On Sunday, July 28, 2013 4:22:22 PM UTC-4, Eisboch wrote:
wrote in message

...





Heh. The mouth-breathing idiots they send to the booth to plug in the

equipment have to be shown how to do it (literally). I've watched

them destroy about as much stuff as they've sucessfully hooked up. Of

course, when they destroy something union rules prevent them from

being fired, and if they break a nail doing it they get time off with

compensation.



--------------------------------



Years ago, my company built several vacuum coating systems for

McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis. The systems were assembled and went

through acceptance testing at our facility before shipment to

McDonnell Douglas. They deposited sacrificial coatings onto wing

sections and landing gear components of aircraft used by the Navy for

landing on aircraft carriers. Interestingly, the same system design

was later licensed by McDonnell Douglas to be used by commercial

bakeries for items like bread pans and other things used in the baking

industry.



Anyway, after the first system was shipped and installed at the St.

Louis facility, I visited to see how the installation went and to

make sure the system was operating properly. While watching it go

through it's paces with the McDonnell Douglas project manager, I

noticed that a set point in one of the instruments needed a slight

"tweak". I pulled out my "tweaker" (a small screwdriver with an

eighth inch flat blade) and approached the control console to make

the adjustment when the project manager grabbed my arm and said, "You

can't touch it!". I explained I was just going to make a minor

adjustment that would take about 2 seconds to do but he told me he

would have to fill out a work request to the McDonnell Douglas union

shop to make the adjustment.



I couldn't believe it.



So, we waited. Went to lunch. Came back and waited some more.

Finally the union electrician showed up with his huged tool box on

wheels and a leather tool belt strapped to his waist. He asked what

we wanted done.



I decided to be a wise ass. I told him that the foreline valve on

the diffusion pump was opening at too high a pressure, potentially

causing backstreaming into the process chamber. I requested that he

adjust the crossover pressure to 100 microns and set the foreline

valve high setpoint to no more than 150 microns.



I then handed him my "tweaker".



He got the hint and suggested that maybe it would be better if I did

it since I had designed the system.

LOL. I had to point to ty-raps that had to be cut, then point to connections to be made, all because they were "protecting the jobs they had "worked" so hard to keep". It's a sick joke, perpetrated on the American public. See my post about Stein's Law.