He's Mocking You

Yesterday, one of our nearly-finished pieces did something our nearly-finished pieces aren't supposed to do: it cracked. I don't mean the little cracks that Mike used to have me fix... I mean a four-inch section of a weld split open. Joe brought it to me for repairs, and I did the best I could. I sanded out as much of the broken weld as I could, and spent about ten minutes re-welding and re-sanding and re-re-welding, trying to patch the crack without using filler wire. The finished product was nowhere near as good as I wanted it to be, but Joe said it would be fine, and I trust him.

One of the reasons why I like Joe is that, even when he's in a bad mood and everything is going wrong, he's always good for a laugh. One of the key elements of this repair job was using our hydraulic drill press to clamp the piece really, really tightly. Pull down on the lever, pressure is applied, repeat until something snaps (the part, the operator's shoulder, whatever). Joe commented that the repaired piece felt more flush than it had earlier, and I replied, "it better... I used every single one of my 130 pounds on that lever." His response, "I used to be a skinny little thing... but then you get married, you have kids, you lose the will to live... things change."

His son is going to be just like him. He told me that he was reading the kid a story the other night, and out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that the kid was playing with a stuffed animal, making its head move as if it were talking. After a while he stopped and asked the kid what was up with the animal, and the kid said, "he's mocking you, Daddy."

My boss is being mocked by his 7-year-old's toys. Should I be worried?