The day of the bunyip

The bunyip is a large mythical creature from Australian Aboriginal mythology, said to lurk in swamps, billabongs, creeks, riverbeds, and waterholes. -wiki

Bunyip, by CW Martin, is one of a group of mischievous spirits (see also brownies, kobalds, gremlins) which haunt our factory.  They were encouraged in their debauchery when the plant manager ignored my requests to sprinkle the area the cutter machines were being moved to with holy water.  My scoreboard is labeled "the Bunyip Board" in their honor, and they were DARN active today.

Among the delightful carnage they caused today:

- At least three prototypes that required a patch of non-woven patch fabric were sent out to the floor without putting the non-woven makers into our systems.

-One engineer came out and asked me if the multi-ply cutter (commonly known as that POS) had been used since we moved it.  When I told him it had, he was confused.  Apparently, he was trying to load a new marker for carpet (we make carpet pieces for boats as well) and the system told him- incorrectly- that his pattern was "too wide for the table".  He said he then tried just re-processing an old one, and got the same thing.

- my cutter decided that the drill bit (used for putting guide holes in fabric) was going to jam up- several times.

-The pause button, part one (see yesterday's post):  I was at the control pad, trying to free a snag.  I called the machine a b!tc#, and it paused without being touched.

-The pause button, part two:  It froze in the middle of a pattern for no reason about a half hour later.  I called the maintenance guy; he borderline fondled the faulty button, and away it went.  "Always works for me," he said.

-Another prototype came to me that would not cut- it gave me the dreaded "too wide for the table" error.  After four attempts to fix it, the engineer in question still hadn't figured out just what the problem was- all though we had managed to move the location of the error from "between 0.0 and 328.87" to "between 0.0 to 427.85" to "between 0.0 and 310.28" to "between 0.36 and 246.45".  He suggested the problem might be with my machine, and asked me to try the other one.  It changed it to "between 0.36 and 245.45".  Finally, his last message was, "This problem won't be solved today."  Ya think?

- A "HOT" cover was brought out to us, with both fabric and non-woven.  I cut the fabric; my partner found that the non-woven marker was yet again not in the system.  Which ended up okay, because the lady who issues the orders had made a boo-boo, and the cover in question wasn't the 36774 she first gave me, but a 36674, which doesn't even need non-woven.  Still, it wasn't a good thing that we didn't have the non-woven marker for the cover we didn't need, because if we ever need it, we don't have it.

-Later, the lady who used to be my boss before the move, came out and said she was so mad at the second engineer.  Earlier in the day, she had discovered an earlier prototype had a wrong designed part, and as usual he argued about it.  "Wow, that explains why he was so nice messaging me about the messed up proto,"  I said.  "He's already been chewed out once!"  Knowing that usually the plant manager has to talk to him about his seemingly arrogant attitude.

"I HOPE he has," She replied.

-Finally, the plant manager comes over to get a label.  "YOU need to do something," I exclaimed.  "I don't know what you did to piss off the Broccoli gods, but you better appease them quick!"

"Why?"

"The glitches are running rampant today!"

"What glitches?  Is it your machine, or your computer?"

"They're EVERYWHERE!"

"Well, you probably don't want me to eat any broccoli NOW... but I AM going to (our biggest customer) tomorrow..."

"Good!  Kill two birds with one stone!"