Monday, January 27, 2014

The Death of King Kong

Meanwhile, back at The Cubicle Asylum...

In between the two machine fires, the snow covered winding mountain roads preventing any trucks from getting to us and one small, yet verbal and SO entertaining spat between Peppermint Twatwaffle and The Groper, we have been struggling to get one particular order out the door.

It was originally scheduled to ship the day after Christmas.

It's a big ass robot monkey, the King Kong Extreme. It has a 100 horsepower motor and ginormous dillybobblers moving the insides. Those dillybobblers are expensive to build. The first time we built the K.K.E. for this particular order, the dillybobbler just collapsed. It said, "NOPE!" Peppermint Twatwaffle called the engineers in and everyone stood around the big ass robot monkey and rubbed their hillbilly beards with dumbfounded looks on their faces. Peppermint Twatwaffle stomped and threw a hissy fit. They salvaged the innards of the dillybobbler, cutting it loose from the welds so they could reuse it without ordering another one.

Not a good quality control practice.. but hey.. dillybobbler innards are expensive.

They started from scratch and rebuilt the King Kong Extreme. Today, I knew they were testing it because the office lights started flickering and the roof sounded like it was going to blow off.

It shouldn't do that.

The Baby Engineer came lookin' for Sparkles and dragged him out on to the floor so that he could rub his chin and look confused too.

There were words between Twatwaffle and anyone in earshot. She decided we needed to call the customer and tell him we couldn't build it.

Um no.

Finally, Sparkles sat down with his calculator, did some cypherin' and came to the conclusion that the the kumquaticles that hold the dillybobbler on were reversed, causing the dillybobbler to run at double speed. And he was correct. Because he's magic. Like a unicorn.

So now, Tiny is coming to get the dillybobbler innard so he can carry it back over to the other plant and cut it loose again and we'll start over again. The King Kong Extreme is now a MONTH late. Sparkles is having a breakdown. If the K.K.E. had blown apart, which as happened with smaller units, like The Spider Monkey Elite, half the plant would have been killed. This thing was running so fast, it pulled paint chips off the beams.

In the meantime, the GM is down at the deli playing the poker machines. I don't know if anyone's told him yet or not.

Just another day at The Cubicle Asylum. Stay tuned.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, as long as nothing exciting is going on it's all good...Right? Just the latest in a long line of snfu's that keep things interesting!

tiff said...

Thank goodness KKE didn't blow!

kenju said...

LOL you are making me very curious about what you really do make there!

Celia said...

Me too, what you build, oh well, a little mystery just enhances the story.

Unknown said...

Glad nobody got hurt:)

As for being a month late...reminds me of a certain locksmith supply place I had to deal with when I was married the first time (hubs du jour was a locksmith, among other things). Orders always late, lost, something. Found out much later that it was the fault of one particular employee who was a bit too fond of "medicinal herbs and tonics", to put it delicately. Glad I don't have to put up with that crap anymore.