Flummoxed

I B Flummoxed. How else can I be?

A bit of background:

My company uses fairly large quantities of hydraulic oil. So, rather than have a zillion steel drums sitting around, we store our oil inventory in 275 gallon "totes."

Totes look like giant cubic plastic boxes. Picture your favorite refrigerator box-wine large enough to hold 275 gallons. Now, replace the cardboard wine box with a steel cage and make the plastic bag have thick enough walls so that it holds its shape. That's a tote.

But, because anything can leak, and because neither I nor the EPA want hydraulic oil running down the street in rivers, all users of big quantities of hazardous liquids are required to set up "secondary containment" around or under all "primary" containers. In other words, if the tote leaks, it has to leak into a tub or something so that it is contained for disposal.

For totes, we use specially made "pallets" that look like a monstrous kid's square wading pool, with a thick grill over the top. The totes sit on this grill and if they leak, the oil simply drops down into the "wading pool."

However, the secondary containment pool has a finite volume. If you let the pool fill up and don't empty it, then subsequent leaks would overflow the pool and run out on the floor. Therefore, one would think that every person would think of that when they saw the pool filling up, over time. Wouldn't one always strive to keep the secondary empty and dry?

One would also think that folks working around these totes and their secondary containment pools would object to the smell of the hydraulic oil emitting up from the pool, if you leave oil in it.

Finally, one would think that just out of general good housekeeping practices that workers wouldn't want all of that leaked oil sitting around out in the open. Oil just seems to get everywhere when you have it out in the open.

BUT ... our pudding heads are not (apparently) folks that think or act in any of the ways that "one" would think!

My morning:

Arrived at 8. Plugged in my laptop and booted it. Shuffled a little paper and decided that it would be a good time for me to do a sweep through the shop, ensuring that safe work practices are being observed.

Walked out the door, into the shop, and there's a tote, perched on its secondary containment, with piles and piles of granulated absorbent heaped up around it.

"What's going on?!?" I gasped.

"That funny tub thing got a leak," said one of the braver workers.

"How ... uh ... wha ... hey. How would the secondary leak? It's supposed to be empty?" I spat out.

"No. It always has a lot of oil in it ... at least since they were filling those hoses the other day and spilled a whole bunch down in there," said Brave Boy.

"No," I said back, "No, there is never supposed to be ANY oil in the secondary containment unless the tote leaks!" I said, starting to lose it.

"I didn't know," said Brave Boy, now meekly.

I'm thinking, "Yeah, but there are a half dozen "old salts" standing around you that know damn well that there isn't supposed to be oil in the secondary," but I sucked it in and kept the thoughts to myself. Time for a safety meeting -- for sure!

"Wait," I said, "That's a new secondary. How could it leak?"

Now the troops within ear shot are starting to look REALLY busy. Way too busy to be a part of this conversation.

Brave Boy goes on, "Well, we were sliding the plastic thingy into the pallet rack and when he backed out, his forks were tilted up too much and he ripped a hole in the bottom of the thingy."

Two more stirs.

The metal cage around the tote has fork lift channels under it so that one can lift these totes up off of the secondary containment for filling or discharging them. Steel. Strong. Fully protecting the tote's plastic bladder. In contrast, secondaries have narrow, thin PLASTIC grooves under them so that you could, if you were stupid, lift directly under the plastic wading pool to lift the pool and the tote, together, as a unit. Well over a ton of load on the little pool bottom.

Huh. I wonder why it split?

So-ho-ho-ho-ho, now I have a ripped open, useless $2,000.00 secondary; plus, another 10 gallons or so of liquid contaminated (hazardous material) oil to pay someone to dispose of; plus several 40 lb bags of "kitty litter" oil sorbent, soaked with oil (hazardous material) to also pay someone to dispose of.

Maybe if I'm lucky, tomorrow somebody will jam a forklift fork through this tote's steel cage and gash the plastic bladder open. I've always wanted to see if those oil containment booms work well. I wonder if we can get them deployed before the oil seeps under the office wall and into the office carpet?

Learning From Our Mistakes

What ever happened to “learning from our mistakes?” Is this time-tested precept of the higher apes also passing away as a distant memory of a few elders in the clan of mankind?

One of our “experienced,” albeit newer, employees was hired to lead some teams and sort of take care of the newbies and the dolts, thereby avoiding losses, embarrassments or accidents. To hear this guy’s personal testimony, he’s waged wars, fought fights, conquered countries and validated virgins from Timbuktu to infinity and beyond. One would think that there had been a few teensy mistakes along the way and our hero, who I call “Slinky,” should have learned a thing or two.

Nah.

Many weeks ago, my company mobilized large machines, portable control rooms and gobs of tools to rig out an offshore demolition boat. (Our parent company manufactures machinery that cuts apart pipe and steel structurals, under the sea.)

A critical little tool – a cutter – is terribly expensive for its size so we don’t keep hundreds of them on the shelf. We don’t have to. One of these palm sized little cutters will zip a 3-inch diameter hole through a sunken deck plate in minutes and keep on “punching” more holes all day. At almost $500.00 each, they better. So, we had only about 20 of them in stock.

Slinky supervised the load-out of the equipment for this boat, knowing full well that this would be only one of many boats to be equipped from our inventory. But, a couple of days after everything was shipped out, the boss, Tree Tall, went looking for a few of these cutters to be used in a demonstration. The shelves were empty.

“Where’d they go?” he wanted to know.

“Well, I sent them all out to the boat,” said Slinky, lamely.

With no love in his voice, Tree asked, “So what were you planning to send out on the next boat?”

No answer.

That’s when I got sucked into the fray.

Tree wanted at least two (preferably 3 or 4) cutters for his demonstration; and, he knew that another boat was coming up for outfitting in a couple more weeks. He turned to me to locate more cutters.

I contacted all the vendors and discovered that our normal cutters were 4 to 6 weeks delivery. Another vendor proposed an alternate cutter design which we accepted out of dire need. We cleaned that guy’s inventory out, bringing all 10 of the available alternate cutters into Houston on Fedex Next Day. I also promptly put in an order for 10 more from the usual vendor who would build them to our regular specifications.

I sort of lost track/interest in the cutters after that, although I did notice that “da boyz” were doing several extra demonstrations that might eat into the cutter supply. No worries, I thought. These guys have just been through the wringer over these things and they’ll tell me when they need more cutters. Besides, in about a week we should have the second order of ten pieces.

Then came an order for a third boat.

And in came an order for a training demo.

Both used these hard to find cutters.

But, I’m not aware of these events, so I don’t bump up the inbound order quantity.

This immediately past Saturday, Slinky and da boyz worked like maniacs to get everything out the door for boats two and three. The training demo is tomorrow (for divers who will eventually work from one or more of the boats we’d outfitted.)

Today, Tree wandered out into the Houston shop to grab cutters for the training demo.

“Who moved the 3-inch cutters?” he said. He probably had a knot in his stomach, fearing that he knew the awful answer. He dialed Slinky’s cell phone. “Where are the 3” cutters, Slink?”

“Why? I sent them to the boat.”

Worst fears confirmed.

“All of them,” said Tree, more as a statement of resignation than a question. He looked at me. I shrugged. He shook his head. The same stupid move had been made again.

The 6-week-delivery cutters aren’t due in for another couple of days. I found one dusty old cutter on a vendor’s back shelf and that’s the best we can hope for.

Do I think that there’s a possibility that Slinky and his team learned anything this time?

What do you think?