05 October 2007

In Training

Luc and one of the other Canadians were in the shop yesterday. They came around to see what everyone was doing, and had some of us train them to do our jobs. I got to train Luc to do part of my job.

The man is very neat and precise. He wants things to be just so. This is normally a good quality to have. When it comes to breaking blades and building barsets, though, it greatly reduces productivity. The first time he broke out blades, Luc was very careful to keep the piles of blades straight and neatly stacked. By the third time, he'd realized that it didn't really matter, so he allowed himself to get a little more sloppy.

I admire him for his compulsive straightening, and also for his drive to completely understand and master a task. After I explained (in Franglais, a clumsy mix of French and English) how to read the print and build a set, he built and re-built that set at least four times, just to be sure he knew what he was doing.

Earlier, when he and the other Canadian were standing at the work table, I said hello to Luc and asked him how he was doing (in French). I was on my way back to my station, so I didn't stop to introduce myself to the other man. A few minutes later, though, while one of the other guys was showing Luc how to tack backs (I'll learn how to do that soon), the guy (whose name I don't know... we'll call him Canadian With No Name) came over and asked me how I knew French. We had a quick little conversation before I got back to welding and he went to watch Luc.

It was nice to exercise my French vocabulary (I want to take classes again so I don't sound like a complete fool) and explain my job in such a way that, in under 10 minutes, Luc could do it correctly. I'll be training my classmate Dan to do the same thing on Monday, and if I can do it in Franglais, plain English will be no problem.



Correction of an earlier entry: the sander we use for sharpening electrodes does, in fact, have its own exhaust/dust collection system. I'm still delegating sharpening duties to my coworkers, though.

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