2019 RETA Breeze Sept-Oct

SERVICE

The Shade Tree Mechanic volume XXXI

Trimming the Tree

cleaning” and that becomes “replace it”. Then that becomes money! Now dusty has become a problem. We also have these fancy corporate visits once in awhile. Now, I enjoy shootin the sh** with them corporate guys as much as the next guy, but the plant manager thinks everything has to look all spiffy. So instantly, it becomes hell fire important to get the whole plant cleaned up. That’s always a pain in the behind. I get the reasoning; the plant manager doesn’t want his boss to think he’s a wanker. He wants his boss to come in and say, “Hey! your boys are doin a good job”. Given that most time them corporate boys haven’t spun a wrench in awhile, they can only go by what they see. If it looks “pretty” then the plant boys are doing a good job. Heck, they can’t go out and pull the heads off my heat ex- changers to see if they’re rodded out. They don’t climb up to see if my

Corporate boys are commin to town the plant manager “trims the tree”. I shouldn’t have to wait for the plant manager to decide. I should be doin it myself. So this year, I’m trimming my tree and then, I’m trimming my plant. My New Year’s resolution is to make sure 1 out of every 10 work orders we draft are for the “pretty” stuffy we normally ig- nore. Maybe one outa ten is too many, maybe that’s not enough. Time will tell. But it’s a start. No trimming of the shade tree, it’s always pretty here. The shade tree grows outside of the little town of Broughton, Ohio. Where everyone is always welcome, the beer is always cold, and something is always needin fixin.

So with Christmas comin’ on, it’s time to start to think about trimming the Christmas tree. Funny how that saying got started. Ya see, some fella cut a Christmas tree and then decided it was too big, so he trimmed it, sooz it would fit in his cabin. While he was cutting it down he also shaped it. Just to make it look more round and the limbs more uniform. He wanted it to look like a perfect Christmas tree. He wanted to make it “pretty”. I’m all for making everythin pretty, but there are times when makin them run takes the front seat. I don’t think that should change. Functional first, pretty second. Unfortunately, sometimes, we get so busy making it functional that when we finally have time to catch our breath we forget about pretty. When I see my boys sittin in the maintenance shop, I know everything on the floor is runnin good. So I have a tendency to let them get a few minutes of down- time before the next crisis. I forget about “pretty”. (except for the engine room, for some reason, I always have time to polish the 9x9). Forgetting about “pretty” is a bad thing and it is completely on me. I rarely write work orders for “pretty”. I should, but I just don’t seem to make them as important as I do functional. Unfortunately, dusty becomes dingy, dingy becomes dirty, dirty becomes filthy, and filthy becomes “not worth

condensers are clean. What they do is look around the plant and it looks “pretty”, they assume everything is ok. So when the

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