by ToClark
CHAPTER 13
He was incredibly busy, these days. He couldn't recall how the workload had created itself and, indeed, he hadn't the time to think about it. He had given up teabreaks two or three weeks ago and now only stopped for the bare minimum necessary to hastily gulp down the canteen's delectable fare and even did this with a sense of resentment at the waste of time. He had worked out the optimum moment to go across when the queue was likely to be at its shortest so that the whole refuelling business rarely took more than ten minutes. He hardly ever spoke to Howell who, anyway, for reasons of his own seemed to be avoiding him. Dave even took his work home to do in the evenings and now regularly came into work on Saturdays, ostensibly for the extra money, but in practice to keep the wolf a little further away from his door and he was even considering cancelling his annual holiday.
It was when a dream shrilling of his office phone dragged him from an uneasy sleep and into a furious row with his wife that he changed his mind and drove to work on the Monday with a faint sensation of relief. How he needed a holiday!
It was an important day. The SQA Inspector was due to call and there was much to prepare for him. It was especially important for two reasons. Firstly, the Ford Buyer was breathing down his neck for a very urgent job which had to be approved today or else thousands of new cars would have to be stockpiled without any driver's seats and secondly because their area SQA Inspector was away and Reeves and Dave had rushed to get three other jobs lined up in the hope that whoever came would pass the lot in one fell swoop.
He had first encountered SQA when the mould which had gone to the scrapyard was replaced and duly came up for its products to be inspected, some time after the Process Engineer had pronounced himself well pleased with the samples he had been given. The procedure was somewhat elaborate. A product had to be sliced up and checked off against the blueprint in various sections. Against each figure on the blueprint an entry had to be made on one of the blue forms and the dimension as measured written into the little box allowed for it under the heading 'Supplier'. A separate little box was left blank for the Inspector to put his own measurement into.
When all was laid out ready, the Inspector came. He was a big man, with big hands and a big voice. He was known, surprisingly enough, as 'Big Lyndon'. He scrutinised the blue form at some length before complaining about the quality of the typing and then spent half an hour searching for something to find fault with, before he was able to track down an undersize of 20 thou (0.02 inches, less than the feeler gauge setting for a sparking plug) in an obscure corner of the moulding. He wrote gleefully with his big pencil
REJECT - UNDERSIZE DIMENSION'
heavily across the blue form so that it would print through to the ninth copy, which he ripped off and presented to Dave at the same time enquiring if he was going to take him out to lunch because he didn't want to be too early for his next call, because then he would have to make another one further away from where he lived and he didn't believe in being late home.
On his next visit to the Process Engineer, Dave raised the question of the rejected moulding.
"SQA are a load of rubbish. Your moulding was perfectly OK, no problems on the line at all. The trouble is that they are an autonomous body and I have no powers to over-rule them, otherwise I would. Why don't you take him out and get him drunk before you show him the next sample?"
Dave took his advice. The Company spent œ150 on a new mould with the faulty dimension corrected and Big Lyndon was given a 12.30 appointment to inspect it. Dave took him to lunch at the 'Pig-in-a-Poke' and then matched him pint for pint until closing time, sitting in Big Lyndon's Company Cortina with a benign smile on the return journey as he left his own personal tyre print on every corner and road junction along the way, to conclude the day's business. They parted on the best of terms, slapping each other on the back with guffaws of merriment and he was still giggling in the aftermath of Big Lyndon's racing takeoff across the factory yard when Reeves thrust the blue form under his nose. The message
'REJECT - SECTION B-B INCORRECT TO TEMPLATE'
was imprinted heavily across it.
The third time they tried bribing him with a range of the Company's more desirable consumer goodies and Lyndon departed with a carful of luxuries leaving them sorrowing over yet another blue form with 'REJECT' impressed all over it.
"It is time" Dave said thoughtfully "to summon reinforcements. I am going to see Folklore."
He listened carefully. He had heard rumblings from the direction of the Automotive Sales office and was in the process of working himself up to issuing a bollacking to his Technical Liason Officer when Dave's appearance in his office forestalled it.
"When can you be ready for reinspection?"
"We shall have to beat the mould into shape, it's ludicrous to keep forking out for new moulds every time. If that is successful, we can have samples prepared for the day after tomorrow. Big Lyndon seems prepared to call in here at a day's notice. I don't think he lives all that far away, so I suspect that we're an easy day out for him, which may be part of his motivation for continually rejecting our stuff.
"Let me know when the inspection is to take place and I will attend myself. Personally." He added sombrely.
Big Lyndon arrived punctually at 12.30 and was as food and drink mellowed as it was possible to get him when Folklore drifted into Reeves' workshop to witness the inspection. The mould bashing had put to rights the undersized section but had created one or two inaccuracies elsewhere and they were hoping that he would simply check his previous rejection and drift away off home in time to watch 'Blue Peter'. It was not to be - Lyndon's mother-in-law was staying with him for the week and he was in no hurry to depart.
"You've corrected that OK" he observed as he lined his ruler up against the cut edge of the product. "Let me have a look at section B-B which was in error once before."
Dave winced. B-B had gone out of true after the caress of the maintenance fitter's lump hammer.
"Aha!" His eyes lit up as his trusty ruler revealed an undersize "this should be 4.875 inches and it's only 4.825. You are 0.05 inches under - here, measure it yourself!" He thrust section and ruler into Dave's unwilling hands.
"May I have a look?" interjected Folklore. Taking the section in one hand and ruler in the other, he squinted carefully at it as if it would grow before his authoritative gaze. "I don't quite understand these decimals of an inch. What should 4.875 inches be?"
"Four and seven eighths."
"And you are quite sure that it is across the centre - here?"
"Quite sure!"
"Would you be kind enough to show me?"
As Lyndon bent over the blueprint to point out the exact location, Folklore, with great solemnity, examined it and compared it against the section in his hand. He turned the ruler, first one way and then the other, eyed it close to and then far away, squinting again through one eye, turning his massive head from side to side to view it from all angles. Eventually he lowered the ruler. "This 4.875 is really four and seven eighths?"
"That's what I said!" Lyndon was beginning to get cross.
"These marks are eighths of an inch?" He indicated the graved lines on Lyndon's ruler.
"Yes! What else could they be? See - there are eight of them between one inch and the next" His tone should have withered this bumbling idiot but he seemed to be oblivious of it.
"I'm sorry, but I cannot make it less than 4.925 inches. Perhaps I don't understand your ruler" and he handed it back to Lyndon with an apologetic smile.
"Look here." Lyndon snatched the section angrily from him and positioned the ruler against it. He thrust it agressively close under Folklore's nose. "Count up seven spaces from the four inch line. Now, is the edge of the product above or below it?"
"Above" answered Folkore blandly.
"Let me see that!" Lyndon was becoming extremely irritated. He turned the sample sideways so that both could view it. "Look. Here is the four
inch line. Now, count up from there. They counted together as Big Lyndon moved his big thumb from one eighth mark to the next.
"Four and one eighth."
"Four and two eighths."
"Four and three eighths."
"Four and four eighths. That is four and a half." Lyndon's sarcasm was withering.
"Four and five eighths."
"Four and six eighths."
"That's four and three quarters, isn't it?" Folklore enquired urbanely.
"Four and seven eighths and a bit below."
"Above!"
Their eyes met and then both swivelled towards the ruler and Lyndon's big thumb. His eyes slowly widened and an unhealthy flush welled up around his collar as the edge of the product showed unmistakeably above the line. He cleared his throat. "Oh well, that's all right then."
Without another word he picked up his pencil and wrote 'Acceptable risk' on the ISIR which was the nearest he ever allowed himself to admit that a product had passed his inspection. "I'll see myself out" he said, and was gone, leaving Dave bemusedly holding the precious ninth copy.
"I don't think you'll have quite so much trouble with him in future" Folklore observed with a faintly mischevious grin. "I have some letters to dictate" he offered by way of excusing himself and departed in the direction of his office.
"He is definitely on his way to the Top" said Reeves when they were alone.
"How on earth did he do it?"
"When you were all occupied with showing him where the 4.875 dimension is on the blueprint, he switched B-B for C-C which, as you know is similar, but slightly thicker!"
Folklore was right, but Big Lyndon was to prove to be a thorn in their flesh in the months to come and despite representations to Ford's higher management, it seemed that nothing could be done to broach their autonomy. He came to appreciate the significance of Watkins' dry remark that SQA 'were a sort of itinerant Mafia'. It wasn't until Big Lyndon went too far with his own Company that he was finally promoted to somewhere harmless and he, thankfully, passed from Dave's sphere of operations.
One quiet summer morning, when the temperature in the pilot plant was too high for the 'Old 4D' to function properly and the staff stayed languidly at their desks, drinking Company issue free orange juice, cooled with ice cubes from the Physics lab. fridge that he arrived unannounced, demanding to carry out a random inspection of their Ford Motor Company products in store and by reference to 'Ford Q101' proving that he had every right to do so. Dave reluctantly led the way to the Goods Outwards section and Lyndon seized half a dozen assorted products, destined for the Cortina production line which had enjoyed several months of trouble free operation. Back in the workshop, he checked them off at length against their respective blueprints while they fed him cups of tea and hoped for the best, but it was with sinking heart that Dave saw that all too familiar look come into his eyes as he held up a Cortina seat in triumph.
"Look here" he cried in his Great Voice "this seat is half an inch under thickness."
"Are you sure?"
But Big Lyndon was too hot on the scent to be deflected by the memory of past embarassments and it would take more than a Folklore Switch to get them out of this one.
"Maybe it's just an odd mould?" he was clutching at straws. There were 76 cortina seat moulds, all from the same pattern - they would all be identical. Lyndon checked ten different mould numbers before he was satisfied that the fault was a general one. The look in his eyes was truly Thor-like.
"Can I use your phone?" He was already dialling Dagenham before Dave could nod his head. "Stop the Cortina Production line!" he bellowed down the instrument "there is a major fault on the seat cushions. Immediate action required etc. etc........"
He had visions of chaos erupting at the other end, mighty machines screeching to a halt in a shower of sparks and thousands of workers staring mystefied at one another in the sudden silence of the shutdown. Meanwhile, moulding lines 2 and 3, which were dedicated entirely to the production of Cortina seats were put on stop. Bitter words were heard to be exchanged in the Executive Toilet (First Sitting) and an unhappy rumble began to stir in the bowels of the factory. It was rumoured afterwards that 'Buzzer' Watson's secretary had opened a secure file which she kept locked in her desk at all times and, following the instructions therein, had booked a first class air ticket, single only, to Venezuela in her boss's name. The local paper had actually begun to compose a new front page with the headline 'Redundancy Imminent at Plastics Factory'.
Lyndon was still on Rees' phone to Dagenham when Watson's assistant had a call from the Ford Buying Department, confirming that production should continue and reminding them that extra capacity had been called off for that night's shift and if they didn't make enough seats then the line would come to a stop all by itself.
Back in the workshop, Lyndon was still stirring up huge clouds of dust and it sounded as though all kinds of pandemonium was loose at the other end, when the other phone rang and the voice asking for him sounded most displeased.
"It's for you." Dave tried to communicate above his verbal torrent.
"You can see I'm busy!" spat back Lyndon, managing at the same time to keep up the flow of his outgoing oratory.
"He's too busy to speak to you now. Can I take a message?"
"Tell him it's SQA Q101." The voice sounded even more displeased.
"It's SQA Q101" he offered, catching his eye.
Lyndon carried on bellowing down the mouthpiece for several seconds more, then abruptly dried up in mid sentence and put the phone back on its hook. He had gone pale. With a hand that suddenly trembled, he took the other receiver from Dave.
"Big Lyndon here."
"Will you confirm that the seat cushion in question is part number 315E 81772A?"
He confirmed that it was, nodding vigorously into the mouthpiece.
"In that case, you do realise that the signature on the ISIR approving this product is your own? You have just rejected yourself! You are instructed to leave there at once and report here at 0900 hours tomorrow morning, in person. Is that perfectly clear to you?"
He nodded and put down the handset. "I'll see myself out. Goodbye."
As Big Lyndon was large, so the man who called that Monday morning, prompt at 11.30 was small. A quiet, aimiable person, genially plump and with a ready and gentle smile, announced himself as the SQA Inspector and, of course, he would be happy to deal also with the other jobs which they had made ready, even though there was only an hour before lunch in which to do it. Yes, he knew Big Lyndon. He was the very Devil, that one! His smile broadened as he passed on the reminiscence about the time Big Lyndon had rejected a brake master cylinder at Girling's because the letter 'G' in the word 'Girling' had slipped 20 thou out of line as it was stamped on to the reservoir.
With gentle hands he checked off the four jobs and lunch was approaching. Reeves and Dave were beginning to relax and congratulate themselves when the little man looked up from the blueprint he was studying.
"Excuse me, it says here that 'to facilitate release from the mould, all corners to be 0.1 inch radius'. I have checked on all four of your mouldings and all your corners are square."
"Oh, that's nothing!" said Reeves cheerfully. "We don't need to radius the corners. It was done as a precaution against sticking at one time, but modern release agents are so good that they don't any more. It simplifies the patterns."
The little man smiled. "That may be so, but it clearly says on the blueprint that your corners should be radiused and they aren't. I'm afraid I shall have to reject them all."
"You can't do that! Reeves was agast. "Just about every job in the factory has that condition. You are, in effect, rejecting the whole lot. And for nothing!"
The little man continued to smile sadly. "I'll pretend I don't know anything about the rest of your stock, but I shall have to reject these" and with gentle, precise hands he wrote 'Reject. Corners not radiused as per print' on each
of the blue forms in turn, handing Dave the four ninth copies.
"No thank you." He wouldn't stop for lunch. "With Big Lyndon away, there was such a lot of rejecting to do!"
On Friday afternoon Dave sat down and wrote out a list of those jobs which would need attention during his absence. By cutting out all the non-essentials he got it down to three sides of foolscap which he took to Grey who was, as usual, reading the P & R Weekly and dreaming of cutting Burton down to size on the Links on Sunday morning.
"Put it in my 'in' tray" he murmured impeturbably as Dave explained what it was. "No, I don't need you to go through it all. I can read and if you haven't made it clear what you wanted doing, then hard luck!"
As he opened the door to leave, Grey's voice followed him. "Have a good holiday!"
And so he did.
Monday morning and the cloud began to gather as he drove in to work. Picking up the pieces from Grey. Calls to make. Etc., etc. His first call was to Grey's superoffice to find him practicing swings with an imaginery golf club. "Did you have a good time? I beat that bastard Burton by 14 yesterday. That ought to have cut him down to size!"
"Oh, that stuff! Still in my 'in' tray. I told Gwenda to take a look at it but she was called away to do something for Smith. Sexy little piece, isn't she?"
Dave's past life began to swim before him. Two weeks of total anarchy! Orders lost, samples not sent, tests not done. Essential calls not made, moulds two weeks behind schedule! "Didn't anybody phone?"
"One or two, but I told them you were away."
Clutching his three dusty sheets of paper, he staggered to his office and called 'Buzzer' Watson.
"No! No problems. Everything under control. Rather quiet, actually. Did you have a good holiday?"
He phoned Prescott to see what the position was regarding three urgent samples which should by now have emerged from the pipeline. Prescott was unpeturbed. "No problems. Everything going well. Did you have a good holiday?"
Howell looked up in surprise as he entered the office with a cup of tea in one hand and a chessboard in the other.
"Fancy a game?"
"Sure. Why not? Are you sure you've got the time to spare?"
Dave looked a little sheepish. "No need to rub it in. I made the mistake of thinking that I was important. I've just learned my lesson! Which hand?"
Howell tapped his left and extracted the white pawn.
"White again. I really don't know how you do it!
He advanced P - K4, Dave replied P - K4 and the phone rang.
"Is Dave there?"
"He's still on holiday" replied Dave and hung up.
"And when he had taken the five loaves and two fishes, he looked up to heaven, and blessed, and brake the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before them; and the two fishes he divided among them all. And they did all eat, and were filled. And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments, and of the fishes."
Mark 6. 41 – 43
