Imagine working as a machine operator at a factory. If the machine was malfunctioning, would you run the machine anyway, or would you wait for it to be repaired?

In this story, one supervisor told the employees to keep running a machine that was malfunctioning even though the machine operator suggested turning it off.

Keep reading to find out what happened.

Manufacturing compliance

I am a machine operator for a company that manufactures hubs for Ford.

Long hours and dirty work conditions.

Since the machines run nearly 24/7, they have tons of problems due to lack of maintenance.

They seem pretty efficient.

We typically produce 200 hubs an hour on my line.

The parts are very sensitive to their measurements, so we have to toss them as scrap if they go against.

We typically don’t run much scrap, since we know the machines well and the geometry to do if the parts go offsize.

There was a problem.

Well, one of the machines was jumping size so bad, we had to shut it down and work on it constantly.

A hub for us normally cost around $30.

I asked my line lead if it was safe to just keep the machine off and wait until day shift could send a maintenance supervisor out to fix it.

His response, “keep running it no matter what it does”.

That was an expensive request.

We ran so much scrap we cost the company nearly $2k.

When the supervisor asked us what happened, my whole line told him that we were ordered.

The supervisor made a bad call that day.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Here’s another story about a machine malfunctioning.

This person makes a good point.

This is probably why the supervisor made that decision.

Another factory worker weighs in.

Supervisors don’t always make the best decisions.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.