A smile in purgatory 火海一笑 (BxB)

New Assistant Tom

(Timeline: Week 4 Monday)

Monday morning, at the machine shop.

"Good morning Hanson" Kexing said when he arrived at work. He gave Hanson a beautiful smile. Hanson did not smile back at him.

"Morning. Today, I'll be working over there at QA. I have to do CMM programming, they need it urgently for a new part. When I work there, I cannot lose focus, because if I write one wrong code, the robot will crash. If it crashes, a probe could break, probes cost about one thousand US dollars each, so I cannot lose focus. Try to work on your own. If you have questions, come ask, but if you can do the work yourself, try to. I need to stay focused on the CMM." Hanson gave Kexing the heads up.

"So what do I do today then?" Kexing asked.

"Here is a list of things to cut, and the dimensions of the cuts. Go find the material using the maps I gave you, cut the materials and quantities of pieces that I wrote on each paper, and measure your cut pieces often. Don't rely on just 1 measurement. Measure at least every 2 pieces. Do you know how to use calipers?" Hanson asked.

"No, can you show me?"

Hanson showed Kexing how to use the calipers, how to zero them, how hard to push on the blades, how to check the calipers accuracy using reference standards. Then Hanson gave a few random items for Kexing to measure, and when Hanson was certain Kexing could use the calipers correctly, he went to QA and started programming the CMM robot.

About 3 hours later, he went to the saw to check on Kexing, partly because he needed a break from programming. Sometimes, he writes so many codes, that he himself gets confused, so taking a break helps. He went to check on Kexing's progress on the cut list.

Before he reached the saw, he noticed somebody yelling at Kexing by the saw area. It was Rich, one of the manual tool machinist.

"What happened." Hanson asked.

Kexing looked at Hanson and then looked down. He knew he screwed up again.

Rich, frustrated, said to Hanson very angrily "Your new guy messed up, I wanted 20 pieces that are each at least two inches long, but he cut 20 pieces that are all just a little under two inches. Now I'm out of material, and this job is hot. He cut all of my material to the wrong length!"

Hanson looked at the paper that Rich was holding. It was a paper that Hanson gave Kexing this morning, with the material, its location, the number of pieces to cut, and the dimension. Hanson had written on that paper "cannot cut shorter than 2 inches each, target oversize, cut 20 pieces"

Since Kexing struggled to read, he missed the words "cannot" and "oversize". So he saw only "cut shorter than 2 inches each, target cut 20 pieces".

Perhaps his brain injury caused dyslexia so he could not read very well. But this morning, Hanson was busy with programming, and forgot that Kexing could not read instructions.

Rich was very mad at Kexing, but Hanson could not tell Rich that Kexing had difficulty reading. In fact, if anybody knew, Kexing would have lost his job already on the first day.

Rich raised his voice and started cursing at Kexing "You can't do shit! You're slow cutting, you cut the wrong size, you waste materials, you even damaged the blade last week and I had to switch blade. Anybody else can do a better job than you! I'd fire your ass if I could! You can't do shit!"

"Rich" Hanson stopped him, monotonous.

"What? Am I not right? It's not just me, everybody else complains about him too! How do you put up with this guy? He can't do shit!"

"There's one thing he can do that nobody else can." Hanson said, monotonous.

"Oh yeah, and what's that?!" Rich's face turned red from the anger and fury.