One of the things I have learned from Reddit is to observe first and make changes later.

You know, if I’m ever in a position of authority over other people and/or procedures.

OP worked in a shipyard for long hours and with not enough help.

Some 15 years ago I worked in local shipyard that focuses in repair work and refitting of all ship types. The yard resides in Europe.

Now it is important to note we have a 200+ meter drydock and roughly the same in pier for outfitting.

At this particular time we had 2 medium passenger ferries docked and they were moored on both sides of the drydocks dam leaving 50 meters between them mostly water.

I had a newish boss on the job after my old boss had retired. The new boss was very stuck up and entitled so we shall call him Entitled Boss or Ed. Other people that come up in this story is me, my co-worker lets call him Matt (not his real name) and the first officer of the other ship. Let’s call him FO.

It is normal for our yard to be understaffed by a lot by half in the least. So a normal workday was between 12-16 hours 6-7 days a week.

We were well paid for all over time so we didn’t mind. We were really busy on these ships and they were moored aft to aft so we were able to lift all materials on their aft ramps with a crane.

I worked with crane as the guy who arranges the lifts and communicates with the operator at the pier,

Matt did the same shipside. We worked well together and had done that together a lot I was in my late twenties Matt was in his fifties.

They knew better when their boss told them there was a “quick” job he wanted them to do.

This one morning Ed comes to us to let us know of a new job.

Ed: I have a small extra job for you to do since you are not that busy.

Me: Umm there are about 20 lifts on the pier and more always comes during the day. I noted to him.

Matt was quite silent he never really talked much anyway.

Ed: I have a dredge coming in 2 hours. You will lift the bucket and the bucket arm off the dredge. A quick job just lift the three things off. You should be done in 30 minutes.

Me: Just thirty minutes?

Ed: Yes they are detached already.

Me: Ok boss.

But he is the boss.

Matt looked doubtful. We started working lifting all we could in 2 hours.

Then we saw the dredge. This thing was big. The bucket was 60 tonnes alone and the 2 sections of the arm were 60 tonnes and 80 tonnes.

Oh and the heavier bit was still attached. At this point I groaned. But Matt grinned from ear to ear and told me.

Matt: Bosses orders. Bosses responsibility.

Then I grinned.

A boss who ended up taking the blame when the quick job took up a majority of their workday.

Cue malicious compliance. We got to work we set the crane in position in a way it was closest to the dredge due to weight. This also meant it blocked any other cranes from lifting to either ferries anything.

We got the bucket unloaded on a trailer. This took an hour. Then we lifted the other half of the arm this took and hour to attach to the crane.

Oops lunch time. Union rules.

Then one more hour to unload it. Now the last arm bit was tricky, we had to suspend it from the crane and remove the pins that held it to the digger half of the dredge.

The pins are relatively small only 200kg (or 440LB) each and held in place by few tonnes of pull or weight of the arm. I took us 4 hours to free the pins.

So any of who are keeping track at this point we were 7 and a half hours into a half hour job.

At this point some crew from both ships and lot of people from the shipyard were watching us work. This was due to the fact nothing had been lifted to either ship in the past 7 to 8 hours and guys had had to stop working.

This is when I met a very excited and red FO of the ship.

FO: What the hell are you doing? Why are we not getting materials in?

ME: You need to talk to him. His orders. As I pointed Ed on the dock.

Oops.

Not quite sure what was said but the FO probably tore him a new one and proceeded to stomp back onboard his ship. I saw him exchange a few words with the captain of the ship and the captain was dialling his phone.

It took about 5 min for our CEO to get to the pier and proceeded to chew my bosses rear. I am pretty sure he was sitting funny after that. We finished the job right around 8 hours and proceeded to lift our backed up lift queue onboard the ships.

For some weird reason he never told me how to do my job or had any quick jobs after that. As I had heard he was let go a few years later.

Just be clear these lifts were difficult due to having to adjust the lifting cable lengths and parts being so heavy. Also the attachment point were fairly high up and the cable we used to lift the weigh around 10 tonnes so.

We never stalled on the job not our style, but we were very thorough in our work that day. Also we broke a winch pulling the other pin and had get a new one this took some time and explaining.

Reddit has heard this story before!

They just told the truth.

You know all lifts are not created equal. Or you do now.

That’s just physics, friends.

It can seem like some of these supervisors can’t really do math.

Your manpower really is a key aspect.

I don’t know anything about booms and shipyards.

But with this post, I very much enjoyed learning.

If you thought that was an interesting read, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.