Fragile

My job is not an easy job. It requires the ability to very quickly change directions in handling complex Engineering situations. When things are busy, you will have three or four things going at once, and you need to be ablle to remember exactly where you were on each one and seamlessly flow back and forth between them.

It takes a particular mind set. Not everyone is suited to this work style, in fact it seems to be very rare.

I was reminded of this recently. The reason I am now on second shift is that my counterpart on second shift came unravelled. It took about ten days to break him, but he has gone over the edge.

I have known this guy for about ten years. He is a meticulous worker, very thorough, with exceptional attention to detail. And a nice guy.

He is a former pilot who has flown a lot of different aircraft, from single engine bush planes in Alasks to 747 cargo planes. But during a stress test, he had a heart murmur show up. Can't have pillots with heart conditions, so they grounded him.

Every thing in his life trained him towards being very thorough and meticulous. If you forget something on the checklist, the bird can come flaming out of the sky. There isn't any room for errors.

This job, however is more about juggling than organization. More barnstorming than test pilot. As he was expected to cover more and more stuff, he was not capable of doing anything at all, because he couldn't decide what to do first. His actions became more and more bizarre, and after just ten days on the job, they yanked him out of the socond shift position, and I replaced him.

Everyone thought that once he was back on familiar ground he would pull himself back together, but like Humpty Dumpty, they haven't been able to put him back together.

I like this guy. Mrs A. and I have gone out to Jazz Alley with him and his wife, and had a good time. We like him and We like his wife.

I haven't seen him since they pulled him back. I have talked to him a couple of times. His health had taken a turn for the worse. His diabetes was out of control, and his blood pressure was alarmingly high. My only advice to him was that he had to be able to go home at night and leave this place behind. He said he didn't know how to do that. I told him it wasn't a matter of choice, it was a necessity.

One of my co-workers told me today that the guy had split up with his wife, and had called him at home asking to borrow a couple of grand. His wife had stripped the bank accounts. Probably not the best idea to give him access to a bunch of money in his present state of mind.

You never know what will set someone off, trip them up, send them spiraling out of control. I thought this guy had things under control. We had similar problems with our kids, understood each other.

I find it terribly sad that he has come apart the way he has.

And frightening.

It illustrates how fragile we are, and how one fork in the path can lead to disaster.