That sucks Andy. I bet it made for an interesting day.
While I love helping people out, I am getting tired of helping the newb out at work. Been here since March. They hired him to replace the man who is now my boss. They got real enamored with the fact he had a plumber license (my old boss and soon to be old manager both had a license. Since both are retiring, we couldn't do any plumbing fixes) and his wife is a supervisor. The guy has no mechanical aptitude. Seriously. He has to take the long way around something or just plain doesn't know what to do.
Today the cutting arm on a turntable stretch wrapper broke. He found the broken spring and replaced it... with a shorter one that wasn't working. Also noticed the sliding arm was catching at a certain point. After dousing it with nearly a can of PTFE lubricant, he calls me asking what he should do. Couldn't explain himself. I run out to the warehouse and look. The rail and sliding mechanism is shot, needs replace. He asks me how. I told him to pull the bolts off the top guard and unbolt the cutting arm from the slider. I get a blank stare and he walks away. I am walking out and the warehouse receptionist asked how my daughter and wife were doing. I talk for 10 mins and he comes around the corner. HE asks me to come look at it. I kid you not, he took off 2 bolts out of the 4 off the guard and couldn't get it off. It took a M8 Allen wrench, so they are not hard to miss. I asked him about those 2 bolts and he "thought they held the cutter to the turntable. I didn't want to have something fall out and not know how to put it back together."
So I walk him through replacing the slider, something I have never done before but is stupid simple. As we were putting it together, I noticed the wrong spring. It was all he had in his parts and thought it would work. Uh no. I run back to our factory, grab the right spring, and run back out. Ran perfect. Nothing like wasting 2 hours of my day with someone who cannot figure out how to replace a rail that took all of 10 bolts to remove and something a monkey could figure out.
Plus side. I saved the company $450 when I pulled the old rail and slider apart, pull the stretch film out of the ball bearing passages, and put it back together. I will get a pic up shortly. The bearings are around 1/8" big.
I understand,seeing a real man would frighten you right? 
by ellis93 » Wed Oct 29, 2014 6:13 pm 
out of three levels of mechanics he gets paid the three scale but far from earning it.....and so it goes.