by ToClark
CHAPTER 8
Two days after Rees had left, Dave was working on the 'Old 4D' on his own in the pilot plant. Thinking that, by tradition, Tuesday was a chip day and that it was about time to knock off and wash his hands, he pressed the solvent flush button to clear the jets and was rewarded with a double eyeful of methylene chloride. He had forgotten to wear his safety specs, the solvent jet had been partially clogged with TDI residues.
He had never known such pain. His eyes were on fire, he could see nothing and nobody answered his cry for help because they had all gone off to the washroom in anticipation of dinner. In desperation he staggered along the wall, groping towards the surgery which was some thirty yards away, its doorway giving on to the same wall as the pilot plant. Halfway along, he crashed into a scrap barrel, adding bruised knees to his already intense suffering and then immediately fell over on a patch of resin on the floor. Agony drove him back to his feet and the surgery door, but the handle would not turn in his hand and in frenzy he banged on the door, but nobody came. His clutching hand found a piece of string around the doorknob and the card attached to it. Sinking to his knees, he held it before him and with an effort that brought sweat prickling out on his face, forced his eyelids to open a little. Through a red mist of pain he read the legend:
'Gone to Lunch'.
He sat on the floor and wept. The pain and frustration broke him to a wailing, snivelling wretchedness and he cried tears of self pity until gradually the tears themselves washed over his tortured eyeballs and the burning subsided. Somewhat late, but completely cured, he staggered to his feet and tottered off to the washroom.
Red eyed but resolute and burping gently from the aftermath of his lunch, he returned to his workplace to find the engineers in the act of wheeling a shiny monster into the pilot plant, its control console encased in polythene wrappings, its pipework smelling of rubber. The new machine had arrived. Grey and Mr Happy were in attendance, busily getting in the way and a whole grease of fitters were sweating, straining and swearing at one another, while all three of the Engineering Managers were issuing conflicting orders to them at the same time. Folklore was there, beaming jovially at all and sundry and contriving to get more in the way than Grey, Mr Happy and all the Engineering Managers put together. Dave was overawed. It would be his job to commission this gleaming titan, to make it respond to his will and produce High Impact-Strength Chair Shell Mouldings from the mould which had turned up the week before and was now cleaned, waxed and ready in the corner. He surveyed the scene from the doorway for several minutes before deciding that the most sensible thing he could do was to leave them to it. His turn would come the following morning.
By the end of the week he had completed the initial setting up and on Friday morning it produced its first high-impact chair shell moulding. In the absence of Grey, who had taken Folklore to visit his favourite chemical supplier (the criterion of favouritism was based on the quality of the lunch, according to Grey), he showed it to Mr Happy who ordered him to prepare a demonstration for the Senior Management first thing on Monday morning.
He set everything up with great care. He put down clean paper on the floor, emptied the scrap bins and topped up the running tanks. He gave the mould an extra polish out with wax and tidied everything up as far as he could. Sharp at 9 oclock on Monday morning, Mr Happy found him on station beside the gleaming machine, its fancy bits still encased in polythene wrappers and the dispensing nozzle in position over the mould, the plastic feed pipe inserted in the filling hole at the top of it.
"I must say it looks all very tidy and business-like. Are you ready to go?"
"I certainly am. I've done a test shot and the compound's fine. Temperatures are bang on, in fact everything's perfect."
Mr Happy prowled round the machine. "Plenty of material in the tanks?"
"See for yourself!" Dave lifted the covers.
"You're happy with the shot time?"
"You saw the quality of the sample. Everything is set up exactly the same. Fill time 8.4 seconds." He indicated the preset sequence timer.
"Hmmm! O.K. But I think we ought to have all that scruffy polythene off the console, though. Makes it look very unworkmanlike" and before Dave could object, he had ripped it from corner to corner so that there was nothing to be done but remove it altogether.
"I left it in place to protect the machine from splashing."
"It would have had to come off sooner or later." He tore the rest of it away and dumped it into a waste bin. "There! Looks much better now, doesn't it!" He polished one of the dials ostentatiously with his sleeve and stood back to admire the effect. "The Executive will be most impressed. It's not often we have any new capital equipment like this."
He turned on his heel "I'll get them over straight away. Stand by the machine until we return."
"Yes Sir!" He saluted the departing figure.
He had never seen a full assembly of executives before. They crowded self-consciously into the pilot plant, their uniform of the dark suit oddly contrasting with his own white lab. coat. Mr Happy, rubbing his hands together with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension was exchanging asides with the most important-looking of the invaders, nodding effusive agreement with his utterances. Of Folklore and Grey, there was no sign.
Eventually, Mr Happy glanced in his direction. "Everything ready?" and seeing his nod in reply, called the gathering to order. "As you can see, Gentlemen, this is the new High Impact-Strength Chair Shell Moulding Machine and we are going to demonstrate filling a typical mould."
He nodded to Dave, who switched on the pumps, ran up the mixer and pressed the 'operate' button. There was a satisfying sound of machinery doing its duty and compound flowed smoothly down the filling pipe and into the mould. He stood, waiting, with one hand on the lifting handle, a rubber bung in the other as the seconds timer swung steadily towards the zero and the 'clunk' of the switch off which was his signal to remove the pipe and insert the bung. It never came. Instead, liquid began to splutter back out through the filling point as the machine continued to cram more compound into the mould. Dave jabbed the 'off' button several times in sudden desperation but was then forced to take cover behind a scrap bin as the fountain of foam compound erupting from the filling hole gathered force and began to spray with hissing fury against the ceiling and rebound all over the machine, mould and anything else which got in its way.
Mr Happy, with commendable courage, leapt for the main electrical control box beside the entrance doorway, clapped the 'on-off' lever down and carried on outside to safety while the terrified executives scrambled over each other in their retreat to the far end of the pilot plant and an inadequate degree of protection behind the grime and grease of the 'old 4D'. The eruption reached a peak of fury, spraying droplets of quick-setting glue via the ceiling to the four corners of the room and then began to die back as the issuing magma became thicker and thicker until it was no longer able to force its way out and one by one, they lifted their heads to observe the creaking wreckage of the machine and the mould. Dave had stood up carefully and was about to approach it when the first of the mould clamps yielded to the mounting internal pressure and with a loud 'bang' the butterfly nut and its bolt hurtled across the pilot plant, ricochetting off a pipe past a row of white executive faces and losing itself in a corner. The VIPs huddled themselves miserably behind the 'Old 4D' from the renewed assault and Dave watched them from the safety of his scrap bin as they jumped in unison seven times as the remaining clamps disintegrated at intervals, like a salute of guns, discharging projectiles randomly all round the room.
Perhaps ten seconds had passed after the last explosion before Mr Happy, closely followed by Folklore and Grey (who had only just got news of the demonstration and had arrived at the doorway in time to catch most of the action) cautiously let themselves into the pilot plant. The shocked management straightened themselves up and took careful, mincing steps across the room towards the doorway, every eye r
ivetted on the twisted ruin of the mould. Before the first of them had reached safety, it broke its back with a crack which galvanised them into action like a starter's pistol and they fled in total disorder, accompanied by Folklore but with the exception of Mr Happy who slowly sat down on the floor and buried his head in his hands.
"I think that ought to have convinced them" remarked Grey, catching Dave's eye and a slow smile spreading across his face. "I don't think I have ever seen anything quite so funny in all of my life!" He abruptly burst out into a cackle of mirth which spread itself to Dave, but more as a reaction to the shock and the pair of them became helpless with merriment. Mr Happy lifted a face like thunder, clambered to his feet and stalked wordlessly out.
"What the Hell went wrong?" he asked when he eventually caught his breath.
"The sequence timer must have jammed. I have heard of it happening on machines of this type. You wouldn't expect it on a brand new one, though."
"Not new anymore, is it? Rather thoroughly christened, in fact!" The machine was plastered with droplets of compound and the centre of the console, unveiled only minutes before, had caught a large dollop which had spread all over the dials and run down on to the control switches, welding them at their respective settings. The mould was fit only for scrap.
"It won't be back in action for a fortnight, at least. Folklore will be really pleased about that!"
Folklore had been able to lay off almost all the blame squarely on to Mr Happy but he was a far cry from his usual jovial self when he summoned Grey and Dave to his office for a blood letting.
"Well, what went wrong? He was dangerously mild mannered. His red-rimmed eyes passed from one to the other.
"There was a failure in the timing mechanism" replied Grey. "We couldn't have predicted it."
"There was no indication of anything wrong during calibration and the test sample" chipped in Dave.
"The electrician has taken the unit out for testing" continued Grey. "It's impossible to test on the machine after the pasting it's had."
"And how bad is the damage?"
"The console is completely gummed up with compound. We shall almost certainly need a new panel. If Mr Happy had left the wrappers in place as Dave intended, the machine would be reuseable by now." Grey twisted the knife a bit harder. "If he had had the courtesy to consult us instead of rushing off and trying to pinch all the glory for himself."
Folklore's eyes opened a shade wider. "Exactly what did he do?"
"He just breezed in this morning, inspected the machine and took its covers off just because he thought it made it look untidy. Then he summoned the Executive and the first I knew about it was when I saw them come into the building, which was when I called you. The rest you saw for yourself."
"I see! Thank you. Perhaps you would see the engineers about repairing it as quickly as possible. Keep me informed." His voice dismissed them as he lifted the internal phone to dial Mr Happy's number.
Outside the door Dave asked "would you have agreed to take off the wrappings?"
"I expect so, but he didn't ask me, did he? Folklore will give him a roasting and leave us alone which is only right and proper, don't you think?"
"Will you get on to the engineers or shall I?"
"I'd rather you did, I've got a meeting this afternoon and I need to sort out a few things."
He phoned the Works Engineer and outlined the problem to him.
"Ah, well! If you'd asked me, I would have suggested that you get the electrician to check the console over before you started using the machine, and especially the interval timer - they're a bit notorious for it. What make is it? Oh well, what can you expect! Worst there is, cheap and very nasty, as you seem to have discovered! It's a great pity you didn't consult me at the time. I can't help you now, though - it's become a maintenance problem. Once you take over the running it ceases to be anything to do with me."
"Thank you very much!" said Dave, placing the receiver in its cradle and recalling that the Works Engineer had been in the pilot plant to see the machine in. He had had plenty of opportunity to comment then.
The Maintenance Engineer was equally helpful, but briefer.
"Development Department is not under my jurisdiction. Good afternoon."
The Design Engineer waffled for about half an hour, initially about the merits and demerits of the current range of moulding machines, then about his wartime experiences (he had worked for the Ministry of Defence on airship design) and finally was giving an elaborate and detailed description of how he lived with his ulcer when the hooter announced lunchtime and he abruptly rang off, having forgotten completely what Dave had called him for.
"Small wonder his nickname is Isembard Kingdom Brunel!" he brooded.
He didn't fancy mince and opted instead to call the manufacturers of the machine, whose switchboard girl put him through to the Sales Manager (UK) who listened politely while Dave told him the details.
"We are only liable for the immediate damage to the machine itself, assuming that it has been used in accordance with the operating instructions. We sub-contract for the electrical components and therefore this is probably a matter for them. I'll give you their number, if you'll hold on a moment."
"But we bought our machine from you, not your sub-contractor. When can you send us some technical assistance? My boss is going mad, and I don't blame him!"
"We aren't made of service engineers, you know! However, if your own engineering staff can't cope, we will oblige you and send a man along" he sounded as though he was doing Dave a great personal favour. "Let me see...", there was a pause, accompanied by the rustling of papers, "...we are shut down for our annual holiday next week and the week after. I'll put a message on his pad to contact you on July 14th. How's that?"
"That is almost a month! We can't possibly wait so long."
"Sorry, old boy. Best we can do. Good afternoon." He hung up.
Grey was at lunch but Folklore was Second Sitting and therefore still in his office. Dave complained to him of the lack of cooperation with mounting emotion while he tapped his fingers on his desk, still looking ruffled despite a most satisfying tirade in Mr Happy's direction.
"I'll see about this!" he said ponderously when Dave had finished. "Leave it with me."
He lifted the phone and blasted the sales Manager (UK) of the machine manufacturer with the full might of One Who is Destined to Rule and therefore can have a say in where his Company buys its machines from. Feeling rather proud of himself (he really was beginning to sound very masterful over the phone, these days. Mr Happy had practically been in tears!) he made his way over to the Executive Dining Room for Executive Style Mince and a discreet word with the Works Manager.
By 2.30 that afternoon, all three engineers and two service engineers, plus a sales representative from the machine manufacturer and a bedraggled looking service electrician from the supplier of the faulty component, had descended on the scene of the crime. The sound of recriminations and apportionment of blame attracted Dave to the pilot plant, along with Howell who happened to be passing and always enjoyed a good show. They watched for a while as the contest developed and inexorably the bedraggled electrician began to get the worst of it.
"Time I bailed the poor bugger out", murmured Howell to Dave. He raised his voice for the benefit of the assembled company. "Perhaps I can throw some light on your problem" he offered.
"What the Hell do you know about it?" snarled the Works Engineer, who disliked him intensely.
"I am the electronics engineer" he commented mildly. "Did you put a smoothing unit on the electrical system?"
A row of blank faces gave the answer.
"It's mostly solid state circuitry, these days and a bit sensitive to mains input." The bedraggled electrician nodded agreement. "Our mains are up and down like a yo-yo because there are some large engineering firms running off the same sub-station. I always put a smoother on anything new. Nine times out of ten
it doesn't matter. Looks like this is the tenth!" He looked the Works Engineer squarely in the eye. "Nobody told me this machine had come in or I would have attended to it. Ten minute job - there's a smoother in my workshop, specially bought in for it."
He turned to Dave. "Coming for a cuppa?"
"I enjoyed that!" he said when they had passed out of earshot "but how is it that when I asked all those people to come and lend a hand, they didn't want to know, yet Folklore has only to say the word and they all come running!"
Howell smiled. "That, my boy, is what comes of having a big office!"
George was lucky, he escaped with a flesh wound."
Jerome K Jerome