Closet Extremist

Bad Habits

Over the course of my apprenticeship with a few of the "Old Dog's" UI've picked up a few bad habits. The biggest one was learned from Ford... and it's a doozy. Ford's been building elevators for nearly as long as I've been alive, and he was a bit burned out by the time I showed up to help him. His attitude was along the lines of "close is good enough". "Agh, Phill'll get it" was a phrase commonly heard. (Phil is the Adjuster, and a true anal retentive... it's gotta be perfect.) Ford would cut corners, or overlook things that were wrong to advance the job. Recently I found myself doing the same thing.

I'm kinda "under the gun" on this job, and the stress has been getting to me. A large factor of it has been the fact that I can't smoke cigarettes inside the building. I'm very accustomed to having a wrench in my right hand, a bolt in my left, and a smoke hanging off my lip. Now I hafta go outside to have a butt, and it adds to my stress because I feel guilty that I'm "wasting time" outside. (getting the nicotine I need to deal with the stress... You can see the Catch 22.)

This machine is one of the most challenging, as it has both front and rear opennings. The entire elevator MUST be perfectly centerred in order for it to work properly, but there was a variance down on the lowest floor that threw me off. Thereby, the entrances on the upper floors were offset by about 3/4 of an inch. The "front' stuck out too far, and the "Rear" was pulled in. I was going to fob it off on the contractor to fix it. He can make adjustments to his walls to compensate for the mistake. Today, I got "Busted".

The Big Boss, came by this afternoon to show a new salesman what a working job looked like. After perusing the alignment of things for awhile, he revealed my miostake to me (that I already knew was there) and gave me the proper impetus to fix it. I shouldn't need that. I should be prepared to correct the problem on my own, and I put it off.

I've made a point to put a little mnote on every surface that I can think of... "Be your own Adjuster". Just a freindly reminder that I'm better than my Bad Habits. It'll work.