Fan Diameter?

Right out of university I worked for a manufacturing company in southern Ontario.  The start of the recession in the early 80’s slowed down business.  Fortunately (or unfortunately) the company kept the young grads on staff


and in a recession, you can’t be too picky about your place of employment.

The parent company resided in Buffalo, New York where I spent four months as a trainee.  The definition of culture shock is to take a kid from the prairies of western Canada and plunk him in downtown Buffalo.  I couldn’t figure out why no one was jumping up to look out the window when a police siren roared by every fifteen minutes.  It turns out that kind of event was “just another day at the office”.

The chief engineer was a Quasimodo look alike and had the personality to match.  You couldn’t ask him a question because he’d reply with, “Well you’re the university graduate.  You figure it out”.   A young engineer who had similar personality disorders, worked as Quasi’s right hand man.  He had the peculiar practice of letting the phone ring exactly three times before answering it.  He performed this act without fail every time the phone rang, I suspect to not seem over anxious or not busy.

When especially bored, I would don a pair of safety glasses and tour the plant.  It seemed the foundry flies were as big as eagles and I would take a rolled up magazine in case I had to bat one out of the air if I felt particularly threatened.  I felt sorry for the foundry workers.  It reminded me of a scene right out of the industrial revolution.  Dark, dingy, smokey and workers tired and ashen faced.

As a trainee I was tasked with helping Tony the Italian with inventory in the foundry one day.  He was befuddled when measuring the diameter of a pump impeller and it wasn’t matching the measurement on the inventory documents.  I stared in amazement.  The measurement he was taking was not across the centre of the impeller.  In fact, he wasn’t even close.  He didn’t know what diameter was.

Oh my gawd, what the hell had I gotten myself into!