Desert Crucible was blessed with a staff of artisans from a wide variety of countries, cultures, and languages. Included in this conglomeration, among others, were employees from China, Viet Nam, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia. This diversity sometimes led to misunderstandings – some amusing.
Anyone who has worked in such a polyglot is well aware that the first words and phrases picked up in a new language are often not necessarily those preferred for use in polite society. Person to person slang comes first.
One day I was confronted by a frustrated new employee from Laos. He had been assigned to use a cabinet sandblaster to remove investment material from a stack of bronze castings. The job involved placing the casting in the cabinet, closing the door, turning on the exhaust fan to remove dust that would be produced, standing at the front of the cabinet with hands in the gloves that protruded into the cabinet, and maneuvering a “gun” that directed a steady force of recycled sand or glass beads onto the casting to blow away the unwanted investment material.
His complaint was that the cabinet “SUCKS!” I knew that we had just recently outfitted the cabinet with new rubber gloves and a new glass viewing window, so I was surprised he was having problems with it. I tried it for a while and experienced no problems. It worked fine. He watched me, shrugged, and went back to work.
Later in the day I was approached by a different Laotian employee who had a big grin on his face. He explained that the previous employee had indeed been having a problem with the cabinet blaster. He had not been sufficiently electrically grounded, and the cabinet would periodically give him a static electric shock generated by the blasting sand.
In his entreaty to me he had said “SUCKS!” when he meant “SHOCKS!”
The poor guy was getting zapped and he couldn’t get anyone to listen to him.
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In our efforts to produce the highest quality product possible, we had an unwritten tradition in the foundry that if you made a mistake, you owned up to it. This proved to be a good practice, as the next guy or gal was not as likely to make the same mistake. “It broke” was replaced by “I broke it and here is how it happened.”
In a weekly company meeting of all employees, I was once obliged to reveal that we had lost a job we were expecting to receive from a customer in Mexico. And it was my fault. I had critically misplaced a decimal point in a bid when I converted pesos to dollars. I explained to the assembled group what had happened.
There was a moment of silence, then an oriental voice from the back of the room, “Get a rope!”
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