From the Mountain Top to the Valley

Would anybody mind if I indulge in a little humblebrag today?

Last summer was possibly the peak of my professional career. I had worked at the Union Pacific Railroad for a couple years, inspecting intermodal chassis and shipping containers. I was good at it. My numbers were twice that of my coworkers - not just because I worked twice as hard, but because I worked twice as smart.

My job was to do annual inspections. If something was out of compliance I either fixed it myself or red tagged it and had it towed to the mechanic's bay. I could fix electrical problems and small issues but anything bigger than that needed the mechanic's bay because my service truck wasn't equipped with the tools to do heavy work.

Electrical work only took a few minutes but gave high metrics. Changing four light bulbs and pigtails scored as high as welding a chassis, but took an eighth of the time.

I worked at a fast pace. That's just my work ethic. But the biggest reason my numbers were so good is I learned the tells. 

Once the daily inspections were done I was free to find and fix anything I wanted. If a chassis had a high serial number and the paint was fresh, chances are there's nothing wrong with it. I'd drive right on by. But if the serial number was low or the paint job was faded, or if the last annual inspection was 9 or 10 months ago, chances are pretty good there's a burned out light bulb or a loose connection somewhere. I plugged my service truck into the chassis' electrical box to switch on all the lights, walked a quick lap around the chassis, took pictures of any burned out bulbs, replaced the bulbs, replaced or reconnected the wiring if necessary, riveted everything back together, took more pictures, and moved on to the next chassis. Fifteen to twenty minutes is all it took.

I hit 140% or 150% of my expected work load every single week. The other guys were usually between 60% and 80%.

But my service truck didn't have a working air conditioner. Summers in San Antonio are brutal, the containers got up to 140 degrees in the sun, and the inside of my service truck was hotter than the outside air. It got so bad I would actually key 911 into my phone before I went inside a container to work on it so if anything went sideways all I had to do is push SEND.

I told the company at the end of the summer in 2020 they had until June 2021 to get air conditioning in my truck or I wouldn't stay on.

They promised they would. I think they intended to - I was the only reason the division was profitable and they wanted to keep me happy. But some leadership changes happened at the top and the people who promised me air conditioning didn't pass the message on to the people who replaced them. When I reminded the company in May they only had a month left to get air conditioning in my truck the guys in charge honestly didn't know what I was talking about.

They tried. They found a service truck for me in the rail yard in Kansas City. The air conditioner worked. But the guy who was supposed to drive it from Kansas City to San Antonio quit the week before and they told me it would be three weeks late.

Two other things happened around the same time. First, the cabinet shop where my daughter worked went out of business. The next day other cabinet shops in town started calling the out of work cabinet makers, offering them jobs.

Moses didn't have my daughter's number but he had mine from when I had worked there a few years earlier. He called me looking for her but ended up offering jobs to both of us. I figured I'd do it for a few weeks until the railroad got my service truck, partly to make a point to the railroad but mostly because my daughter had wrecked her car and needed a ride to the new cabinet shop. I figured we could carpool together since she had moved back in with me. In a few weeks I'd go back to the railroad and she'd have enough saved up for a down payment on another car.

The second thing that happened was Navistar called. They're a company that makes semi trucks and they were building a brand new facility close to my house to build electric big rigs. Four 10 hour days, air conditioned facility, better wages than either the railroad or the cabinet shop, and best of all, electric trucks!

I drove an electric car at the time, a Nissan Leaf. I drove it because I wanted to make a difference. Electric vehicles are cleaner for the environment and reduce our dependence on countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia for oil. I've always worked jobs that made the world a better, more beautiful place when I could, even if the pay wasn't as high as my skills and work ethic could have brought.

At Navistar I could have made a difference. I could have helped electric big rigs take over the market and finally push diesels, those chugging relics of the 19th century, off the road. They wanted to hire me as their maintenance technician and have me help set up the factory. I was dizzy with excitement - if I calibrated the machinery not only to specs, but to a much smaller tolerance window, I could ensure better parts, better trucks, less down time in the factory, and happier customers. I could help drive down the production costs by engineering this thing right, which would drive down the purchase price and get cleaner trucks on our highways sooner.

I felt I was meant to do this. It seemed every job I'd ever had in manufacturing and quality control and engineering led me to Navistar. Every math class I had taken in college, every elective I took in physics and engineering, they all led me here. The experience I had with vehicle electrical systems at the railroad, the robotic arms I worked on at Toyota and the robot prototypes I worked on at NASA, the compressed air paint guns in the cabinet shops, even moving to the outskirts of San Antonio seemed like it was meant to happen when the plant went up six miles from my home.

It felt good knowing three companies wanted me, but there was no doubt in my mind which one I wanted.

That week I got the diagnosis. I was legally blind and would soon be totally blind.

I knew I could go back to the railroad, but only in the mechanic's bay. I couldn't drive a service truck around the rail yard anymore.

I could go to Navistar and pretend I could see until I just couldn't, but my dream was to bring a level of precision manufacturing to the company that would push start America's switch to electric trucks, not to just show up and barely get by.

So I stayed at the cabinet shop for another couple weeks, until I realized my field of vision had shrunk so much I could either see my hand or the table saw blade, but I couldn't see both at once. I had become Schrodinger's Cat. I could know where the blade was, but not where my fingers were in relation to it, or I could know where my fingers were, but not where the blade was. I'd worked with industrial tools for 20 years and still had all ten fingers, but if I stayed at the cabinet shop a couple more months I'd probably be down to 8 or 9.

The cabinet shop let me go.

I went from the pinnacle of my professional career to unemployed in a month.

It hurt.

Boy, did it hurt! Imagine everything in your life has led you to a certain destiny and it just feels perfect, then at the last moment the opportunity is taken away from you.

My professional reputation was built on precision and efficiency, and I knew I could take tons of pollution out of the atmosphere by bringing my skills to the manufacture of electric big rigs. It seemed this company built a new factory in San Antonio just for me, and together we were going to change the world.

Okay, erase the "humble" from humblebrag if you want, but I really was that good. I might not be the smartest engineer on the planet, but you'll never find one more passionate about electric vehicles or with a stronger commitment to excellence in precision and efficiency.

So yeah, losing that opportunity hurt. Going blind seemed like nothing compared to watching the electric vehicle revolution happen six miles down the road and knowing how much faster and better it could have been if I had been able to contribute.

Sure, tomorrow I could try to get a job. I could apply to do call center work, following someone else's parameters as to what I can say and what I can't, knowing I could help the caller by telling them something but forbidden by my superiors from actually doing anything helpful, and knowing in the end none of it matters and nothing I did that day made a single bit of difference in the world but when this call is over please stay on the line and fill out our customer service satisfaction survey.

How depressing!

I don't think so. Last summer is too fresh in my mind, when the cabinet shop wanted my help to make the world more beautiful, the railroad wanted my help to keep the supply chain running safe and on time, and Navistar wanted my help to clean up the air we breathe and give our State Department the balls to say no to the Saudis.

I want to do something that matters. It's just who I am.

Not all my blogs have happy endings. I'm trying to imagine a positive spin to put on this but nothing honest comes to mind. If you can't help but feel sorry for me, feel sorry because I didn't get to help usher in the electric vehicle revolution, not because I lost my eyesight.

Rumster thinks I was born to write but I wasn't - I was born to engineer. Writing isn't my passion, but it's all I have left. So I write with honesty because striving for precision is just who I am. But I certainly don't write with efficiency, because I'm still no good at editing.