Blog number fifty-four Oct 27, 2006
Whenever I saw workmen using a jackhammer, I always thought that the one using the jackhammer was the supervisor and the ones standing around watching were the workmen. I thought that because it looked like fun, using a jackhammer, and I noticed that all the fun jobs - driving the tractor or the truck, were always done by my father or my grandfather. It was only when I rented a jackhammer to break up some cement borders that I understood things are not always as they seem.
I picked out a sixty pounder, thinking it an odd description of a tool. I thought it might have to do with force or energy or something horsepower-like. It doesn't. It is how much the damn thing weighs, and why it is classed by weight became understandable after a few minutes of usage.
Another thing I thought about jack hammers was that the hard work came with the hammering of it - trying to hold it steady. That's not true. That'‘s the easy part. You just hold it upright - probably do that with one finger. The tool does all the work. No, the hard part comes when you move it a few inches to another spot. You have to lift it up, you see. And when you lift sixty pounds every few minutes for hours at a time, it's like lifting free weights for hours at time. Makes your arms melt.
Those were supervisors and replacements standing around watching that man working a jackhammer. Obviously.
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My wife and I were discussing things and at one point she said, "The Pope was a hotsy totsy Nazi. Say that out loud for the full poetic effect.
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I was just daydreaming about when I was stationed at Mather and I got to thinking about the six B-25's that were stationed there when I first arrived in 1955. They are a beautiful bomber. Twin vertical stabilizers on the tail, a small bomber. Anyhow, they used to take off in the morning for practice bombing runs. I saw one take off at night once and blue flames shot out the exhaust. Very impressive.
One morning a couple of us saw them loading up practice bombs for their morning bombing runs and we volunteered to help them load up. Well, I was sitting here daydreaming about that and it suddenly struck me. Why were they practicing bombing runs with obsolete B-25s in 1955-56? Who were they going to bomb for real? Were they to train some South American pilots for their South American purposes?
I wish I had thought of it back then and asked why were they doing what they were doing and what it was that they were doing and if they had any spare change.
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One morning a crowd was gather around a t-29. There was a swarm of bees on the tip of the right wing. Discussions were going on about how they could be dispersed so the aircraft could take off. Finally, above the chatter could be heard the voice of reason, "Leave them alone. When the aircraft takes off, they'll be blown away."
Underneath our fatigues we all wore tee shirts. Mandatory. Come time to get flu shots and a handwritten sign in the clinic said, "Please do not remove fatigue shirts. We do not want airmen standing around with tee shirts visible to female dependents." Makes you want to cry, doesn't it?
That was the first and only year that sign went up.
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When you go to any management training anywhere, one of the main things you are always told is that when you take over as a new manager, make sure you wait long enough to find out what is going on and to get a feel for the place before you start making changes that might upset and/or infuriate the employees. Sound advice, no?
Every couple of years we would get a new Chief of Maintenance and ALWAYS, within days, changes would be made that would make certain parts of our jobs impossible to accomplish.
One year we got orders via a new Chief of Maintenance that the only persons to call in work orders were the crew chiefs. Now, a crew chief's main job was to take out the trash and call for fuel and towing and to run up the engines, checking them out, taxiing the aircraft if need be. They had no training whatsoever in electronics or structure repair. How could they know what needed repairing from reading the writeups? They couldn't.
So that morning we all sat around waiting for the light to dawn in the Chief's head so that he would make everything go back to the way it was always done. That happened about time for lunch - 1100.
Where were his advisors in all this? Were they new too? Or never did understand the operations the working men did? Probably that.
I think I told you this next story once, but I'll tell it again just in case, because it points up my theory that they never understood what we did.
We used to have to come in on the weekends whenever the C model T-29's were flying, in case they had Bomb/Nav problems. The fact that they were not Bomb/Nav flights meant that they never had Bomb/Nav writeups and they never would and therefore our weekends were often messed up for no reason at all.
We complained to our supervisors, who knew the problem, but they said they couldn't do anything, it was the Chief'scall and if he wanted us there , we would be there.
One Saturday I met a Lieutenant in the hall and I told him of the idiocy of our working on week ends when none of our equipment was being used. He said, "Well, I'm sure the General (Of the base) knows what is going on." I told the Lieutenant, "How would he know? Nobody has told him. You didn't know until I told you." That was the last time we had to work week ends.
Fact-finders always go to the supervisors to find out what is going on instead of to where the answers really lie - with the peons doing the actual work. I have seen that happen time and again
You wanna find out if there is mud in the bottom of the ditch? Ask the guy doing the digging, not the supervisor sitting in his office.
I think we win our wars because of a very few men that know what they are doing, and not because everyone knows what they are doing. I love humanity, but does it have to be composed of so many idiots?
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