Some days, work is way too much like work
Jun. 26th, 2008 06:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
revchrisSome days....
One of my profs ordered a new electron microscope about a year ago.
It was supposed to be delivered tomorrow. Yesterday, after a couple calls to make sure they knew where to deliver it, I got a call saying it didn't clear customs (it's coming from Germany), and it'd be delivered on Friday.
This morning, the customs expediters called the prof te tell him it cleared this morning. Nobody said anything, however, about the fact that they were going to put it on a truck and send it right over. I had been thinking about taking the afternoon off, but hadn't quite left yet when the phone rang.
It was the truck driver. He was down by the fountain wanting to know where he was supposed to unload.
I grabbed the prof and the service tech (who has to oversee the unloading, and plug in one of the crates) and another staff guy, and we went and unloaded the truck. 13 crates, weighing between 100kg (225lbs) and 1400kg (3100lbs). Is there such a thing as metric skids? It seems like there are a lot of skids that are just slightly too small for a "standard" pallet jack these days.
We unloaded the first 10 by hand and then I drove the forklift up into the truck to unload the next two and to pull the heaviest one to the back of the truck, which required then driving the truck away from the dock and letting the dock plate drop because with the skid at the back of the truck I couldn't maneuver the forklift out from under the skid completely.
We had the truck driver drive the last skid over to the building it's being stored in. THe biggest box is 9' tall, and we had to find somebody else's building to store it in because none of our doors are tall enough. Eventually we'll have the masons take our building apart so that we can get the last skid in.
Then we moved the other 12 skids off the dock and over to our building. 11 are in my warehouse, and the 12th is inside because it has a high-vacuum pump that has to be plugged in to keep the electron gun that's in the box from dying.
It's been a long afternoon, largely because I'm the only one in my building who can drive a forklift, and it takes the big outside forklift to go from the dock to the building and then the little inside lift to move stuff around in the warehouse, leaving me continuously shifting from forklift to forklift.
One of my profs ordered a new electron microscope about a year ago.
It was supposed to be delivered tomorrow. Yesterday, after a couple calls to make sure they knew where to deliver it, I got a call saying it didn't clear customs (it's coming from Germany), and it'd be delivered on Friday.
This morning, the customs expediters called the prof te tell him it cleared this morning. Nobody said anything, however, about the fact that they were going to put it on a truck and send it right over. I had been thinking about taking the afternoon off, but hadn't quite left yet when the phone rang.
It was the truck driver. He was down by the fountain wanting to know where he was supposed to unload.
I grabbed the prof and the service tech (who has to oversee the unloading, and plug in one of the crates) and another staff guy, and we went and unloaded the truck. 13 crates, weighing between 100kg (225lbs) and 1400kg (3100lbs). Is there such a thing as metric skids? It seems like there are a lot of skids that are just slightly too small for a "standard" pallet jack these days.
We unloaded the first 10 by hand and then I drove the forklift up into the truck to unload the next two and to pull the heaviest one to the back of the truck, which required then driving the truck away from the dock and letting the dock plate drop because with the skid at the back of the truck I couldn't maneuver the forklift out from under the skid completely.
We had the truck driver drive the last skid over to the building it's being stored in. THe biggest box is 9' tall, and we had to find somebody else's building to store it in because none of our doors are tall enough. Eventually we'll have the masons take our building apart so that we can get the last skid in.
Then we moved the other 12 skids off the dock and over to our building. 11 are in my warehouse, and the 12th is inside because it has a high-vacuum pump that has to be plugged in to keep the electron gun that's in the box from dying.
It's been a long afternoon, largely because I'm the only one in my building who can drive a forklift, and it takes the big outside forklift to go from the dock to the building and then the little inside lift to move stuff around in the warehouse, leaving me continuously shifting from forklift to forklift.
