As of today, the Ashbury family
is at Retirement minus 279 days. Where has the time gone? It seems like just
yesterday we were at R minus 323.
My beloved has been a little
less than chipper over the last few weeks, because that wonderful
beginning-of-the-end scenario he expected to happen mid January, so far hasn’t.
He’d believed that by this point in his final working year of 2017 he’d be well
entrenched in his routine. That routine consists of sitting in his truck,
balancing between transporting loads of finished product to the stock piles and
reading his kindle as he waits for the truck to be loaded.
He’s still boots on the ground,
and the plant (the rock crusher) is yet to be “fired up”. I asked him what the
problem was. He snorted. “What else? We’re waiting for the engineering firm they
hired to figure out that while something may work in a computer simulation, it
doesn’t necessarily work in real life.”
Basically, there’s this new
“chute” for a product that is an over-sized rock called gabion stone. According
to the computer simulations, that chute manages to control the rock coming out
of the crusher just fine. The problem? In the real world, larger rocks cannot,
on their own volition or even with the aid of a little bit of gravity, turn
ninety-degree corners. Small gravel and sand, yes. Larger rocks? No. They just
jam up the whole shebang. The laws of physics are laws for a reason.
I asked him if he was itching
to go up to the office and show them, on the chalk board, why the chute won’t
work. He shook his head. At this point, having given so many years to the cause,
and having been looked down upon in the last several years by those with
university degrees in engineering, he said that he’s finally gotten the message,
that he isn’t “qualified” to design these pieces of equipment (despite having
done so for many years, with his “designs” all having successfully lasted for
decades). No, these days he’s quite happy to let the “experts” have at it. It’s
not that he doesn’t care. He did tell them, when they first showed him what they
were planning to do, that the chute wouldn’t work. They didn’t listen. In my
opinion, that’s fair enough. He shrugged and said that it’s not his thousands
upon thousands of dollars being flushed down the drain.
My husband hasn’t exactly been
physically slogging away, though, during these last couple of weeks. Instead,
he’s been managing a few crews of younger men, teaching them how to do other
repairs that need to be done, and letting them slog away. Between you and
me, I don’t think he minds that too much. The only problem is that he’s on his
feet most of the day, and after several years of not being on his feet most of
the day, it’s really hard for him to get used to it.
Aging really isn’t for the
faint of heart.
He did perk up on this past
Monday, as he was assigned to use another truck to do a job connected to
clearing a section of the floor in advance of that area being worked. He’s glad
not to be on his feet this week, and has his fingers crossed that they’re going
to get things back to normal soon. His site has a quota, every year, of how much
stone they are expected to produce to meet projected demand; the longer it takes
to get started on that goal, the longer it takes to achieve it.
Often, his company ends up
offering overtime hours to compensate when long delays happen. I won’t be the
least bit surprised if he decides to go in on some Saturdays again this year, as
he’s done in the last couple of years. He took advantage of the opportunity in
the recent past because in the several years prior to that, there was no
overtime offered at all. The person who was plant manager during those lean
years claimed that was a company-wide policy; however, that was a lie. The truth
was that the more money that manager did not allow his men to earn, the bigger
the bonus he received for himself at year end. The result for his employees is
that each one of those hard-working people had their annual income cut by
several thousands of dollars, each.
You may have
guessed that particular manager was the one who killed my husband’s love
of his job and respect for the company he works for.
Of course, the grapevine has it
that things are not going so well for that man; I’m not surprised in the least.
I really do believe in the principle of sowing and reaping.
Or, to state it as popular
culture would have it, the karma bus has picked that man up for a nice, long
ride.
Love,
Morgan
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