Happy Helper

I got to train an assistant today. I don't know if he'll be helping me again, but I hope he will. Marcel is the new guy in blasting and shipping, and since things were slow in his department and I needed someone to put barsets together while I welded, he was given to me for four hours.

Marcel is a sweetheart. He flashes that brilliant smile of his all the time, he has a great personality, and he wants to be as good as he can possibly be at whatever he does. He shows great attention to detail and assimilates new information quickly.

This is going to seem strange, coming from someone who's obsessive-compulsive, but... I wish he were less obsessive-compulsive. I love that he wants to do a good job and get the barsets set up perfectly for me to weld, but he's so intent on making them perfect that it takes him forever to do each one. Fortunately I had a dozen barsets already welded and waiting for some extra tacking and grinding, so I worked on those while he gently tapped each blade and spacer into its proper position.

When I trained him, I was almost finished putting together a set and ready to get back to welding, so I only demonstrated enough that he got the idea and could be unsupervised until I was finished welding the set I was working on. If I get him again tomorrow, I think I'll have him watch me put together an entire set so he'll see how little he really has to do to get the job done.