Faux Pas
Faux Pas
(OP)
A rule of survival:
In any situation, think before you speak.
In my first years of work, my company was bought out or merged or something and several operating units were closed down as part of the "rationalisation" program. Of course, a lot of folk got laid off.
One plant that closed produced orifice plates: "CROPs and TOPs" and manufacture moved down to our plant.
We also had some people move down and provide some training and one illustrated his talk with some pretty good stories.
One day we had a visiting inspector and it was my job to look after him. He seemed not to be the happiest sole so I related one of the stories I had been told of how an oriface plate installation was being commissioned and the engineer rang back to say that he couldn't get a flow registered.
Aftermuch discussion and following lots of tests, the engineer finally decided to open up the pipework and inspect the orifice.
It had no hole but it did have an inspection mark.
He rang the office and spoke to QA about this.
"Hey, I've got this oriface plate with no hole but everything says it was inspected and approved."
The QA guy, whose approval it was, replied "If it passed inspection, its got a hole."
This story went down like a lead baloon with my visiting inspector.
"Did you never hear of a blank oriface plate?" he asked through gritted teeth, explaining that sometimes blanks would be provided to be sized on site later.
It just hadn't ocured to me that laid-off QA guys would get work as inspectors.... I guess I just about made his day.
A less generous guy might have found a way to make some trouble for me.
Fortunately my ears are drying out now and I have learned some discretion and that part of surviving is not to make enemies, they can have long memories.
But it's an amusing occupation watching others make the same mistakes and look horrified when they learn what they did.
In any situation, think before you speak.
In my first years of work, my company was bought out or merged or something and several operating units were closed down as part of the "rationalisation" program. Of course, a lot of folk got laid off.
One plant that closed produced orifice plates: "CROPs and TOPs" and manufacture moved down to our plant.
We also had some people move down and provide some training and one illustrated his talk with some pretty good stories.
One day we had a visiting inspector and it was my job to look after him. He seemed not to be the happiest sole so I related one of the stories I had been told of how an oriface plate installation was being commissioned and the engineer rang back to say that he couldn't get a flow registered.
Aftermuch discussion and following lots of tests, the engineer finally decided to open up the pipework and inspect the orifice.
It had no hole but it did have an inspection mark.
He rang the office and spoke to QA about this.
"Hey, I've got this oriface plate with no hole but everything says it was inspected and approved."
The QA guy, whose approval it was, replied "If it passed inspection, its got a hole."
This story went down like a lead baloon with my visiting inspector.
"Did you never hear of a blank oriface plate?" he asked through gritted teeth, explaining that sometimes blanks would be provided to be sized on site later.
It just hadn't ocured to me that laid-off QA guys would get work as inspectors.... I guess I just about made his day.
A less generous guy might have found a way to make some trouble for me.
Fortunately my ears are drying out now and I have learned some discretion and that part of surviving is not to make enemies, they can have long memories.
But it's an amusing occupation watching others make the same mistakes and look horrified when they learn what they did.





RE: Faux Pas
Good luck,
Latexman
RE: Faux Pas
Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng
Construction Project Management
From conception to completion
www.kitsonengineering.com
RE: Faux Pas
Blacksmith
RE: Faux Pas
I love engineering humour.
RE: Faux Pas
RE: Faux Pas
Helpful SW websites FAQ559-520
How to get answers to your SW questions FAQ559-1091
RE: Faux Pas
Once again, that age-old adage applies.
Better to let people think you’re an idiot, than to open your mouth and confirm it.
RE: Faux Pas
The weird thing is, if you know who made the funny mistake, 90% of the time you can make fun of them to their face and they take it with good grace.
LewTam Inc.
Petrophysicist, Leading Hand, Natural Horseman, Prickle Farmer, Crack Shot, Venerable Yogi.
RE: Faux Pas
Learning from the mistakes of others is far better:
A colleague of mine was at an ISA dinner or some such similar, his first (and nearly last) time of being allowed out in such august company, and proceded to wax lyrical about our companies products.
Fair enough, maybe, but when he then laid into the competitors products (a no-no in any event) he failed to take account of the fact that that company was represented at the same dinner table as our own after dinner speaker. Rather than get into a slanging match he simply sat quite and then sent a strong letter to the MD.
It is a sad thing when some engineers are not allowed out on their own because of what they may or may not say. The social graces are often not much attended to by company training programs and yet the ability not to put ones foot in it is surely a pretty strong requirement and one wrong word can do endless harm.
There are some excellent Video Arts traning films produced by John Cleese that proved very amusing and instructional. My fvaourite is the service engineer who visits a client, regards the offending piece of equipment, sucks his teeth, shakes his head and then says "Who sold you this then?".
Despite having seen this film, one service engineer (and by training, history and nature of the products, of necessity a true engineer) continued to accompanied excurions to key accounts to prevent just such occassions.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Faux Pas
Ciao.
RE: Faux Pas
Regards,
RE: Faux Pas
When that person was later hired by my company to fill a senior position, the document and all references to it went strangely AWOL.