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Old 03-17-2023, 11:23 PM
luke strawwalker's Avatar
luke strawwalker luke strawwalker is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Needville and Shiner, TX
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Originally Posted by tbzep
My dad was an industrial mechanic at an aluminum plant for the entirety of its existence until he retired. He was the first person hired when the plant was built in 1964 and was on site to see where and how everything was done; plumbing, electrical, assembly of the large rolling mills, underground piping, the large cooling towers and water tower, etc. The plant opened a little over a year after he was hired, so that gives you an idea of how in depth his knowledge was of the facilities. He was the last of the original employees to retire. The rest of the mechanics, electricians, etc. didn't give it a second thought the last few months before he retired, when he tried to teach them about some of the stuff that might come into play in the future. They thought they knew it all. A couple months after his retirement there was a major issue and nobody knew enough about the infrastructure to deal with it. They called him to come back to work temporarily, just a week or two. They said don't even worry about bringing your tools, the guys would lend him theirs. He ended up staying over six months, teaching the now eager mechanics, electricians, and the plant engineer the things they couldn't be bothered with at his first retirement.

Now the rocketry related part: Why did I type all this? To tell Paramount/Euclid to please beg the retired Euclid folks to come back and teach you how to make great tubes while they are still alive and able! Pay them well and praise them for their help. If it causes issues with their pensions, offer stocks or something else of value for their time instead of a salary. You can find a way! Some of them might even do it for free if you buy their lunch for them while they are there.

On a side note, my dad was depressed when he first retired. He'd worked every day of his life from early childhood to nearly 80 years of age, first farming and fixing bicycles, then an auto mechanic and body man, until he moved on to industrial mechanic work. Upon retirement he quickly had everything fixed at home and on the small farm. I'd ask for help with things that I could do myself to keep him occupied, but that wasn't quite enough. When they called him to come back, he was the happiest man on earth. When he re-retired (technical term) his depression was gone. It was nice to be needed...indispensable even.


Yeah modern companies often cut off their nose to spite their face.

My BIL in Indiana worked at a bolt factory making automotive fasteners (door jamb bolts, other assorted fasteners particularly TORX type stuff) and he set up and ran several different machines doing various draws and roll threading, etc. Lots of machines cutting steel coil to length, doing the stamping/forming, etc. Well, the company got bought by some Italian outfit and of course they wanted to make more money and thought they could "do it better". They had a lot of local farmers working for them, working in the plant during the midsummer and winter when the crops were just growing to maturity and when the fields were snowed in after harvest... but then when you employ farmers, you have to realize you're going to have a lot of planting season and harvest season absenteeism... guys taking their vacations to get the crop in or out of the field. Sorta like I told my nephew's girlfriend one time-- you date a farm boy, you have to expect to be a planting season widow and harvest season widow... and since they were into hunting, a deer season widow."

Anyway, they decided to make it near impossible for farmers to take off for planting and harvest, and so a bunch quit, including my BIL. The company figured "it's just a bunch of blue collar floor guys-- we'll hire kids out of high school to do the same job". Yeah, well, farmers are used to working with machinery doing specific jobs, setting it up, adjusting it, maintaining it, etc. The company quickly found over the course of a few months that "hiring kids to do it" wasn't a bright idea... sometimes entire runs of parts were all junk, machines not set up properly broke or destroyed expensive tooling, sometimes hundreds of thousands of pieces of coil steel was drawn wrong and cut into little bits the wrong size to feed the machine, thus it all became scrap metal... HUGE amount of waste and breakage, PLUS the energy to run the machines and wear and tear on the machines while on a production run that turned out scrap garbage because it was set up and operated wrong or adjusted wrong... Lost TONS of money. Then they decided that yeah they could deal with farmers taking time off if they could get some good operators back that actually knew what they were doing...

He had a buddy tell him, they were basically begging for guys with experience to come back... you could pretty much tell them what you wanted to make and when you wanted to work and not work and they'd give it to you, because their "kids" were costing them SO much money and lost production... He went back for a year or two and yep took off pretty much anytime he wanted, and got a fat raise from his old wage when he went back... but after awhile they start slipping into the same old habits and so he was out of there. The plant ran another couple years and has been shut down and sits empty now...

Later! OL J R
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