August 11, 2011

So yea, I decided to just put the date for the daily blog posts instead of counting the days.  Figure it'll be easier to keep track of that way, means my daily posts will probably be at the end of the day like they have been.

Now, I figure some of my readers, like most of the people I know in real life, are probably curious about what I do at the charcoal plant.  They want to know what my typical day is like at work.  Well, this is how my typical day goes:



First of all, my shift is 2pm-10pm, but I usually head to work early, clocking in around 1:38 usually, and most of the time I have a few minutes past 10:00pm on the clock out.  The times are central time for the U.S. and Canada, which I believe is GMT -6 internationally, somebody comment with the correction if I'm wrong on that, I'm not too good with the Greenwich Mean Time.

Anyway, after I clock in, I put away my lunch and my change of clothes for the end of the day, then head into the manufacturing building, where I head to the office there.  Now, while I'm heading to the office, I'm doing a little surveilance at the same time.  First, I'm looking at the usual spots I take care of: 

The wet shaker, where the briquettes straight off the press get shaken to remove dust and to try and reduce the number of brokens that enter the dryer room.  My job here is to clean off build up of material, which I call bumps sometimes, that can push good briquettes off the shaker.

The wheelbarrows.  There are usually three: one at the end of the overflow chute at the back of the press, one below the incline conveyor to the press, and one under the incline conveyor to the silos.  My job here is to empty the wheelbarrows as needed and try to clean up the floors a little.

The starch hopper.   Pretty much the main part of my job: Keep the starch hopper full.

Now, as I'm looking at those spots on my way to the office, I can also see if we are running Mesquite, dry nitrate/borax, and what color starch we are using at the moment.  It sounds silly, but there really is a difference in the color of the starch.  White starch is typically very dusty, while yellow starch will stick to anything.  Days that I say I come home with "stone-arms" are yellow starch days, because the starch gets on my arms and then, as I'm working, collects charcoal material which dries and creates dozens of tiny briquette stones on my arms, hence why I call it "stone-arms".  Typically I can also see if the rotating shift utility guy, Donnie, is working that day as well.  And that's all before I get to the office.

Once I'm in the office, first thing I do is grab a couple of earplugs from the dispenser by the door.  While I'm rolling those up to put in my ears, I'm looking at the supervisors logs, to see how the day has went so far and to look at the formula we are running at the time, and the time sheet for the starch, just to get an idea of how fast we are running through the pallets.  Then, I test the drinks for the day, Gatorade in a five gallon jug, water in a three gallon, to see if I might need to get some fresh before I begin work.  By now, the ear plugs are rolled and in my ears, and unless I need to freshen up the drinks, I head over to the cabinet on the other side of the door to grab my safety goggles.  Once I have those, it's all shoveling, dumping, and cleaning unless the supervisor asks me to do something else or I'm helping the loader driver clean up at the end of the shift.  Remember how I said I like to keep my mind off my work while I'm working yesturday?  The way I do that is I just think while I'm working: about something or someone that is either on my mind, that I think I need to think about, or something I don't think I've though about enough.  That's my typical day.

Today, though, was a little different from typical.  Seen a slider turtle inside the building, thought it was a briquette until it started moving.  They were also testing something with the rate of the starch or something like that, which apparently made a bunch of brokens in the dryer.  Needless to say, the dust collection overflowed, and there was a big mess under the incline belt to the silos (the wheelbarrow is under the dust collection system).  Yea.... what a day today.