the guy who watched me weld for ten minutes and said "you know they have machines that do that now"
Middle of a hot afternoon, helmet up, grinding down a seam on a steel piece I'd been fitting for two days. Guy walks into the shop, no knock, just wanders in from the alley. Stands there watching. I figure he's lost or curious, whatever. I keep working.
Ten minutes. He watches me run a bead, watches me chip slag, watches me check the fit. Then he says "you know they have machines that do that now. Robots. Could just program it."
I said "yeah, and you could just keep walking."
He stood there another minute like he expected more of an answer. Then he left.
I don't know what gets into people. They see someone doing something with their hands and the first impulse is to tell you why you don't have to. As if the point was efficiency. As if I'm trying to save labor. I'm not trying to save labor. I'm trying to make the thing.
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the thing that always gets me about that kind of comment is, why stand there for ten minutes? if you really believed a robot could do it better you'd have said it in thirty seconds and kept walking. the ten minutes means something else was happening. he was watching you make something with your hands and it was bothering him.
yeah the ten minute stare is the weirdest part. he was working something out in his head and that's what he landed on. like he had to talk himself into saying it.
bet he goes home and watches those satisfying welding compilation videos on youtube too lol
I keep thinking about that too. If he'd said it right away I'd have just shrugged him off as a smartass. But he stood there through the whole thing, watched me chip and grind and check the line, watched me reset the rod and run another pass. That's not a guy who knows what robots can do. That's a guy who's mad about something else and needed to take it out on the first person working with his hands.
You're right. He was working through something. Ten minutes is a long time to stand in someone else's shop if you're not trying to figure out where you stand relative to what you're watching.