"First Day on the Job"

[Cptn Elias Moore 0]

"First Day on the Job"

Commander Elias Moore

Challenger Project Foreman

Foreman's Journal: June 7, 2154

 

0730 hours -- Reported promptly fo my first day of foreman duty and was greeted in my new office by a mob of angry workers. Apparently, some people were a bit upset by the shfit changes I made. I directed the workers to make appointments with my secretary, only to learn that I don't have one. If only I could explain to them that help will be arring soon from the Martian colony. It's a bit tough to do that when I myself am not even sure if the help will be arriving soon, or at all for that matter.

 

0814 hours -- Encouraged the last of the workers to exit my office and finally had a chance to look around. Very nice office, I must say. Spaceous, good architecture, well lit, atmosphere recycled to near perfection. A large viewport looking down on the construction site. A large desk, a comfortable pvoting chair, two cushy sofas situated around a low sleek table, and, built into the wall beside the door, an industrial-sized coffee machine. Even as chief engineer on Venture, I never had accomodations like this.

 

0815 hours -- First cup of coffee.

 

0816 hours -- Checked out the office computer and found my mailbox flooded with even more complaints than were brought to my office personally. Well, at least they were courteous enough to let me settle into my new workspace peacefully. Some of them, that is. A few of the complaints, I noticed, were from people that were also in the mob that greeted me. At least they believe in redundancy... that makes a good engineer.

 

0858 hours -- Second cup of coffee.

 

0914 hours -- After dealing with many of the electronic complaints, I started calling workers to the office to hear them out. Much of what you'd expect. They don't feel they can handle the workload, they have chronic health problems, they have families waiting for them back home. I simply assured them that more hands would be brought onto the project in good time, and recommended that they transfer to the Columbia project if they felt overburdened by my demands. I don't need soft workers. Let them be replaced by Martians if they can't take a little grind.

 

0937 hours -- One worker called me inhumane, complaining that I view the workers as nothing more than robots. This came from one of my filing clerks, a man whose job it is to simply keep records of the construction and relay reports to headquarters. What, precisely, is his complaint, I wonder? I worked shifts as long as 56 hours on Venture, digging through tight maintenance tunnels baked to 60 degrees and filled with possibly toxic fumes to race against cascading EPS overloads that threatened to kill everyone on board. And he doesn't want to store folders in a filing cabinet and send messages back to Earth? To hell with him. Let him request a transfer, and I can give his office to someone more deserving.

 

0941 hours -- Third cup of coffee.

 

1046 hours -- Speaking of deserving. I reviewed the project roster in order to gauge the trends among my workforce. There are obvious patterns among most of the complainers, and they have nothing to do with health problems or family issues. Most of them, it seems, are children of privilege, who have gotten their degrees from various universities back on Earth and who have never done an honest day's work in their lives. The ones who aren't complaining, openly at least, those are the ones to look out for, the ones who can really contribute something to this project. They probably mumbled complaints under their breaths when they read my memo, but they're keeping their comments to themselves and doing the job that's expected of them. Just like me, when Venture was threatened by one catastrophic system failure after another and any complaints sent to the those in charge would only be met by a "we're all going to die if you don't work yourself into a coma!" There's something to be said for motivation like that. Maybe something along those lines could be used to encourage my more reluctant bumble bees...

 

1059 hours -- Fourth cup of coffee.

 

1129 hours -- Checked out the spiffy Xiang Technologies construction software installed on the office computer. A very impressive diagram of an NX class vessel complete with deadlines for every component's installation is among one of the templates installed. I cut the overall completion deadline down from five years to three months to see how that would affect the deadlines for each individual component. Interestingly enough, the ship's frame is scheduled to be completed yesterday, and the industrial systems installed within the next five hours. My bumble bees will be overjoyed when I pass these deadlines along to them.

 

1132 hours -- Fifth cup of coffee.

 

1214 hours -- Sat down for my lunch. I'm not sure why the workers would complain about a ten minute lunch break. On Venture, the only lunch breaks we had occured when our attempts to eat and keep the ship together at the same time resulted in hull breaches and/or fractured limbs.

 

1216 hours -- Sixth cup of coffee.

 

1332 hours -- Spent the last hour fielding yet more complaints, one from another filing clerk, a tiny, scrawny man with eyeglasses named Albert Shrippert. Deciding that I needed some time away from my office, I assigned Albert the vacant secretary position. He resisted, I threatened to throw him out of an airlock, he took the position. Indeed, the extreme motivation techniques work even on the laziest bees.

 

1333 hours -- Grabbed cup of coffee #7 on the way out.

 

1412 hours -- Completed a quick tour of the starbase and found myself in Admiral Forrest's office. Deciding I'd received enough complaints that day, I would dish a few out just to promote a fair bit of balance. I let the Admiral know just how I felt about eight filing clerks being assigned to the project when there is a grand total of five people working on the wiring, the gravity plating, and the water reclamation system. Also requested an update on the Martian situation. He assured me only that his invitation was relayed through Earth Gov's colonial relations division and that no word has been heard from Mars since.

 

1416 hours -- Helped myself to coffee cup #8 in the Admiral's office.

 

1445 hours -- Back in my own office, I checked the astrometrics charts and noticed that Earth and Mars are on roughly opposing ends of their orbits. That means that if Mars does send help (for which I'm confidently hopeful) the only chance of that help arriving at the drydock before the week's end depends on Earth sending some of its high warp transports to pick them up (for which I'm dismally devoid of hope).

 

1515 hours -- A tear-stricken young crewmen came into my office to ask how she could possibly meet any of the tight deadlines with hostile aliens gunning for Earth. I assured her that there was little chance that any of our big, bad, technologically advanced neighbours care about we primitive humans and our little Warp Five ship. Honestly, doesn't she realize that these aliens have more important concerns?

 

1530 hours -- Ninth cup of coffee.

 

1638 hours -- A notice on my computer conveniently reminded me that the deadline for Challenger's industrial systems had passed. I checked the crew progress reports... percentage of industrial systems installed--2%. Well, looks like we missed the deadline.

 

1640 hours -- Tenth cup of coffee.

 

1712 hours -- I instructed Albert to schedule appointments for some of the "worthy workers," the people who haven't taken it upon themselves to barge into my office yelling and screaming at me. I'd like to outline some agendas with them. They all seem to have the fortitude needed to help me talk some sense into the softer workers.

 

1734 hours -- I resisted the urge to grab an eleventh cup of coffee. I really need to start cutting back.

 

1758 hours -- I decided to show Albert that I'm not as devoid of feelings as he thinks. I allowed him to head home early.

 

1800 hours -- I punched out, headed to the docking bay, and grabbed the controls of an unused shuttle pod to take a few trips around the Challenger embryo. No matter how tight the deadlines, no matter how many Admirals are breathing down your neck, no matter how many workers you have banging on your door and flooding your inbox, there's nothing more exhilerating than a huge pile of useless and unremarkable scraps being assembled into one streamlined machine of magnificent workmanship. Even if I have to get my hands dirty and help the workers build this ship from scratch myself, I'll enjoy seeing Challenger come together...

[Dumbass 0]

0815 hours -- First cup of coffee.

0858 hours -- Second cup of coffee.

0941 hours -- Third cup of coffee.

1059 hours -- Fourth cup of coffee.

1132 hours -- Fifth cup of coffee.

1216 hours -- Sixth cup of coffee.

1333 hours -- Grabbed cup of coffee #7 on the way out.

1416 hours -- Helped myself to coffee cup #8 in the Admiral's office.

1530 hours -- Ninth cup of coffee.

1640 hours -- Tenth cup of coffee.

1734 hours -- I resisted the urge to grab an eleventh cup of coffee. I really need to start cutting back.

Yeah, especially since you only have a 10 minute bathroom break the whole shift! :D

[Tovan 0]

daaamn thats alot of coffee!

[Dumbass 0]

daaamn thats alot of coffee!

Not only that, but if he didn't spend every minute documenting all his activities he might have actually gotten some work done! :D

[Tachyon 0]

Sounds like a bureaucrat.

 

Indeed, the quiet ones are always those to watch out for. Rawel hasn't been complaining lately because he's got too much work to do. And because he has nothing to complain about, he's use to staying up late. As long as you get your software when you need it.

 

You must of been jittery by the end of the day.

[Dumbass 0]

Even if I have to get my hands dirty

Whoa, now, take it easy. We wouldn't want you to break one of those pretty little nails of yours. :D