re: Common plant baw complaints

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There’s a high probability that we’ve all worked in a plant at some in our lives.

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Gonna be a no

I’ve never even been inside a plant

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Engineers are always wrong according to contractors in every field

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I’ve worked on several different sides of the industry including operations and construction, and this is pretty much the unnanimous opinion of everyone without a 4-year degree. ESPECIALLY construction hands.

It always cracks me up because they’ll bring up all these little issues that make the job slightly more difficult and act like it’s impossible.
- “Why do we need to tie this tubing in right there when there’s a perfectly good point over here that we can reach from the ground?”
- “This (insert modern material) shite is so much harder to work with, why can’t we just use (insert antiquated material) instead like we have always done?”
- (My favorite from operators) “You expect them to check that shite once per shift? Good luck, everyone on A, B, and D shift is just gonna pencil whip it anyway.”

When I was starting out I always deferred to those guys as much as possible. But over time I’ve realized where the disconnect lies. Field hands think engineers just design shite “fricked up” (in the field hands’ eyes) because the engineers have no clue what’s going on in the real world. Engineers, on the other hand, just tend to not give a shite about the extra hour it takes a field hand to install something.

That hand’s labor cost, compared to the reliability, process safety, or efficiency benefits from doing things the engineers’ way, is often peanuts. The difference is that the field hand typically can’t grasp the technical implications and doesn’t have a great understanding of how total cost of ownership works.

I think a lot of times when engineers wind up deferring to the field hands, it’s simply because they ran the numbers in their head and decided the argument wasn’t worth fighting. I’m obviously excluding new grads who are still looking for the beam stretcher from this analysis.

ETA: I should say that I’m really talking about engineers who work in the field, not cubicle-dwellers who crank out CAD drawings. I have had my fair share of issues with those folks not understanding cost impacts of their choices.

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Engineers don’t make things easy to fix and don’t make the things that get fixed most often easy to work on

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About 33% of everything is cross-threaded by non-engineers. 95% of the time something isn't working, is because someone fricked with it

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lostinbr

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What he said.

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Two week notice?

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That is the dumbest thing in the world because you sure won't get a 2 week notice if you are getting laid off.

Have you guys not watched Refined by Boyd Animation?

Buy me a 12 pack when I get back from this plant, and you can watch me work on an old motorcycle

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That is the dumbest thing in the world because you sure won't get a 2 week notice if you are getting laid off.

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If you are worth a frick you will at least get two weeks severance.

If you don't then laid off is just another word for fired.

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If you are worth a frick you will at least get two weeks severance.

If you don't then laid off is just another word for fired.

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Yep.

I always enjoyed plant work. I worked at the coal-fired power plant on I-10 in Gulfport, and at the test stands at Stennis.

There were some engineers and especially some superintendents who were card-carrying members of the Pennyloafer Mafia. I remember one of them winning a drawing for a shotgun at a safety meeting and getting the least enthusiastic round of applause ever seen in power plant history.