What happens when too many people try to repair something.

[SavannahLion]

At work, I was given the responsibility of "updating" a near ancient player so we can use it with more modern equipement. In other words, connect it to a PC (or some other suitable modern recorder), so I can convert from the old medium to a more modern medium so someone 50 years down the road can have the same problem of converting from the current medium to whatever medium they're using.

So I set about the task of figuring out why it isn't working and I conclude it's a drive belt. The original was made from cloth and I suspect some kind of rubber compound long rotted away. The powers that be, the guy mastering the project, elects to have someone else construct a new belt from, what else, cloth. Meh, I was just going to scrounge through the VCR belt collection to see if that worked.

M'Kay, whatever, as long as it works, I don't care what the belt is made from.

Today, they pull me from my office and have me take a look. "The machine still isn't working!" They say. They've been fussing with the machine for nearly an hour. Pieces of paper jammed into one of the DPDT leaf switches. They tell me it needs to be this way because they feel it's a deadman's switch (it's not). 

After about five minutes fiddling with the switches and reseting them to their proper positions, I decide the real problem lay in the fabricated belt. Just not enough tension.

So I spend the next thirty minutes trying to explain to my co-worker in the nicest way possible, the belt just isn't tight enough.

They tell me, "the deadman's switch needs to have paper in it to work." I explain several times, that no, it's not supposed to be that way.

They tell me, "one of the cords has a short." I explain that if the belt isn't turning, then we don't know if the cord has a short.

Then it's (another) wheel not engaging. It needs to have media. The player needs to be reset. 

No, no, and no. Check the belt guys. It's the belt. The belt! 

They finally decide to check the belt. The machine, more or less, works. 

So who gets credit? Not me. 

Oh well. I get my machine back in a few days and I do what I originally needed to do... adapt it.

I never really understood this part of human nature. Something goes awry and when a lower echelon points out the error, the other refuses to admit or accept the mere possibility of the mistake. It doesn't matter how nice, subtle, or blatant I am about it. People simply refuse to acknowledge and when they finally figure it out (sometimes days later), they get credit for the solution.

It was always like that at every job. I would like to get credit for solutions, but at the very least I would like the other person to admit the mistake so I don't blow days or weeks of my time while they dick around with my machinery.

[Dartful Dodger]

I think you've got the wires backwards.

It's a Chinese fuse, they're supposed to be backwards.

I meant backwards from how they're supposed to be.

You know nothing about Sino Chino relations.

I dated a Korean girl in high school.

That is an entirely different Oriental nation, get an education.

The person that made the mistake is too dumb to know it was his mistake and trying to explain that you thought of the solution is as frustrating as the original problem.  I’m at the point where if I know a solution I’ll tell them my idea once.  If they reject it I just act as dumb as the rest of the pack and then just fix it when no one is around. 

I think if I ever left, my co-workers would be confused as to why everything stopped fixing itself.

[tommy]

I just act as dumb as the rest of the pack

 

[gonzo90017]

Regardless good job. 

[Kevin Mullins]

The person that made the mistake is too dumb to know it was his mistake and trying to explain that you thought of the solution is as frustrating as the original problem.  I’m at the point where if I know a solution I’ll tell them my idea once.  If they reject it I just act as dumb as the rest of the pack and then just fix it when no one is around. 

I think if I ever left, my co-workers would be confused as to why everything stopped fixing itself.

 

[SavannahLion]

I think if I ever left, my co-workers would be confused as to why everything stopped fixing itself.

It would be nice if I had that excuse. I learned that there's 98000 square feet of crap space that I have to, "fix." I don't think they would notice if I died in there much less stopped fixing anything.

We have these steel sliding drawers that run on super crappy rails. For the last nine months, I haven't fixed a single one of them because I lost the ---smurfing--- wrenches I need to fix them. So far, no one noticed.

[danny_galaga]

i really wasnt sure what you meant by an 'ancient player' but google came to the rescue