T'was a sad day...and a vengefull day for me.

[Mahnarch]

Today is the last day of my Grand Haven run as, Magna GH is shutting down in a couple of weeks and they've reached the point where they're transferring their second shift shipper/receivers to their other plants.

All of them (4 in total) have worked together for the last 9 years (Jason being the 'newest') and now they're being divided by 60 miles to two different locations.

Mike and Jason are going to Alto.
Marcia and James are going to Newaygo.

These guys were a team, I tell ya.
They could all be on hi-los at the same time and the place would look like a bee hive - a finely coordinated machine with no errors.
They had each other's backs and knew each other's every move.

Well, tonight was their last night as a group. And my last night on this run as, starting monday, I'm reassigned to a new one since they are no longer there.

It would have been nice if I'd arrived at GH a minute or two earlier, since they all decided to play hookey and skipped out for an hour and a half to go to AppleBees for lunch (normal break is half an hour but, they were the ONLY ones in the building, so no one noticed....except me.)

I showed up to an entirely empty factory....
I mean, COMPLETELY!!
I'm talking 'last man on earth' empty - hi-los parked in walk ways. Doors left open. Papers laying on the floor.....

Not that there was anything running or anything but, it had a kind of eerie quiet to it that made me feel like zombies would lurch around a corner at any moment, y'know?

The main problem was: I was running an hour ahead of schedule and the group planned to be back before/as I got there.

Dinner ran late. I showed up early and.............


They came back to find all their hi-los wrapped up in shrink wrap and a certain truck driver who'd figured out how to dial up the PA system (*7997, found in the Rolodex) and was singing 'Doors' songs into it.

You gotta love practical jokes but, losing friends hurts in the end.

I'm sure I'll see them again, in the future, but, they will never see each other - unless they specifically set something up, which is highly unlikely due to scheduling and distance.

It's sad, really.

It reminds me of when I first started driving.
I had a dedicated route to the Gerald R. Ford International airport (to whose namesake I missed by a half hour when Air Force One brought him here a few months ago) and I made great friends with Ben and Jesus at Expeditors and Kitty Hawk, respectively.
Neither of whom I've seen since April.

I even heard that Wally retired from Howmet (my pick-up point) since I've left that run.

How time flies.

[Phil]

I know what you mean.
I've worked one place for 17 years now and the same thing happens. THey split up the groups that actually know what they're doing because the time that another group works is easier for the company.

That is crap but they do it.

Then what else is this. Age doesn't mean a damn thing. I'm 36 I am more qualified than a lot of guys 45-50 years old.

Brian is our supervisor and he is about 27 or 28 and he is the best supervisor we have ever had.

I would never question this guy now I would just try it his way because his idea always works.

We had a really good guy retire at age 73, 4 years back and for about 3 years after that we had a guy who had 30 years in the company and still didn't know which way was up. Time on the job and age isnt' always the best measure.

This guy we use to call him our 'Stupidvisor.'

Right now third shift turned in the highest success rate on jobs.
They might break us up now because they figure it will balance the finishing rate but it wont because if they took half of us and put them with 3 idiots the idiots wont be able to keep up so it will be the same as 4 people doing the job.

You can do better with 4 good people than a team of 8 if only 3 are any good.