Arts & Crafts

It Was A Banner Day At ASCO

Back in January when I designed my very own retirement banner, because I’m the only person making banners, I cheekily added the words “making”, “last” and “banner” in a smaller text so that it read “Congratulations Brian On (making) Your (last) Retirement (banner.) Well, as it turns out, not only was it not my last retirement banner, it was not even my next to last, but my 3rd last. I printed mine out on the Monday before last and the very next day HR asked to make one for somebody on 3rd shift whose last day is the same as mine, March 2nd.

Once my banner was put in the company cafeteria for people to sign, the word was out, and people started to show up with requests for banners that would be needed after I’m gone. I made 4 birthday banners last week, one for each person in a department. One for someone who was actually celebrating her birthday, but the other three were for later. They asked me to have them just say “Happy Birthday So and So” and they would save them and put them up every year.

Today was a banner day at the Valve Store, my work load had slacked off a bit, so I decided to work on knocking out the 7 requests I had collected over the last few days. First up was another retirement banner, next was a birthday banner for the same person. Next I did a birthday one for someone’s granddaughter and a birthday one for that very same someone. Then I had a pair of aunts and another person’s uncle. I rolled up the last banner just as the bell rung signifying the end on my work day. Only seven more to go, working days, not banners, but who knows have many more requests I’ll get between now and next Friday.

Retirement Banner

One of my collateral duties here at the Valve Store is Banner Maker to the People. Birthdays, Anniversaries, Baby Showers, Retirements, etc, if someone asks they will get a 3′ x 4′ full color banner printed out on my 42″ wide HP800 plotter. I have a few stock ones that I drag out, but most of the time I try to design something unique with a fancy font and incorporate the person’s personal interests somehow.

It was a slow Friday afternoon so today I decided to go ahead and design the last retirement banner I’ll ever print.

Richard the Safety Guy

The Valve Store has always been a safe place to work. We of course have a Safety Committee made of salary and hourly employees, but it is ingrained in the culture and it shows. You can never be too safety conscious in a machining & manufacturing factory. And our parent organization, Emerson Corporation, which manufactures all kinds of gizmos worldwide, treats safety as a high priority as well.

Up until recently the company’s main safety coordinator was a dual job person, she was also our on-site Occupational Health Nurse. As our number of employees has grown, both the health portion and the safety portion became too big for one person.1 Enter, Richard. He is a nice enough guy and by all accounts a very intelligent individual. But, you knew there was something coming didn’t you? As sometimes really, really smart people are, he can be a little flaky.

The other day he came into our Fabrication offices and started to explain to our engineer that he had done a walk-thru and noticed that one of the anti-fatigue mats had a turned up corner that created a trip hazard and need to be replaced. Tom says, “Sure I’ll write up a purchase request right now.” “What size?” “It’s ahh,” he then starts to hold out his arms, moving them around in an approximation of a rectangle, “about that big.” Tom asks, “Which machine?” Richard replies, “Well, it was back there on the left side when I walked through and it is the 3rd or 4th or maybe 6 or 7 back.” The entrance to our offices are smack in the middle of the manufacturing area and seeing as there was no mention of which direction he was traveling when he came in, the offending mat could be anywhere on the shop floor. Tom sighs, and says, “I’ll take care of it.”

This is where I come in, because Tom comes over to the Arts & Crafts Department, tells me the above story and then says, “That guy has sure got some fantastic Safety Powers. Could you design me a logo for his super hero identity?” I ask playfully, knowing Tom, and knowing where he is going, “Nice SG for safety guy?” “No,” Tom says, “I was thinking more along the lines of SD.” “S for safety, combined with the first letter for a Richard nickname that is not-so common in usage anymore.”2 So I used the color green for safety, a nice round logo for center chest placement and a little extra flourish added to the letter SD to get across the point.

Richard might just try and rock a suit like that at Halloween, but I bet he’d want a cape!

Arts & Crafts Engineer



Last Friday: Hey Brian can you make me a banner for my Relay for Life Event…tonight?
Monday: If I email you the pictures and bring over the words what I want on it, can you make me up a Lost Dog flyer?
Tuesday: Not enough people have returned their Safety Survey. Can you design something and print out five of them on 18 x 24 paper?
Wednesday: I print out my usual Service Level chart to hang outside the cafeteria.
Thursday: I need a banner for my Dad’s 75 birthday can you fix me up?
Friday: If I send you a picture with something circled could you erase it somehow?3

Safety Poster

Forest Gump Safety PosterThis morning I was cleaning out some of my old files at work. Tossing out stuff from the previous century that were one-time things, stuff for people who have since retired and others that I can’t image I would be using as a template in the future.

About three year’s ago the Valve Store’s(tm) Ocupational Nurse held a little contest for employee suggestions for a new safety poster. So I worked up this cute little idea based on the movie poster for Forrest Gump and submitted it. I don’t remember what won, it wasn’t mine, so I’m sure it was fairly lame. 🙂

The only thing I can think of is they were afraid of a law suit from the legal department of Paramount Pictures. Or maybe the then nurse was smarter than she looked and saw through my sarcastic twist on the Forrest quote of, “Stupid is as stupid does.”

Started down, went up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1466

DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA Batman

Egghead

Most of this week the big bosses of the Valve Store(tm) have been/will be off-site attempting to dazzle the even bigger bosses from Valve HQ by recounting the tales of past triumphs from FY2014 and presenting ideas for a more profitable FY2015. On Tuesday when I noticed that our manager wasn’t in his office at his usual time, I questioned over the cubicle wall to Mark and Tom, “Is Boy Wonder going to be out too?” (A reference to our new supervisor who is all of 30ish.) This led to maybe we should make up signs for their empty offices, one for “Robin” and another for the manager with Batman on it.

This sounded like just the thing for the then unsupervised Arts & Crafts Engineer to do after lunch. So I went to the web and downloaded some photos of the Dynamic Duo for the manager and our supervisor. I then did the same for 5 of the villains from the 60’s TV for us peons. I measured our cubicle nameplates, 2 x 10 for us and 3 x 12 for the big guys and made up some new themed ones. I then used some of my low tack spray adhesive and covered up everyone’s existing signs with the new ones.

They stayed up for all of an hour and a half. Batman called and told The Penguin to tell the second shift supervisor to make sure they folks in the shop weren’t playing poker or anything later because the President of the company was going to want to take a tour of the plant after they all had dinner. We may put them up tomorrow afternoon, because the big guns will have gone back to Jersey by then and leave them up until Batman and Robin get back to work on Friday.

Invitation

Last Friday when I asked my former boss and now a manager for another department how come he never wore a Hawaiian shirt on Fridays. He replied, “I was never invited.”

As the unofficial Valve Store(TM) Arts & Crafts Engineer I took this as a challenge being issued, so I got busy with some Google-fu, photoshopping and Microsoft Word work.

Started up, went down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1394