saw this coming months ago, when my supervisor told me I was headed to the Job that has been the source of my agony for the last 8 months.
here's how the bulk of it went down.
I am not a fire alarm technician. I manage to get by when needed. it's kinda like someone always working on American cars and then getting a VW with some sort of errant sensor problem thrown at them. a VW guru would jump in there and say, "oh hell, that's the low limit coolant sensor " or some damn thing, for like fire alarm systems I am not a VW fuel injection guru. The domestic mechanic would still be looking for the engine in the front. That's me in this situation. I am not afraid to air my own faults.
I will agree that the best way to learn is by doing, but usually its under some supervision, or taught by a teacher or learned individual in an environment a little conducive to the educational experience. Handing someone an entirely foreign system, a month before a deadline, that you know is doomed to be a damn failure pretty much sums up how this went. in the beginning I asked for help. I was given a travelling journeyman whom (god bless him) is a really cool guy and fun to work with, wasn't the best person to be helping me out with this. I was given him because the foreman didn't want him doing anything else because he didn't think he was capable of doing anything on his own other than walking around in circles. That was his assessment, not mine.
So there I was up against insurmountable odds, with little to no help, trying to start something doomed to fail, with little to no direction, and no supervision. Do you remember Montgomery Scott's first thoughts on trans-warp beaming. "hitting a bullet traveling through the air with a smaller bullet, whilst riding a horse, blindfolded."
I asked for more help. didn't get any.
I asked for a layoff, was advised by higher powers against it
I threatened to quit so they could get someone more knowledgeable than me out there to complete the task from hell. and that never happened.
Somewhere during the last week I begged for help and was told tomorrow at noon the whole crew was mine to put the devices (loud, flashing things) on the wall, noon rolled around, nothing. 3 pm.....nothing. 5pm I got a few guys helping, which created more problems as they ended up scraping wires and flip flopping things knowing even less about whats going on that what i did, so instead of a few problems that were a matter of systematically checking things i had a bunch of mother of all untraceable problems.. That's what led to the 31 hour shift i was on lunch and got a smarmy sideways conversation about deadlines and blah blah blah bullshit.
I almost pulled it off too. Through all of his rants and his childlike tantrums, tyrannical behavior and pulling a 31 hour shift in a futile attempt to make things right and salvage my reputation, Iwas hours from completion. turns it with tracing down all the little problems it took about a week. There it was. All done, he calmed down a bit. Kinda like Adolf Hitler that just burned a fatty. Still a tyrannical dick weed with a superiority complex, but one that took it down a notch.
So Tuesday of this week rolled around, and I was working away doing what I do best, running conduit, pulling wires and making up transformers and big disconnects and what not, and I got called to this rush rush "how the heck did I miss this thing" job of his. imagine that he missed something. so I grab my tools and start running some pipes, figure it'll take about an hour to get the pipe ran and wire pulled. go down to where the material is stored and he strolled up with a smile on his face....
"Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it's time to clean house."
with that he hands me my checks and the layoff notice.
No warning. Not that i didnt think it was coming mind you. 6 years with the company and this is how its handled. He and I butted heads from the beginning and it'll probably always be this way. I would like to think that all the others I have worked for will remember me well, but having been in the lunchrooms and break ares of these job sites I know he will have free reign to vilify me and run me into the ground, and just as I always smiled and nodded as he spewed forth his sermons of bullshit, others will smile and nod as i am dragged into the gutter.
I'm facing 2 years without electrical work, wife, 2 kids and a mortgage and a car payment. same stuff as most of America. I suppose that at least in my own way I admitted my faults, tried to correct the situation before it got too bad. in the end i stayed true to who I am, and what makes me that way. in the end he's a part time foreman, a part time football coach and a part time father.
I am not.
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