation house from time to time because after all, she is pure evil on occasion. She screamed at me to get out of the building or she would have me fired, and some other dumb bullshit that I didn't pay attention to. When I make Super Shopper that mad at me I know I've won, and I bask in the glory of it while it lasts. Doesn't matter what foolishness comes out of her mouth it still puts a self satisfied smirk on my face. I brushed her off and went back to work right in front of her while she stood there hovering between female hysteria and total anger. I guess she left after a minute or two. I didn't notice. What I didn't know until it was too late, was the dingbats called site security.
Fifteen minutes later I got a tap on my shoulder that startled the shit out of me. It was one of the dayshift supervisors. I swiveled around my my chair to face him and it looked like he threw on some clothes as fast as he could to come into the site. He told me to evacuate the building. I shook my head at him in disgust. Nobody listens to me around here. It's so fucking frustrating, let me tell you. Once again I got up from where I was working and opened up the oven containing He-Man's experiment. I said to the manager, "There's no smoke in here, there is no fire anywhere. The women didn't see anything, they freaked out and made shit up because they all have brains the size of a pea. Here's what everyone was smelling tonight. Sniff for yourself, dude". He checked it out and I shut the door to the oven. No sooner did I close the door he looked at me and ordered me to evacuate the building due to a possible fire coming from the window heaters. What the fuck? Was I speaking to him in Russian or something?
I gave up, and walked outside to the parking lot. Fuck it.
posted by factory_peasant at 9:56 AM
2 Comments:
Jack-
just read your stuff. i'd like to know more about your time spent in Vietnam and what you experienced. are you planning on adding more to the site or are you keeping the focus on dioxin?
i used to work at a drugstore and our store manager was sprayed with Agent Orange while he was in Vietnam. he once told me there wasn't a day that went by that he didn't experience some kind of severe pain from the exposure to the chemical. i don't think i'd be able to live like that...
Wad. not exactly sure what you mean when you say 'hammered the word'. please enlighten me, o vocabulary guru.
as for He-Man's oven experiment i don't remember if it worked out or not. i'll see him tomorrow at work and i'll ask. he might not remember either. heh.
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