So for the last couple days, I've been working at another shop. I'm leaving for a week in Maine tomorrow, and a little extra cash couldn't hurt... It's been years since I worked there for a few reasons, the majority of which I am not going to go in to... However, I will tell you this... This place is a meat grinder of life... Working there drains all the energy out of a human being... It is simply one of the un-happiest places I have ever experienced...
Why is it so bad?... Well here's an example... The first day I was there, I had to make crush plates for the welding project they assigned me to... A crush plate is just a thick metal washer essentially that you weld on to a scenic element to keep some idiot with a wrench from simply crushing the tubing with the bolt... Well I need 418 of these things for my project... They had me make 666 of them so there would be some extra for stock... (you get 111 out of each stick of material... 6 stick... no predilection for the 666 number...) Fine, they have a great old Buffalo ironworker to shear and punch these things, so I did them in a couple hours... Once done, I broke down the jigs and cleaned up, then moved to a different aspect... Well the next day I came in, and they decided they needed more... 1200 more roughly... That's 1800 total... Since you put one on each side of a bolt joint, that means 900 bolts... You need at least 2 tubes to bolt together, and drilling tube is like drilling two holes, so that's 3600 holes at the minimum that have to be drilled... If doesn't seem so insane until you are the one drilling that many holes... That's probably 4 days straight of drilling if everything goes well... (it never does)
Now, since I have yet to actually see more than one sheet of the plans, its hard for me to say they're doing something really wrong... However, 900 bolts is an awfully high number... If I put 100 bolts on a single set, that's a lot... Granted, this show is larger than most of what I do in my shop, but there has to be a better way they aren't thinking of... I suspect I'll be back there after I come back from vacation, so perhaps I'll get to see some more plates, and it'll make sense... I am not going to hold out much hope though... They have the ability to make projects much harder than need be over there...