Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Scorcher

It got up into the mid-nineties (35 C) today with high humidity. Our steam engineer basically spends his time shoveling coal into a furnace and then driving behind it for a half hour or so every trip. By early afternoon, I was getting concerned about the young man engineering today. I prompted the upper echelons -- who were preoccupied with some other projects -- to consult with him and the conductor, and a decision was made to shut down operations about two o'clock. This was a wise move, but if we had been on top of things, we probably should have made the decision an hour or two sooner. Fortunately, the engineer is a healthy twenty-one-year-old and should survive.

Anyway, it was hot enough without having to ride behind a blazing furnace all day shoveling coal into the fire.

Management! We should all be taken out and -- well, severely reprimanded or something.

1 comment:

Tom Scharbach said...

I think flogging in your general direction would be a good idea. What is it about teenage boys and management, anyway? It seems that a precondition to both seems to be that brain death. Droolers ...