Machine Shop Sparky

Sometimes the gods smile upon me, my friends. I'm not sure what's behind it all, but this year is shaping up to be one of my best years ever. It didn't start out well. A lot of January and February was a depressing epic of disasterous proportions. But I've turned it around. And as apprehensive as I was about this new job, I am taking ass and kicking names all over the place.

The assembly operation was down today because the testing range was down in preparation for shutdown, which is next week, so we did some cleaning and rearranging of the cell. At least at first. Remember yesterday how I mentioned that Amanda was the one there I hadn't yet broken through with? Well, she and I got sent to the machine shop to work the rest of the day (and probably tomorrow), and so I got to work right next to her for most of the day, and the breaking through has begun. Sometimes I wonder if the Nice Lady, or whoever is in charge of me up there, reads these posts and then makes the necessary tweaks. I think Amanda and I might get along very well given the chance. Working in the machine shop wasn't too bad either. It's a little more tedious than assembly, but once I got in the rhythm I could deal with it.

I also had my 30 day review. Holy cats, has it already been that long? It flew right by. I was brought into Mike's office for a small meeting with him and Barney, and Mike went over their notes on me. It's similar to many company reviews I've been through, in that there are a number of categories, and I'm given a score out of 100 in each. I wish I had a copy of it, because I'd transcribe all the numbers for you here, but you're going to have to rely on my memory. Seeing as I've only been there a short time, and the job is uber-complicated, it was explained to me that the scores in most categories were really pretty good. In a lot of the stuff I was scored a 79, just under a B grade. Alllllllmost, but not quite. That's for the stuff like job knowledge and accuracy and such. I'm doing well, but I have a ways to go, and that's to be expected. One of those 79's was in the category of 'Interest', as in how interested I seem in the job, I guess. Mike explained that one as, "You're a pretty quiet guy. You're a little hard to read." Give me time. Before long most of them will forget I was ever this quiet, I assure you.

But I did get four(4) 100 scores. Those were in the categories you'd expect that I would hit the hardest: attitude, reliability, initiative, and .... something. I've been racking my brain all afternoon trying to remember what that 4th one was, but it was something in that same family of qualities. I was especially pleased with the Initiative score, as that was something I always thought I didn't get enough credit for on my LSI reviews. It's also nice to know that I work for a company where it's actually possible to get a 100 score on anything at all. LSI and FMC, I'm looking at you.

We got out a little early today, which I'm sure is due to the shutdown thing, and word is that we're getting out at 1:50 again tomorrow. I'm hoping tomorrow afternoon is a little more productive than today was, since I was lazy and took a nap instead of going to Borders like I was supposed to. Well, tomorrow is another day. Maybe I'll get sent out to the machine shop again with that cutie Amanda, too. Woo hoo.

Good day. Good day.