Friday, September 24, 2010

Had to Happen Eventually

First off, "oh my god, it even has a watermark". If you don't get it you NEED to watch that movie. Fucking hilarious- in a twisted way. Second, I'm sorry for the long post below.

Until yesterday, I had neither been called into work on an emergency nor caught by a boat at the bridges of Bay City. So I'm eating dinner last night and I suddenly get a voicemail from my boss (Scott) that says "Ben, we've got some pretty serious problems in California. Meet me at the office asap."

I'm going to pause there and give a little background - this job in California is the largest we've had in years (like multimillion dollar job) and its with the Navy, so its very important we don't botch it. Our install crew was already acting like a bunch of fucking morons the very first day on the site and almost got escorted off the base for safety violations. Plus there is a superintendent on site who simply does not like the idea of people in his building so he is blowing it WAY out of proportion. Needless to say things are not going very smoothly at the site.

So anyway I have to cancel my plans and head out obviously.... and Scott is coaching his daughters soccer team so he isn't answering his phone. Anyway, I get to Bay City and I'm crossing a bridge - all of the sudden BOOM the light turns red so I slam on my brakes like a fool. The gate goes down and I see this huge ship is coming from like 1/2 a mile down the river. lol. So I'm sitting there for half an hour...and I finally get a hold of Scott. Our installation leader (Ray) tells us that the anchor bolts coming out of the foundation are too short and that he can't get them through the baseplates, thus being unable to actually anchor any of the plates.

At this point, Scott, Ray, and myself are all shitting bricks. There is a way to remove the rod from within the anchor and replace it, but since it is of a high grade steel and precision manufacturing, it would cost us near $50,000 to replace them with new ones. Not to mention the time such a fix would cost both us and the Navy. So Ray makes his rounds at 5pm (Pacific time), gets everyone fired up, and then the day ends and everyone goes home furious with Bay Cast.

Finally, I arrive at the office. While looking over all the drawings within the project, I figure out the problem. It is difficult to describe, but just imagine a rod that sticks out of the floor of their shop. And that rod is threaded into something way in the concrete. It was threaded in too far. That's all. So I try and call Ray and tell him this, but he left the base early lol. And he shut his phone off. Scott sends a text to his private cell that says "numbnuts" and Ray calls back all pissed off "HEY SCOTT THIS ISN'T OUR FAULT THIS IS SERIOUS I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO WE'RE GONNA HAVE TO START ALL OVER." So, after 25 minutes of speakerphone debate we finally convinced him that he was wrong and all he needed to do was LOOK at the drawings we gave him so he knew what was going on. lol. Yes. Basically, he made some assumptions and that got us all in deep shit. The navy officers will not return to the site until next Tuesday, so unless someone finds a way to contact them they will continue to think the projectis fucked (and that we are all retarded at Bay Cast) until they return.

Though we still look like a bunch of tards, Ray is especially good at kissing ass, so I am confident he will somehow find a way to repair the damage he has done to our relationship with the customer. Also, it was very funny how much Scott messed with him once we figured it out. He ended the conversation with "I'll talk to you at the next emergency" lmao.

Ok, so I'm not sure if it was worth all the reading u just did... but I was FREAKING out and didn't get a chance to rly tell anyone what happened. For a while there I thought we were gonna have to fly over to California and fix the problem first hand.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Epic Driving

I saw this video today and I had to share it with you guys. It is truly epic, you will enjoy it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TshFWSsrn8