February 15, 2017

As of today, the Ashbury family is at Retirement minus 279 days. Where has the time gone? It seems like just yesterday we were at R minus 323.

My beloved has been a little less than chipper over the last few weeks, because that wonderful beginning-of-the-end scenario he expected to happen mid January, so far hasn’t. He’d believed that by this point in his final working year of 2017 he’d be well entrenched in his routine. That routine consists of sitting in his truck, balancing between transporting loads of finished product to the stock piles and reading his kindle as he waits for the truck to be loaded.

He’s still boots on the ground, and the plant (the rock crusher) is yet to be “fired up”. I asked him what the problem was. He snorted. “What else? We’re waiting for the engineering firm they hired to figure out that while something may work in a computer simulation, it doesn’t necessarily work in real life.” Basically, there’s this new “chute” for a product that is an over-sized rock called gabion stone. According to the computer simulations, that chute manages to control the rock coming out of the crusher just fine. The problem? In the real world, larger rocks cannot, on their own volition or even with the aid of a little bit of gravity, turn ninety-degree corners. Small gravel and sand, yes. Larger rocks? No. They just jam up the whole shebang. The laws of physics are laws for a reason.

I asked him if he was itching to go up to the office and show them, on the chalk board, why the chute won’t work. He shook his head. At this point, having given so many years to the cause, and having been looked down upon in the last several years by those with university degrees in engineering, he said that he’s finally gotten the message, that he isn’t “qualified” to design these pieces of equipment (despite having done so for many years, with his “designs” all having successfully lasted for decades). No, these days he’s quite happy to let the “experts” have at it. It’s not that he doesn’t care. He did tell them, when they first showed him what they were planning to do, that the chute wouldn’t work. They didn’t listen. In my opinion, that’s fair enough. He shrugged and said that it’s not his thousands upon thousands of dollars being flushed down the drain.

My husband hasn’t exactly been physically slogging away, though, during these last couple of weeks. Instead, he’s been managing a few crews of younger men, teaching them how to do other repairs that need to be done, and letting them slog away. Between you and me, I don’t think he minds that too much. The only problem is that he’s on his feet most of the day, and after several years of not being on his feet most of the day, it’s really hard for him to get used to it.

Aging really isn’t for the faint of heart.

He did perk up on this past Monday, as he was assigned to use another truck to do a job connected to clearing a section of the floor in advance of that area being worked. He’s glad not to be on his feet this week, and has his fingers crossed that they’re going to get things back to normal soon. His site has a quota, every year, of how much stone they are expected to produce to meet projected demand; the longer it takes to get started on that goal, the longer it takes to achieve it.

Often, his company ends up offering overtime hours to compensate when long delays happen. I won’t be the least bit surprised if he decides to go in on some Saturdays again this year, as he’s done in the last couple of years. He took advantage of the opportunity in the recent past because in the several years prior to that, there was no overtime offered at all. The person who was plant manager during those lean years claimed that was a company-wide policy; however, that was a lie. The truth was that the more money that manager did not allow his men to earn, the bigger the bonus he received for himself at year end. The result for his employees is that each one of those hard-working people had their annual income cut by several thousands of dollars, each.

You may have guessed that particular manager was the one who killed my husband’s love of his job and respect for the company he works for.

Of course, the grapevine has it that things are not going so well for that man; I’m not surprised in the least. I really do believe in the principle of sowing and reaping.

Or, to state it as popular culture would have it, the karma bus has picked that man up for a nice, long ride.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury