2009

CHICKEN OF THE SEA

So it’s ’09, I’m still working in the boatyard in American Samoa but it’s getting old as work invariably does. A few months after I’d started work at the boatyard (see Manlifts) my friends Sam, his family and catamaran Purrrfection show up in the anchorage, we’d known each other since Panama and had run into each other in different anchorages. Good people. Sam is also looking for work and soon finds it as the Utilities manager at Chicken of the Sea tuna cannery, good gig, never occurred to me to approach either COS or Starkist. On my best day I couldn’t have pulled off that interview, but Sam is substantially more polished than me. By the time I’d been at the boatyard 6 mths Sam is encouraging me to work at COS, sounds complicated, I’d have to be legal and everything. Finally Sam comes to me with a proposition to work for him at COS. Ok, I’ll listen, he needs someone to supervise a structural steel refurbishment at COS. When he started they asked him to sign a $1,000,000 construction project that had gone to tender and they’d selected a contractor but as head of the department they needed his signature. Sam’s response was “I’m not signing anything until I’ve had a look at the situation” Sam decided that the 60 man maintenance crew could do the work in house and reclaim disused equipment platforms on the roof for the new steel and his projected price was $250,000 and 6 mths to complete, with no disruption in production. Management were ecstatic, this is a substantial saving for an old plant that is running in the red. They ask “When can you start?” “As soon as I find a guy to supervise the work, but I know a guy.” Ok, you know where this is going. Sam dragged me through the problem areas and asked what I thought. “Sam, I know nothing about structural steel, I can’t even weld.” Sam urged me not to worry all he wanted to do was remove a couple of structures that were threatening to fall through the roof and through the boilers below and sister a bunch of beams that looked shaky. Hell you could read a newspaper through some of them. The only tricky ones were a pair of roof trusses that really looked nasty. “By then we’ll figure out something, we’ve got lots of cranes, forklifts, etc. All you have to do is keep the guys on your crew driving, you and I will plan how to do it. What do you think?” he asked. “What are your plans for the steel that’s not going to be condemned, but soon will be? A lot of this stuff will still be good if you protect it soonish.” I ask “I figured we’d grind and paint, what do you think?” he inquired “You’ve got a ¼ million in the budget and no shortage of compressed air, buy a sandblaster and we’ll blast it and paint it, it’ll be better and faster than painting. We can tarp the areas to contain the grit.” I suggested. Sam said he’d check it out with head office in San Diego, they loved the idea and he bought a 1 ¼” sandblaster with a 500 lb hopper and a couple of pallets of black beauty grit, plus 2 oxy/acetylene cutting rigs. It looked like I was changing jobs. Sam accompanied me to my interview with Willem, a South African with a lot of experience in the food industry. Willem pulled my CV out of a pile of paper and declared “I’ve never seen such a varied CV. Have you truly done all of this?” I replied in the affirmative and he asked what do we have to pay you? “I replied that the post tax equivalent of $20/h would be fine. He asked if I could start in a month when the purchased materials arrived, along with my work permit and how long I could commit to COS, I said a year. We agreed and I told Bob that I was out in a month, he took it pretty cheerfully as I’d fixed pretty much all I could figure out to fix.

So now I was a COS employee and legal to boot, my 3rd work permit in 17 yrs of cruising, I was going to be paying into the USA system, weird. I went to work got checked out for health, auditory examination, etc and met my 5 men that were my crew. We went up to the roof to dismantle the offending platform that was threatening the boilers, laid down plywood sheets for our hand carts, mustn’t puncture the roof membrane we’re moving over the freezers. I showed the guys how to adjust the pressures on an oxy/acetylene cutting rig and how to cut efficiently. When I asked who wanted to go next I turned to pick up the piece of I beam I’d just cut and the guy in the crew who spoke English, the rest were Samoan only. “Master” he cried in alarm “That’s our job, you’re the Master” “Get over that idea now please, from here on in we are 6 workers, all equal, all working.” He translated what I’d said and I was viewed peculiarly by the rest of the crew, they lit up the torches and soon I had a hand cart full and I took it to a fish box we were using as a rubbish tip at the edge of the roof where a crane could pick it up. On my way back I passed one of the guys with the other hand cart full of steel, we were working. Samoans are nice folk and as the Army and the NFL have discovered they’re huge, I’m not, I’ll never crack 5’8” and humping a full oxygen cylinder across 100+ meters of roof gave me lots of time to reflect on my earlier equality statement. About that ime I told COSs accountants about my 4 dependents, that sure reduced the tax bite. There was an another amusing moment when we lit up the sandblaster for the 1st time, we tarped a beam and I went in with the full on gear, a helmet with a fresh air source and lots of protective gear including a long leather vest with sleeves and blasted a few square feet. “Ok that’s how it works. Who’s next? “ I asked. There were no takers. “C’mon guys this is the job, you have to do it” I said firmly “Finally the next littlest guy to me stepped up and came out speaking excitedly and positively in Samoan. The biggest lad who would routinely hump 2 oxygen cylinders one on each shoulder over 100+ meters was last, but he really liked the sandblaster and became the designated blaster, relegating the other guys to clean up and painting. At the same time I had a couple of the guys taking apart the disused roof platforms to recover the steel I beams so we could sister bad beams, we welded jacking plates to the bottom and wound them up with 4 pieces of 5/8” all thread, until they assumed the load, welded them in place at the top and concrete encased them up 3’ so a forklift wouldn’t knock them out. I made a deal with the can plant, an independent company that supplied COS and Starkist with cans for an electric cherry picker in exchange for the sandblaster when we were done with it. The work went fast, in 3 mths we were down to blasting steel for other departments to facilitate their painting, we stuck them with the cleanup, but they were cool, we’d just saved them days of scrapping and grinding.

Sam asked me what I knew about reflective, waterproof, coatings. “C’mon man what do you think, nothing of course.” I laughed. “Well, light up the computer in your office and grab a quick education in them. Freezer 2’s compressor never shuts down and every couple of days we have to go in there and knock down 2 meter icicles before they skewer a forklift driver, the roof leaks that bad. You’re finished the steel job and you’ve done it in 3 mths for $125,ooo, so I’ve got $125,000 already in the maintenance account, let’s see if that’ll cover it” He instructed “Ok man, I’m on it.” Three days later I had 3 prices of around $120,000. “What do you think?” he asked. ”Well, it’s the right product, but I think we ought to buy it 20% or so cheaper” I replied. You see my job for 12 yrs in Canada before I went sailing was as a commercial electrical estimator, it was my job to make sure we got the right price going into a tender situation against a dozen or more other electrical contractors, by that I mean a significant dump, like 10% or hopefully more that no one else saw. I made promises that used to keep me up at night with self loathing. In fact it was that job that drove me to sail away, eventually I just couldn’t do it any longer. Construction isn’t pretty. So anyway I called the guy who had been the most helpful, explained I was only going to talk to him and not shop his price “Give me your bottom price right now and you’ll have a purchase order tomorrow.” Sometimes it works, we bought the materials for $90,000. “What do you want me to do now Sam? “ I asked “I don’t know man, this place is seriously running in the red. Any good ideas for cost savings?” he said. Sam really took his job quite seriously. “How come none of the steam process equipment isn’t insulated, I mean we’re making steam with $5/gal diesel and the collapsing steam is screwing up the whole system” I suggested. “Well, everyone says there’s no money in it when you consider the cost of insulation and it’s attendant installation. But please check it out,” I contacted john Mansville, the insulation folk, they had a lot of questions about our steam process equipment, ambient temperatures, desired radiating temperatures, etc. We settled on 1” of rigid insulation c/w a PVC cover to clean easily and I had to measure the lengths of steam lines c/w elbows, Ts etc. I had the boiler efficiency numbers , so how much were we going to save? Three days later I gave Sam my calculations “Please check these numbers, you know I suck at math and I can’t believe what I came up with.” Ten minutes later he was back smiling “Your numbers are right, if we insulate the process equipment we save $500,000/yr and a further $250,000 for the lines. How much to buy the insulation?” he asked “The street price is $50,000, I figure we’ll get it for under $40,000” I explained “S**t, that’s 1 months saving in fuel” he exclaimed “Less, actually” I said helpfully “How long to install do you figure?” “Well, we/ve got a 2 week shutdown for Christmas and maintenance is working through it, put 20 guys on it and I imagine you could knock it out” I said “You’re probably right, let’s go it’s time for the management meeting , you’re presenting this stuff, it’s your work” he said “Forget it, I hate those things just a bunch of a**holes explaining why it’s not their fault, besides I work for you, I’m not management.” I protested. “Ok, I’ll present it, but make no mistake they’re going to know who did this” he promised “Yeah, big deal” he was back an hour later and asked me to get a hard number on insulation cost, I did the same thing as with the roofing supplier and we bought it for $39,000.

About a week later the cell phone COS had given me rang it was my boss Willem “George do you have time to swing by my office?” Obviously only one correct answer. “See you in 15 min” I responded “George, you’ve done some extraordinary things for this company, the steel, the freezer roof and the insulation, that’s unbelievable” Thanks” I replied “But most of it was Sam” I suggested. “Not according to Sam” he countered “ I’d like to promote you“ “I like working for Sam “ I wheedled “Yes, we all like Sam but I need someone to fix Label and Case, I want you to run it” This is a department of about 175 people who were usually responsible for production shutdowns that resulted in the loss of fish. FDA rules are that the fish has to be cooked in the can within 2 hours of being thawed, but if there are no empty retort carts, what the cans are cooked in, the production line stops and eventually the fish goes to fish meal, a relatively low buck animal protein supplement . It’s label and cases job to empty the carts. “Jesus Willem, that’s like getting a date with a drop dead gorgeous girl, you know you’ll get lucky and you know she has genital herpes” I protested “That’s an excellent analogy of what I’m asking of you, except I’m not asking I’m telling you” he says “And if I don’t?” I say breezily “Then I’ll fire your ass” he says forcefully “No you won’t” I try “ Want to find out?” Willem sounds serious. S**t.

So now it’s my 1st few days in Label and Case, there’s been no formal introduction and only senior management are aware of my new status as their new boss, they simply parachuted me on top of the system. Not ideal. Day one, they are on a mezzanine above the soon to be insulated retorts. The ambient temperature is 135 degrees, there is no cold water insight. “Where do you go for water?” I ask one of my new colleagues. “You need to get permission from the line boss and go up to the top of the fish cleaning lines “ comes the response. That’s about ¼ mi of walking. I head back to stores and find 2 brand new water cooler/fountains. “I need those” I tell the guy in charge. “Nah, they’re signed out to maintenance, you’re label and case” “ What’s my ID say?” I ask, “Uh, maintenance, sign here” I’ll send a couple of mechanics down in 15 min for them” “Cool,” comes the response. I went back up into hell and grabbed 2 mechanics who spoke English and asked them if they could install one upstairs and one down and if they could finish before the end of the shift. “Sure, they just plug in, easy” They had them up and working in 2 hrs and when I returned no one still knew who I was but they knew all about the water. “Master, thank you” “No, my name is George” A couple of days later one of the packers was blowing it’s sub breaker on a cogged belt, the belt was bar tight, cogged belts don’t run tight, I asked one of the mechanics to ease the belt tension and the problem disappeared, but not before I drew the ire of Joe, the head mechanic, who ran a very tight kingdom. He had no idea who I was and dressed me down big time in Samoan, didn’t need an interpreter for that and told me to stay the hell away from his machines. Clearly a formal introduction was going to be needed. I returned to Willem and explained what had happened. “Oh s**t, what have I done to you?” he cried “sorry, I’ll take care of it ASAP” for the next 3 shift starts Willem called a meeting of Label and Case people and introduced me. A week later Joe came to me and apologized and asked if I was going to fire him. “Are you kidding?” I laughed, “you’re the best mechanic in the place, but I am going to ask you for a favor, I don’t want you to think of it as a punishment, more as a compliment. I want you to trade shifts with the other head mechanics for as long as you think necessary to train the other mechanics in 2nd and 3rd shifts.” I asked “For how long” he asked. “As long as you think the other shifts are still learning, when you think you’re done with 2nd shift, move to 3rd shift, when you’re done with them return to 1st shift” I asked “OK?” “and it’s up to me?” he confirmed “Sure, it’s the same equipment, I just want you to be a teacher, just don’t fire anyone without speaking to me 1st. OK?” Two weeks later I received a size 2 roasted suckling pig from Joe, a really nice peace offering. In case you’ve no idea what I’m talking about it’s a coconut raised 70 lb pig cooked in the traditional method, absolutely delicious, the coconut comes tight through. All 3 shifts of mechanics had a feast in the park, I put up the beer. Line change times on 2nd and 3rd shifts improved markedly.

I’d always been told that the problem with Label and Case was the quality of the mechanics and their maintenance, but after 6 wks I decided that was just a pat management answer. Sure the mechanics were not the best, but they got it done, eventually. I started showing up for management meetings covered with grease and got the expected “We didn’t hire you to do the work, we hoped you’d supervise the work” came the other managers comments “Yeah, this is me supervising” I was coming to the conclusion that the line workers were poorly motivated and generally disorganized, so I resolved to work with the people on the floor and try to understand the problem. Right away I recognized that they had no way of judging their progress at the end of an 8 hr shift. “How quickly can you generate production line by line at the end of a shift?” I asked the ladies in the L&C office “In 30 sec, it’s fully computerized” was the response. “Ok, by the time they punch out I want all the lines output posted where they hit the time clocks. OK? I want them clearly labelled day by day, shift by shift for the whole 5 days, 6 if we run overtime, 7 if it’s bad OT, please explain to the office ladies on the other shifts, for me as well.” “Sure easy” it became a huge hit, they’d never seen their own efforts, but it was so easy to read it required no explanation. In 2 more weeks I was buying restaurant size ice cream containers and giving out ice cream to the best producing shift as they came on and for the shift going out, I just knocked them off 15 min early. Polynesians love ice cream, it was such a cheap ploy I was almost ashamed of myself. Almost. The management meeting were getting more interesting. “You’re buying ice cream and knocking off early to eat it? Who’s buying the ice cream?” asked the other managers “Me, our numbers are up, OT is down and we’ve not cost the plant any production losses in weeks” I countered “Make sure you put those receipts into accounting” put in Willem “Good management practice, where’d you learn it?” “Here” Basically all I did at the meetings was explain what was broken, how long to fix it and how many empty retort carts we had.” “How many carts George?” was Willems standard question, an easy way of monitoring L&Cs activity “Computer says 500” “We only have 990 total and you’re telling me we’re better than 50% empty?” “You want us to put cans back in, that’ll take a while” “Today is Wed pm, we’ve never had that many empty carts mid week and despite your piss poor attempt at levity that’s unbelievable.”

Working with the line workers was definitely paying off, I just wandered the floor talking and helping, the retorts were insulated and the temperatures were running about 110 degrees on the mezzanine. I was trying to work part time on all three shifts, made for long days. I never changed how L&C functioned, fired anyone, demoted or promoted. Eventually it came around the 1 yr mark, Willem tried to get me to stay, but I was done, he made lots of increasingly attractive offers, but the cruising kitty was burning a hole in my imagination. The day before my last day my head supervisor asked to knock off 15 min early and involve 2 shifts so they could say goodbye to me. How do you say no to that? So amid the ice cream treat he makes a long speech in Samoan and presents me with a bulging envelope. “We wanted to get you something, but we don’t know anything about boats, so we passed the hat, there’s $1168.00 in there, buy something you need with it and think of us.” “I made a long entreaty to spend the money on a huge party for all 3 shifts so we could all enjoy it, after all I knew how hard they worked for their money.” “If you tell me to translate that I will, but you’ll be making a mistake, these people are really proud of what they are trying to do for you” explained my supervisor. “Ah” and I launched into an explanation of how the money would enable me to buy a crucial piece of equipment that I couldn’t quite justify and how they were saving my wrinkled white ass. “Ok, that I will happily translate. The applause was tumultuous. At the next management meeting I was the topic of conversation. “Did they really give you money?” asked the other managers “How much?’ “They said $1168.00, it seemed poor form to count it” “You know” said a very old, quiet manager “I’ve been here 27 yrs and that has never happened before, you’ve obviously made some friends” Later that night back on Thalia I recounted my day with Debrae “That’s outrageous, you can’t keep it” she spat. Itried to share it and explained my supervisors comments. Then donate it to the library, she suggested, that’s ridiculous they don’t read, it’d just go to waste. It stayed a sore point for some time between us, but as far as I could tell there was no easy resolution. The day after my official retirement Willem announced the phased out closure of the plant. Two weeks later I returned to say my goodbyes. “Willem, I think you guys really over reacted to my quitting” “F**k off George”

Debrae and I sailed north to the Kirabati and other adventures (see Canton) George and Thalia

“If I’m lyin’…”