Have you ever been assigned an impossible task?

[fintstone]

The way we do it in the Air Force for aircraft, etc...is have a 7-level inspect completed tasks on critical or dangerous items before they can be put into use. Most journeymen are a 5-level. They earn this distinction through a combination of training and hands on experience. A 7-level is an earned distinction that usually comes with more experience. demonated maturity, and a bit of QC training. In industry, one would expect it to pay slightly better.

[vash]

OMG! bringing up some memories. i had a crap "team leader" on my first project at my current job. i was straight out of school, and very nervous. i had to organize a paving job..well re-paving job, where a local complained of a huge puddle in front of his business. i surveyed the area, and put some spray marks on the curb, so the paver can simply "hit the marks" and the water would flow downhill. has a newb, i over thought it. i had excel worksheets and graphs, illustrating my survey points, and showing the water running downhill..no biggie. enter jackarse: he saw my marks, and said..i had to maintain a 6" curb..and NO! i couldnt pay for some AC grinding. the dude wanted water to run uphill..i did my best, and the huge puddle became a small puddle, and i had a short curb. he threw me under the bus with the boss. i got called in. i pulled out all my notes, my excel sheet, my plan..and photos. and explained the situation. i simply said, "jackass here wants me to defy the laws of physics..." i was pissed. i was cleared..at the end of the meeting i said, "who was the idiot that messed up and put the puddle there in the first place?" silence.. i still work for the same boss, and we get along. the team leader has been fumagated.

[GH85Carrera]

My impossible task was small scale stuff. The owner of the company decide I should get a new title, Production Manager. It did not come with a raise of any sort, just a lot more work. I was supposed to supervise all the employees, do the quality control for the entire place and still do all of my regular work. I tried for a few weeks and saw that it would require me to work 12 hour days. I told him it was a impossible task and he had a choice, I could supervise and produce nothing, or I could go back to my job and he can find another production manager. Since my job production was the start of 70% of the work he hired a production manager at a full salary. If I had been offered that much more money I would have done the 12 hour days.

[javadog]

When I was in college, I shot photos for the campus newspaper. A new 11,500 seat arena had been built and they wanted a shot of the interior. Without setting anything up with the arena management, they sent me down there on short notice and told me they needed the photo in a very short amount of time. Naturally, when I got there, the place was locked down completely. I managed to essentially break into the place but the arena was pitch black and there was nobody around to turn the lights on. I figured my flash wasn't going to be enough light...

JR

[911Freak]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

OK, here's the details:
This was a vertical deep well pump with a 4 piece ridgid coupling.
The motor sits on top of the pump and the solid coupling not only transfers the torsional power, but also provides the lift to keep the pump rotor centered axially in it's stationary parts. The motor acts as a radial bearing and also a thrust bearing.

The coupling takes hex head cap screws (bolts) to hold it's parts together.
The female holes drilled and tapped in the coupling parts are 7/16" NC.
The millwright didn't have any 7/16" bolts handy (they are not that common in this industry but I had them in my shop) and instead of asking his supervision to get some (which might have taken 10 minutes to round up) he grabbed some 3/8" NC bolts and tried them. He wanted to get the job done so he could co home on time.
The 3/8" bolts have a different thread per inch count so they grabbed.
He tightened them up and they seemed to work OK so he said to himself that'll work.
This was a small 12 stage centrifugal pump designed to provide high discharge pressure but relatively low flow. it was in critical service.
It had a spare pump but the spare was out of service waiting for parts to repair it. The OEM didn't support the model anymore so we had outside vendors replicating the parts.

We started the process unit up after the maintenance was done and the 3/8" bolts held for a while, but eventually broke and damaged this pump.
Without the spare pump to go to, we lost production. $$$$$$$
If he had asked his supervision for the right bolts this would not have happened.

Even a really bad mickey-mouse mechanic knows better. This guy was making $34 an hour. No excuses.

Was his name Primitive Pete?

I mean seriously what was this guy thinking?

[lendaddy]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

A while ago a contract millwright was working in the plant and put the wrong sized bolts in a machine. it failed. He later admitted he knew the bolts were the wrong size but he figured they'd work.
he wasn't working for me but there was a big investigation.
Long story longer, a recommendation from the investigation was to "Develop a system that will verify that the correct parts are being utilized in all equipment before it is deemed ready for service".
It may sound easy to the layman but in reality it is so complex it makes my head hurt just contemplating the ramifications.

It was assigned to me because I'm the SME and it came from very high up.

Two choices, one is to put some worthless sound-good cliche ridden procedure together and send it out and be ashamed to have my name on it, or two: work diligently for the next several years to re-vamp the entire maintenance practices of the industry, spending millions of dollars in the process.

I hate that.
I'm pushing back.

They are asking you for legal and CYA eyewash, that's all. Write up a generic policy putting the onus on the employee and they will be happy. Maybe require another employee or supervisor to sign off on items deemed critical or some similar crap.

The guy giving this to you just needs to be able to say he "took care of it".

[Sapporo Guy]

Um, get a white board, some markers and have each repair photographed and signed off on.

Then suggest that all bolts, nuts, screws should be converted to the metric system. These fractional sizes are getting real old!