My worst shift in five years was last Tuesday and none of the machines were the problem

I run a small shop in Grand Rapids and last Tuesday everything went south. Had a rush job for a local automotive supplier, 40 parts needed by 3 PM. I set up the Haas VF-2SS with brand new inserts and the first part came out dead on. Then my helper shows up late with a hangover and scraped two parts by forgetting to switch offsets after a tool change. I spent an hour re-cutting those while he argued that the CAM program was wrong. On top of that, the coolant pump started surging and I lost 20 minutes flushing lines. By the time I got the last part done at 4:15, the customer was already calling pissed. What made it stand out is that every single delay was from people or maintenance stuff I could have handled better if I had just checked in the morning. Has anyone else had a day where the machines ran fine but you still got beat up by the little things?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_robert17h ago

Man, that sounds exactly like my Tuesday last month with a coolant leak and a hungover intern.

sarah_hart16h ago

Man you're comparing a hungover intern to a lost family pet? That's a stretch and a half. A coolant leak is annoying but fixable, a missing animal is pure panic mode. The intern might show up late or mess up paperwork, that's a Tuesday. Losing a dog or a cat means driving around the neighborhood crying, posting on every lost pet page, and praying someone calls. Totally different kind of stress.

grantmartinez14h ago

Calling around to all the local mechanics saved me a ton of headache with that same problem.