Oh boy, the supervisors and planners where I work have lost their freaking minds.
The assembly department is going a 4 day work week with 10 hour shifts instead of 5 day weeks with 8 hour shifts.

I don't know reasoning but I do know studies show shifts longer than 8 hours on a regular basis result in more mistakes and generally less total productivity. Especially in an all manual labor department like assembly.

One less lunch break, and it gives them the option of going into the new day off if they get behind. Plus that is one less day of doors open so less power usage, provided there is only one shift.

Uncles house is all rocks, steel, and glass. Some of the rocks are even chunks of glass.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w55yuXAxoW...0/P2160086.JPG

The manufacturing part of the facility works 3 8 hour shifts 5 days a week and typically use volunteers for 3 shifts on Saturday. The machine operators stagger their lunches and breaks so most machines can be kept running 24 hours a day. For several years a Saturday with no overtime is rare and then typically only on long weekends like Thanksgiving.

Assembly was working 2, 8 hour shifts 5 days a week and rarely one 8 hour shift on a Saturday. The new assembly schedule is 2, 10 hour shifts 4 days a week.

Everyone thinks a 4 day work week would be better, but it has been proven time and again that quality and productivity goes down driving total costs up, despite the 2 hours a week saved because the facility is not open for the 5th day of breaks and lunches.

There has been a trend for some time as the company has aged that supervisory positions and staff that were occupied by people with specialized education have been replaced by promoting employees without that specialized education. The result is that the workplace has changed from a place people wanted to work, to a place people dread going to.

This 10 hour shift thing is just one example. When the company had a real live college edumicated industrial engineer, he did all he could to keep 3 - 8 hour shifts fully staffed with only occasional overtime, and they never worked on a Saturday. Since the well educated founder of the company passed, and that industrial engineer retired the overtime has steadily increased, employee moral has gone way down, and now we have a department going to a 4 day work week.

Hey, they are currently making money and I get to work from home managing the exchange server and a couple of other servers and take care of my Mom, so what to I care.

Ah ha hahah,

Just got an email announcing a Safety Challenge. If the employees can reduce the number of injuries in the next 90 days, everyone gets a free First Aid Kit. Ah ha haha ha.

If you can use less wrenches, we will give you a free wrench set!

Morning all.

My old bachelor pad house had a hole in the wall behind the dining room table that allowed access to the back of the bath tub. It was a nice textured piece of sheet-rock with a nice looking trim piece to frame it. It was held in place with a neat little clip.

The bathtub was a cast iron pink tub with 100% non standard faucet that I think was unique to the world. Every few years I had to take the entire fixture off and haul it to a local faucet repair place for him to put new seals in it. It had two separate knobs that were about 28 inches apart. It was a pink & green tile bathroom. :eek:

Of course the carpet in the house was gold shag carpet. :cool: :confused:

When I did that bathroom remodel I decided I would never ever again do anything like it again myself. That resembled real work. Oh and the toilet was pink as well.

I had to gut it to the studs on the subfloor, and remove every bit of sheetrock except the ceiling. The old toilet was connected to a lead drain which I had to have replaced.

One cool thing is the medicine cabinet had a little slot in the back of it. You could drop a used razor blade in the slot and it just fell to the dirt under the house. There was a decent pile of rusty razor blades from previous owners.

Hehehehehehehehehe

He said shag

:)

I hate gfi outlets! My folks got us a wood pellet grill for cooking on for Christmas. Plug in on the patio and about 5 mins in it pops the GFI. Replaced the GFi and it still popped it. Got to reading online and apparently gfis don't like heating elements, which this has to light the fire. Put a regular outlet in and it runs great. Need to get an outlet cover that will protect the outlet from getting splashed now.

Stijn!!
 

Start Geezer voice:

Why back in my day when I was you age we had to light a fireplace with a match or a lighter. And we had to chop wood with an axe. Why we never had to plug in a fireplace. What is the world coming to? What next, are ya gonna have to plug in a shovel or your hammer? Ya whippersnapper.

End Geezer voice.

GFI outlets were my undoing on our last work-cation.

I am giggling as I read this sitting next to my fireplace that burns real trees that were cut down with a chainsaw and split with an ax.

when I was young, we used to have to come home every afternoon after school in the winter and chop the firewood, set the fire with paper and matches and tend it to get warm. These days we come home, the heaters have automatically turned on and the house it toasty.

Kids today just don't know what there are missing out on!

It's a lot of work but I do love my fireplace

I used to do that whole chainsaw /splitting wood thing when I was in my 30s. Now, I'll kick back and push a button. :cool:

There's no fireplace at all in our DC condo, where it be more useful than the gas FP we have in our SoCal house. Oh well, maybe I can play YouTube videos of a roaring FP on my TV.

Aren't wood burners against the law in Ca? or parts of it anyway

Ca, some parts are edible.

Brother did a major remodel on the current house before he moved in...It was to increase the flu size on the fireplace so it could burn wood instead of one of them glowy log gas insert things. Then he put a gas insert in anyway.

Nice

Evening groovers SmileWavy

Ours was originally a wood burner with a gas starter, but the PO burned fires that were way too hot, which caused some damage to the hearth and firebox. We wanted to give the fireplace a face lift after we bought the house, and elected to go completely gas (insert) while we were at it.