Quality Control

 Quality Control

Kenny retired from quality control at the factory after 43 years.  Two pictures of him were printed in the Thermotech news letter – in one he was young and, in the other, old.  He told everyone that he enjoyed his work for the company.  In the last couple years, the job had become a bit tedious but this was because Kenny had become so expert, had solved all problems, and performed his duties effortlessly.  Quality control work required attention to detail and Kenny possessed this characteristic to an extent that, sometimes, his wife and children held it against him: “Must you always be so persnickety?” his wife sometimes asked.  It was non-union position, exempt and classified as management and, so, you always had to be on your toes.  There weren’t any contractual protections, no collective bargaining agreement and, in some respects, Kenny’s QC work was like walking a tightrope without a net.

He and his wife planned to travel after his retirement.  They had children on both coasts and Kenny thought that he and his wife would make a circuit to see the grandkids.  But Kenny’s wife was diagnosed with cancer, suffered, and died and, when he saw the grandchildren, it was at her funeral in the wintry Midwestern state where he lived.  His children said that they were unaccustomed to the cold and had forgotten the bitter rigors of the weather.  The cities where they lived were more temperate and, although there were sometimes typhoons and hurricanes, it didn’t freeze and there was no ice.  After his wife was buried, and family members departed to the airport, Kenny packed a duffel bag with a few pair of underwear, some socks, and his medications and, then, drove southwest to the mountains in Arizona.  At the upper elevations, snow covered the ground and the pine trees were dark, green needles twitching in the wind; it wasn’t much of change from the climate back home.  When he slipped on ice outside his motel in Flagstaff, Kenny bruised his back and decided that travel was pointless without his wife.  So he went back home.  The house was empty, silent, full of memories that gnawed at him like rats in the wall chewing up insulation and electrical wires.  He tried to take naps, the longer the better, but found that he couldn’t sleep in the day.  Kenny still rose long before dawn, a relic of his work at Thermotech.

One day, a manager at the plant called him and said that there had been some sort of nasty disagreement at work.  The QC worker who had taken Kenny’s job had quit without notice and the government contracts that required careful scrutiny as to quality were in breach.  The manager said that they were negotiating with the man who had quit, and, in fact, had another applicant waiting in the wings, as it were, to take the job if the discussions with Kenny’s successor were unavailing.   The manager said that Kenny could step into the job without any delay and, that, it would be very helpful if he would return to the position for just a few days while the problems were being sorted-out.

Kenny returned to the Thermotech plant before dawn.  The parking lot was lit by halogen lights equipped with motion detectors and mostly dark.  It was unsettling to see the lights blazing suddenly overhead as he walked under them.  As always in the winter, the surface of the lot was smeared with ice polished smooth by the tires of the cars and pickup trucks.  The fall on the ice in Flagstaff had unnerved Kenny and he walked with small, mincing steps, a gait that made him uncomfortable.

The factory smelled of hot metal, coffee, and aromatic chemicals, an insistent odor that made his eyes water a bit. Kenny found his sampling cup and began checking the parts in their upright cardboard containers.  Almost all of the parts were made to specifications but he found a few that were defective.  He spoke to the foreman and, then, checked the QC logs from the last inspections.  The ledgers weren’t up-to-date and this meant that he couldn’t trace the defective parts to the machine that was misfiring to produce them out-of-spec.  It was irritating to Kenny that the quality control protocols that he had developed had been ignored.  He found several machines making the type of part that was defective and had to stand near the hot presses for several minutes, watching them cycle to see if there was some hitch or stutter in the process.  Retirement had deconditioned him a little and it was tiring to stand next to the big machines, shifting his weight back fact and forth on his feet on the concrete while the presses fumed and huffed, the die slamming shut with a percussive bang and the injection head hissing a little like a snake as it injected plastic into the mold.  He identified the problem and, then, redtagged the machine, throwing the panic switch to shut it down.  The foreman argued with him about meeting quotas when the press was down and unproductive.  

“There’s no point in hitting quota if the parts are bad,” Kenny said.

The foreman was new to the position and looked at him skeptically.

Kenny, then, found the mechanic.  He was sitting in the break-room eating a doughnut.  Kenny told him that one of the presses was misfiring and producing, maybe, 12 bad parts per thousand.  

“Who cares?” the mechanic said.  He also was a new hire and didn’t know Kenny.

“It has to be fixed.”

“Then, you fix it.”

“That’s not my job,” Kenny said.

“It’s a government contract,” the mechanic observed.  “Twelve in a thousand is close enough for government work.”

Kenny said he disagreed and that he had redtagged the machine and that it would stay out-of-commission until fixed.  He had forgotten about this aspect of QC work, the fact that management didn’t like the machines tagged-out and that supervisors tended to take Kenny’s observations as to product not-to-spec as a personal affront.  

The mechanic shrugged and said he would get to it when he could get to it.

His eight-hour shift seemed very long and Kenny found himself frequently glancing at the clock on the wall.  It was dark after work as well and the parking lot was black until his motion lit the overhead lamps.  Without someone moving under the silver light posts, all would have remained dark, possibly forever.   It was dark until something moved and cast a cold glare on the ice and, then, it was dark again. The sun had set and there was no sign of light in the western sky.

Kenny worked another couple of days, returning home with aching muscles and burning eyes.  It felt like he was getting sick.  The stench of burning plastic in the plant made him sneeze and cough.  

At the end of week, the plant manager told him that they had persuaded the QC worker to return to the job.  

“We’ll be sorry to see you leave,” the manager said.  “You know, Kenny, no one does this job like you.”

“It has to be done correctly,” Kenny replied.

Nothing had changed at Thermotech.  The people were different, perhaps, but the processes remained the same.  The pale plastic parts in their bins were exactly the same as the pieces made by the machines during the previous forty-three years.  Kenny had never know exactly how the parts were used or what they were for.  He still didn’t know these things.  

After work, Kenny went to a liquor store and bought a small bottle of Windsor whisky.  He cooked a frozen pizza and sat in front of the television watching the news and sipping the whisky.  

The quality control job was tedious, rife with acrimony, and the conditions in the Thermotech plant were harsh. Kenny wondered how he had managed to perform that work, not for a week, or a month, but for 43 years.  

Another thought occurred to him but it was disturbing and he didn’t dare think it to its conclusion.

In the middle of the night, Kenny sat up in his lonely bed.  

“I have wasted my life,” he said.