The arrival of our first one predated my hiring only by a little, but he had already found time to fall behind on his work.
We knew we were meeting our new machinist that day, but after waiting for him for 20 minutes most of us had busied ourselves with our computers doing trivial work or trying to figure our if we had the time wrong. We barely noticed him when he wandered in: you don't normally expect strangers to show up on a federal base, and sometimes you just stop looking for them. The man wandered up to Tie-Dye's desk where he made himself comfortable, primarily by kicking his muddy shoes up onto my boss' keyboard. Tie-dye looked at him, then at me, then back at the man at his desk, trying to piece together what was going on.
"Excuse me," it was Tie-dye's very politest voice, "but, who are you?"
The machinist casually laced his fingers behind his head and pressed his feet into the desk to lean back, "Who me? I'm God, baby!" Turning to one side, he made a little clicking noise at Daniella and nodded at her in a manner I'm sure he thought was devastatingly attractive.
***
She was livid, "You have got to get rid of him."
Crash always believes in the best of everybody, "Aww now, I know you've had your misunderstandings... but he does great work..."
"You don't make Holocaust jokes to jews."
"How would he have known you were Jewish?"
Crash always believes in the best of everybody, "Aww now, I know you've had your misunderstandings... but he does great work..."
"You don't make Holocaust jokes to jews."
"How would he have known you were Jewish?"
***
I'm not sure if it was the fact that he tried to randomly purchase magnesium (a rather flammable metal) instead of aluminum, that he randomly powder-coated a component likely to overheat in black and billed the project for it, or the fact that he tried to make the body with tack-welds which fell apart. Personally, I was most amused by when Daniella tried to have a talk with him so they could sort out their differences and learn to get along, and he accused her of "trying to get him alone because she wanted him." No matter the cause, it wasn't very long until we sent him on his way.
"Fuck it," Crash threw the powder-coated tack-welded sheet metal box aside in annoyance, "I wouldn't use it as a urinal."
The next machinist misprogrammed an expensive CNC mill so that it thought the metal wasn't some place it was. It did a full plunge through the workpiece's surface, got stuck there, grabbed the part we were working on, shook it like a rag-doll, ripped it in half, and dragged the top half out of the vice and into the ceiling of the machine so it could trash that for good measure.
The next machinist hid his files on a secret server and regularly threatened to not let anybody have his work when he believed his paycheck was late. He was, in reality, one of the only ones being paid on time.
Another one sprayed Sys with a can of compressed air for cleaning things, turning it upside down so it sprayed it in liquid form. He thought it was pretty funny, but Sys got a hospital trip for the burn.
A good machinist is hard to find.
"Fuck it," Crash threw the powder-coated tack-welded sheet metal box aside in annoyance, "I wouldn't use it as a urinal."
The next machinist misprogrammed an expensive CNC mill so that it thought the metal wasn't some place it was. It did a full plunge through the workpiece's surface, got stuck there, grabbed the part we were working on, shook it like a rag-doll, ripped it in half, and dragged the top half out of the vice and into the ceiling of the machine so it could trash that for good measure.
The next machinist hid his files on a secret server and regularly threatened to not let anybody have his work when he believed his paycheck was late. He was, in reality, one of the only ones being paid on time.
Another one sprayed Sys with a can of compressed air for cleaning things, turning it upside down so it sprayed it in liquid form. He thought it was pretty funny, but Sys got a hospital trip for the burn.
A good machinist is hard to find.
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