Today's Keyboard Smash
May. 20th, 2021 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scrubjayspeaksThis week at work I got to have a squee moment of "they are paying me to do this." That's because I got to spend an hour and a half being a junior unofficial grease monkey. Something had gone extravagantly wrong, physically, on the machine I was meant to run. And while there is both a trainee tech and the former tech, there's, like, no...rule...that says I can't hang around and lend an extra hand??? There wasn't much of anything else I could have done anyway--we're slow right now and most tasks have multiple people on them already. Plus, the former tech knows I'm obsessed with the machines and indulges me, so long as I make myself useful and pay attention when explanations are offered.
Which is why I got to help out and peer into machine guts and ask questions, and someone paid me for the privilege. I was a very happy creature. I was likewise happy when I sorted out another problem with the machine with just the trainee tech--we were extremely proud of ourselves for not having to call in A Responsible Adult to fix it. And I was goddamn delighted when I figured out why a dumb thing was happening, tried out a solution, and fixed it entirely without getting help from anyone at all.
I am back to my status as the Good Child with my team lead, which is to say I was ignored all day. It's understood that I will ask for help if I need it in a timely manner, and if I'm not kicking up a fuss, then I'm fine and no one needs to ride my ass about it. I very much like being the Good Child and not having my ass ridden.
Someday, man. Someday, I'm going to get official cross-training as a tech. Then the engineers won't get that weird, pinched look whenever I start grabbing wrenches or teaching myself to reprogram the robots. Because I will be officially trained in wrench-brandishing and robot-wrangling. And then there will be no stopping me! Muhuhaha!
Which is why I got to help out and peer into machine guts and ask questions, and someone paid me for the privilege. I was a very happy creature. I was likewise happy when I sorted out another problem with the machine with just the trainee tech--we were extremely proud of ourselves for not having to call in A Responsible Adult to fix it. And I was goddamn delighted when I figured out why a dumb thing was happening, tried out a solution, and fixed it entirely without getting help from anyone at all.
I am back to my status as the Good Child with my team lead, which is to say I was ignored all day. It's understood that I will ask for help if I need it in a timely manner, and if I'm not kicking up a fuss, then I'm fine and no one needs to ride my ass about it. I very much like being the Good Child and not having my ass ridden.
Someday, man. Someday, I'm going to get official cross-training as a tech. Then the engineers won't get that weird, pinched look whenever I start grabbing wrenches or teaching myself to reprogram the robots. Because I will be officially trained in wrench-brandishing and robot-wrangling. And then there will be no stopping me! Muhuhaha!
