[GreenKeys] RE: FAA dates

[Ed Hickey]

That reminds me of a classic story.  The customer was US Customs.  I was
reporting to Dick Rybka (aka Rip, The Ripprer, etc.).  It was a Friday
evening about 4:45pm.  I did not want to work overtime.  I had just pulled
into the garage at 31st and Shields and Rybka wanted me to go to US Customs.
The problem was the machine was answering back with "letters" instead of a
"V".  I reminded him that I knew nothing about switching systems.  I could
fix the printer but I had no clue where the "V" came from.  Rip told me it
was a bad repeater at Chicago one.  He explained that those people had no
idea how to fix anything.  He said go the the customer, call Chicago one and
tell them to replace the repeater.  So I got suckered into it.

I went to the customer and called Long Lines.  After a big argument, I
convinced them to replace the repeater.  It fixed the problem.  I got out of
there and was "off the books" by 5:30pm.  I really didn't learn how to
"milk" things until about the time I reported to Schelinski.

A couple of weeks earlier, Illinois Bell introduced us to the FMP books,
sort of a poor man's TOP.  The FMP books contained a flow chart on how to
fix things.  The FMP's were going to improve production and of course,
minimize downtime.  The first block in the flow chart was "the problem is
obvious".  The last block was "call for help".  We were instructed to follow
these books to the letter.

Ripper had a standing rule about checking mainshaft screws on all repair
visits.  For some reason we were having problems with screws falling out.

Monday morning I walked into the garage and Rip was standing there waiting
for me.  Instead of telling how good I was to fix the case Friday night, he
proceeded to rant and rave for about 10 minutes on how dumb I was and how I
nearly singlehandedly put Illinois Bell, AT&T, and the US government out of
business.

When he calmed down, he told me that although I fixed the trouble I failed
to check the mainshaft screws and the screw fell out of the codebar clutch
and the codebars broke all of the tines off all of the function bars.  This
happened about 15 minutes after I left.  Night Plant spent the night out
there and then pulled off and left it for the Saturday guy, who spent all
day Saturday working on it.

Rip asked me what I had to say about it, so I quoted block 1 of the FMP flow
chart that said "the problem is obvious", the next block that said "fix it"
and the next block that said "get out of there".  At no place did it say
anything about tightening screws.

Rip went to my truck and took my FMP book away and threw it in the dumpster.
That night he collected everyone's FMP and threw them out too.

Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: Don Robert House [mailto:don.house@verizon.net]
Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 9:50 AM
To: Jack; wa2hwj@att.net; jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu
Cc: Phil Schelinski; Jim Haynes; K9kom@aol.com; Ed Hickey; Bob Liddy;
Bob Cnota; Ken Clinkman; Tom Kleinschmidt; Bill Henry; Steve Kissinger;
George Hutchison; David Weil; Rush Glick; Warren Brader; Gil Smith;
greenkeys@mailman.qth.net; Frank Frisch
Subject: Re: FAA dates


At 9:04 AM -0500 11/05/2003, Jack wrote:
>When I responded to what we called an "MX" circuit (AT&T Long Lines
>controlled it), I would call the test board as soon as I arrived and
>clear the trouble. As long as it wasn't an open line, they had no
>idea the machine was broken and often didn't confirm if an
>answerback was being sent(!). That was more the customer's issue,
>and they were always very accommodating when we were they
>trying to get them back on line.
>
>Jack WA2HWJ
>
>NNNN

"Chicago One" was never so accomodating.  At least I don't see how we
could have gotten away with your trick.

Don