It will soak in at about 9:30 or so that the Catfish has gone back to school. Throughout the summer, if he was not working that day, it would be at 9:30 or so before he would wander into my freshly cleaned kitchen and begin the slow motion process of cooking breakfast and watching something on his computer, but he’s not here. He’s back in school in western Massachusetts.
This was his last year to work at the dive shop. He learned a lot at the dive shop. He learned how to inspect tanks, clean dive gear, interact with all sorts of strange and wonderful people. He learned how to solve problems, and how to prioritize. He sometimes complained about a bad day at work, about having to wash wet-suits or schlep tanks. Overall, I think this was a good experience for him.
I contrasted his job experience with one of mine while I enjoyed a cup of coffee.
I had a job working construction in Jonesboro. We were building the ‘new’ library at ASU. It was in the early stages, so we were pouring concrete. First they dug holes about 8 feet around, and in those holes we poured a concrete pad. On those ‘pad’s we constructed forms to create concrete columns. Inside the forms was a lattice work of steel for strength and resilience. At some point, I graduated from digging dirt with a shovel, to helping pour the columns.
My job was to climb to the top of the column, about fifteen feet above the pad that had been poured in the hole in the ground. It was only about twelve feet above ground level, but the hole it was in was three feet deep. I stood so that my waist was just about even with the top of the form. A crane had a bucket attached. The idea was that we put concrete in the bucket, and the crane would lift it up and over the column form, and I would pull the dump lever to release the concrete into the form. The bucket held one cubic yard of concrete.
Day in and day out, I climbed the forms and poured the concrete. This wasn’t a bad job I thought. It was so much better than digging in the dirt, tying steel, or building forms. I hardly ever broke a sweat.
One day they were training a new crane operator. I was up on the form watching them fill the bucket with concrete. I was comfortable up there. I knew my job. This was a piece of cake, and I watched the new crane operator as he carefully lifted the bucket. He was very focused and serious as he slowly swung the bucket toward the column. He slowed his rotation as he neared the column. I reached out to grasp the dump handle that came halfway around the bucket like the face mask on a football helmet.
It became apparent that the new guy had made two tiny errors. First, he should have slowed his rotation about 2 feet before he did, because even after he stopped the rotation, the bucket’s momentum caused the bucket to continue and swing another couple of feet toward the forms. Number two, he should have lifted the bucket another 4 inches or so because as the bucket with all the momentum contained in the mass of one cubic yard of concrete continued to swing. In slow motion it contacted the forms at the very top….and continued forward for another one foot or so, causing the forms I was standing on to collapse and fall away.
Desiring to avoid what would obviously be a painful fifteen foot fall onto a concrete pad covered with broken wood forms and jagged steel rebar, I grabbed for something to hold on to, anything to stop from falling. I grabbed the dump handle of the bucket with both hands. I should have grabbed the bar that was along the base. It would have been a safe hand hold, but I grabbed the dump handle. It was immediately clear that I had chosen poorly because the dump handle was designed to release the concrete when it was depressed. Me hanging on it caused it to depress very rapidly, coming to a sudden stop at the bottom of it’s arc which caused me to swing violently beneath the spout where the concrete had begun to pour out.
The concrete hit me with such force that I lost my grip on the dump lever and fell 15 feet landing flat on my back on the wreckage of the forms. One cubic yard of concrete flowed from the bucket and onto me.
Catfish and I have completely different perceptions of a bad day at work.
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