Wednesday Weblog for March 16, 2022 |
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Quote of the Week:
Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching-even when doing the wrong thing is legal. — Aldo Leopold
Aldo Leopold (January 11, 1887 – April 21, 1948) was an American author, philosopher, naturalist, scientist, ecologist, forester, conservationist, and environmentalist. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and is best known for his book A Sand County Almanac (1949), which has been translated into fourteen languages and has sold more than two million copies
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Leading Off: This Bud's For You |
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In many cases when we learn something at work or in our personal life, what is learned is not what we expected to learn, but instead, something else that surprises us.
If I was ever young and impressionable, this is a story about that time. It was a taste of a different kind of life and created both an appreciation of those who work with their hands for a living, as well as some not so admirable feelings about how some employees abuse the 'system.'
Looking back, even though I had been working for several years by the time this story takes place, it was surely my first 'big boy' job.
The fact that it took place in the middle of Vietnam War made the lessons even more impactful to me at 19 years old.
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Between my freshman and sophomore year in college, I worked at the General Dynamics Shipyard in Quincy, or the Fore River Shipyard as it was known in the neighborhood. It was walking distance from my house.
At one time, it was the largest employer on the South Shore, with three shifts and more than 10,000 employees. It has been closed for many years now.
I was a Pipefitter, Third Class-Unskilled.
Great title, eh?
Yeah, everyone knows that when you add 'third class' or 'unskilled' to a job title it really helps self-esteem. Put both of them in the same title and you are really making your point.
At the shipyard, your hardhat was color coded to your job. Pipefitters wore baby blue hats that showed off all the dirt at the bottom of the hull. Other trades had green, red, dark blue and so forth. You could tell someone's occupation by the color of their hard hat.
That summer I mostly installed liquid level indicators in soon-to-become fuel and water tanks that were five stories high inside the ship, the soon-to-become USS Dixon. I also unexpectedly learned a lot about productivity, a little about patriotism, and some things about greed or laziness that have stuck with me.
There have been a lot of outstanding contributions made by labor unions and their leaders in the history of our country. They have made a major impact to the development of our workforce and work practices, but the leaders of the AFL/CIO union I belonged to that summer, had no part in making a contribution to anything, other than lining the pockets of its members, short term.
But that union did contribute to my education. It taught me how to stop working because I needed a pipe. As a pipefitter, I wasn’t allowed to CARRY pipes, I was only allowed to FIT pipes. If I needed a pipe, I needed a ‘Chaser’ to carry it for me. Yes, even from one end of the ship to the other. Even from the dock to the deck.
If I was seen walking and chewing gum, I mean walking and carrying a pipe, I could be written up and incur the wrath of the other members of the pipefitter gang I was assigned to.
It could take days to get a pipe through the archaic ordering system. This rule, among many, significantly drove up the cost of operating that shipyard and cost the US Navy, and taxpayers, a ton of money.
And in the 'significant knowledge' category, the union rules also taught me that if I was in the restroom, which was called the _ _ _ _house in the local language, I didn’t have to leave.
You read that right. Once you were in there, you didn't have to come out. Our dock had one 40 stall open-air, but covered and walled, always packed to the gills restroom, or actually, it was a rest area.
It was where I, and many others, slept most days. I could stay in there for hours, or until the smell chased me out. Can you imagine a 'home away from home' like that?
The contract specified that you couldn’t regulate how long… you-know-what should take. To stay productive, upon entry, I gathered all the Boston and New York newspapers laying around and read them cover to cover. I even did a crossword puzzle or three. Even at 19 I was into time management and multitasking.
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I also learned that a 160 pound kid like me, a college soccer player in peak shape, who could fit through a 15" by 24" hatch in the deck that his 275 pound supervisor couldn’t fit through, was basically unsupervised.
In fact, in the very lowest bowels of the ship at the bottom of those five-story fuel and water tanks, reached only by a very long, and very scary, five-story ladder welded to the bulkhead, there were stacks of flattened cardboard boxes assembled by men who I assume had large supervisors. That cardboard was used for sleeping during the shift, with less of an odor.
And finally, I also learned about Pete’s. One of the mechanics who was taking me under his wing and teaching me how not to be productive and how to avoid getting caught doing nothing, one time brought me to Pete’s Grille, founded in 1958.
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Here was the deal: at 11:29, a minute before the 30-minute lunch period started, 250 workers drifted from the ships and warehouses and docks and gathered in lines at the timecard shed inside the South Street Gate.
When the whistle blew, everyone punched out at 11:30 and ran, yes ran, across the street to Pete’s to get a seat.
When you entered Pete’s, every single seat was preset with a ham sandwich and an open quart of Budweiser next to it. All 250 of them/
They might have varied the cold cuts daily, but the one time I joined in, I was lucky it was ham & cheese. At Pete's it was free to get in, and you paid $2 to get out and were back in the timecard shack at 11:59 to punch back in. (Except for a few guys who paid other guys to clock them back in but stayed at Pete's until the end of their shift.)
No IDs were necessary. With the shipyard dirt all over me, including my face, I looked of age. Since guys my age were in Vietnam wishing they could have a beer and a ham sandwich in a place like Pete's, no one was going to hassle me.
All this took place when the boats we were 'working' on were needed a half a world away. Did I mention that drug use was rampant on my ship? Did I mention that one time it took me three weeks to weld pipes into a guard rail around one of the engines? A four-hour job at most. Did I mention that I had no training on how to use a welder?
As a 19-year-old I can tell you that, given what I was watching on a daily basis, I wasn’t sure how the boats floated.
Not too many years later General Dynamics decided to abandon the Quincy Yard since their costs were so much higher than the shipyards they were bidding against (go figure) and thousands of high paying jobs were lost.
Just before the final death knell, there was some buzz about the workers buying the shipyard to keep it alive. A friend of mine, who also previously worked there laughed at that and said simply: “the people who are trying to buy it are the same greedy pigs that are causing it to close, if they had worked harder or had been more honest it would still be open.”
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I’m sharing this story because the one thing we all have in common with those shipyard workers is this: we control the future of our organizations: whether they grow or shrink, whether they succeed or fail, whether they last for years or close.
Those ‘greedy pigs’ who were milking the clock, sleeping during their shift, and having lunch and more at Pete’s should have known at the time that they were killing their organization, one Bud at a time.
But apparently, they didn't give a _ _ _ _. They were all about themselves, every day and every way. What you do when no one is looking does make a difference.
That summer I learned one of the most important lessons a 19-year-old can learn: character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught.
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Below is the USS Dixon, now retired
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To submit your advice simply reply to this email and send it in. There is no guarantee it will be published, but I'll do my best to get the best ideas included. Even if it is not published right away, keep looking for it. |
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Submitted by Chris from England
"I reached out to someone who seemed to be able to get everything done
and asked for one piece of advice."
"The first element of the advice was to stop managing lists and start managing time. The second element was to spend 20 minutes Sunday night looking at my calendar and booking into the calendar what needed to be done and when. I have been following this advice and have never felt more organised and in control of what I want to get done."
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Surprise Photo at the End
The Crew: Extras In McChicken Commercial
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Joe's Positive Post of the Week |
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The Roll Call of states and countries where readers reside: Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Washington DC, Wisconsin plus Canada, Spain, Conch Republic, Australia and the United Kingdom |
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Ed Doherty
774-479-8831
www.ambroselanden.com
ed-doherty@outlook.com
Forgive any typos please.
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