His Attitude Could Use Some Maintenance

I’m a woman, working in a factory that produces NEMA (National Electrical Manufacturers Association) motors. My particular line assembles the stator core, and my job is to press the wires into their final shape and test them for any defects. I’ve done this for going on five years now.

However, my press hasn’t been working right for months, and maintenance has been lazy about getting around to fixing the problem. It’s an automatic hydraulic press, but it’s putting on too much pressure, forcing us to set the pressure lower and lower to make up for the problem. It should be on level five or six; it’s on level two.

Lately, the press has been destroying part of the motor if left to its own devices, and to account for that, we have some stiffened paper as a shield to protect the delicate part from being ruined. This is causing the machine to kind of fault out at times because the sensor isn’t reading the motor correctly. There are two options at this point: fix the pressure issue or fix it to where it won’t fault out.

I’ve put work orders in for this the entire week. It was running fine and just decided to stop running fine. There’s been no change in the settings I can see; it looks like a timing issue, which the head of maintenance agrees with. He sends out one of the workers that I can’t stand.

This man is convinced he’s the smartest person in the room and you won’t tell him otherwise.

Maintenance: “So, the cause of this is this paper here.”

Me: “Yes, I’m aware that’s the most likely cause. If I don’t have it in there, the press will eat the leads, and we lose time by sending them back to be redone, then repressed, and then probably sent back again.”

Supervisor: “Is there anything you can do to patch it up for now? It needs to be fixed, but it’s the end of the shift. Can we run it for the last forty-five minutes?”

Maintenance: “Yeah, I can do that. As long as people don’t mess with settings without knowing what they’re doing, it’s fine.”

I feel like this is a personal jab at me, but I take it. I don’t care; I just want to run my machines without issue. My supervisor leaves and [Maintenance] begins to work.

Maintenance: “You know, I checked the logs. You’re the only person who calls us out to fix it every time it messes up a little. No one but you has this problem.”

Me: “Uh-huh.”

I continue to take it, not telling him that I can see those logs, too, and I can see where every person who runs this machine puts in for various major issues they won’t come out to fix. I also happen to be the ONLY woman who runs this kind of machine in my area.

He runs a few motors, causing the exact problems I’ve been having, proving my need to have the stiffened paper in place. He comes up with the genius idea that it’s a timing issue, and the upper press isn’t putting on enough pressure. I say absolutely nothing to him about it because what do I know?

He sets the pressure to three and I walk a short distance away. He runs the press, and there is the LOUD noise of metal snapping.

Me: “It broke a bolt! The machine’s down. I’m done for the night. It’s not running again!”

He pulls the completely destroyed core out of the press to see that it’s snapped a major bolt.

Me: “This is what happens when people mess with the settings without knowing what they’re doing.”

He gave me a look and repaired it fairly quickly. He set the pressure back to two, put another motor in, and ran the press. It snapped that new bolt at once, meaning he had made the problem WORSE.

Ten minutes to the end of the shift, I told my supervisor I would not be in the next day and went to talk to a friend of mine for the last little bit of work.