Day 20: Goodbye To Another

Brady got terminated today.

We were walking in through the badging station for IMFT, when his beeped. He was pulled aside and we told him we'd keep going and see him at the "Stretch & Flex." The "Stretch & Flex" came and went, but no Brady. Griffin showed up (after waking up a little late) and said he saw Brady at the badging station and waited for him for a minute, but then felt he should probably hurry and get up to the FAB.

Brad and I got split up to work on different parts of the ceiling crew. Brad and Jaime worked on the scaffolding, screwing the grids together with the wiz nuts. Daniel followed them in a separate scaffold, caulking. It worked pretty quickly that way, and we got a large portion of the FAB caulked and wiz nutted by the end of the day. I, on the other hand, worked with Geneva, hanging measuring tape from the grids, so Alfredo could site them with a eye-level thing, and then Arturo and Luis adjusted the grid height. We leveled the grids that way. We spent all morning, until lunch doing that, and I thought my neck was going to break. Hanging the measuring tape was pretty cool though. We pulled it out til the tape read about 130 inches and we carefully hung it by the tip on the edge of the grids. The tricky part was getting it to grab onto the grid without slipping and falling on us. The most frusterating thing was when the tape would buckle and tip over. That much tape is hard to balance without it buckling. Arturo, Luis, and Alfredo all were speaking spanish, and Alfredo was giving commands like "tres-cuartos" or "cinco-octavos" and every time one was level he would say "a esta" (i think...that's what it sounded like, but I couldn't tell if he was saying 'a esta' or 'ya esta'). Then I would pull a tape down and move it to the next grid. Geneva can't speak spanish (she's Native American), so I would let her know when to pull down the tape and move it. Lawrence knew that I took spanish in high school and could pretty well understand them, and Alfredo asked if I spoke after a particularly long conversation that included a lot of whooping and laughing between him and Arturo. I told him a little but it's hard to understand cause they spoke so fast.

Quinn worked at the pass-thru, moving gaskets into the FAB for Alex's crew. They're finally moving at a pretty fast pace and keeping up with the ceiling crew. Griffin, I believe, worked either on gaskets, or at one of the pass-thrus. It's more probable that Alex grabbed him and put him to work in the gaskets than a pass-thru. I saw him occasionally walk by as I was moving skates or hanging measuring tape.

During the 9am break, we were still wondering where Brady was and I unfortunately couldn't get the phone in the break room to work, so we were left wondering what had happened to him. We began to speculate that he'd been fired, but more jokingly than anything else. Brady fired? Could someone really do that? We weren't sure what was going on, but it certainly bugged us. Skye was feeling sickly, flu-ish, if you will; and he opted to ask to leave and go home. We didn't see him again, so we figured he either was granted sick leave or was asked to leave for good...we hoped it was the former, since we were sick of losing friends at work.

We did the same thing in between 9am and 12pm, hanging measuring tape, caulking, and wiz nutting. It was relatvely boring, but I couldn't complain, since the time passed pretty quickly. At lunch I nuked two peices of Dimitri's pizza and was in heaven, because it's so good. Oh, and I also called Brady and found out for sure that he was terminated. In his halting and seemingly unbelieving words, "I...don't....work there anymore." Then we both cut out and I hung up. I broke the news to Griffin, Brad, and Quinn, who just sat there dumbfounded, but then we all started to laugh. It was funny, although unfortunate that he was let go. It just seemed unusual that he was suddenly gone, without a warning. We were still in shock by the end of the day. Quinn just kept laughing at lunch, saying, "Brady got fired." We started to joke about it, and thought it was pretty funny.

After lunch, Lawrence had us move grids and he, along with Arturo, Luis, and Alfredo, hung them in the ceiling. I believe we got about 8 or 9 hung before the end of the day. Geneva and I moved them all over and then just hung around by the scaffolding, moving Brad and Jaime, and Daniel when they needed to be rolled along to the next area. It was a pretty boring afternoon and we thought the day would never end.

We decided to say hello to Brady at Maggie Moo's tonight, but we never ended up going. Geneva and Elvira went, I think; and perhaps Ron went too, since we told him to. I didn't wake up from my nap until 8:15 and I never got a call from Brad or Quinn or anyone.

Brad and I ducked into the bathroom on our way out today, and Lawrence, Arturo, and Luis did too. Lawrence walks up to the stall next to mine and says "RIGHTEOUS!" and he unzips. Brad and I just busted up laughing. These guys are so funny! While we were at the clock-out station, Brad was standing in front of Lawrence and Luis, when they suddenly busted out laughing. Brad turned around and said, "What was it?" Lawrence said, "Well, I probably should be saying this cause it's mean, but Julie is so ugly that her mom doesn't even want her!" They all just started laughing again and Brad said, "It's so mean, but it's so true!"

Well, I guess something good came from today...now Brad (or Griffin) doesn't have to wake up as early to get Brady in the morning. Here's to looking on the bright side.

Two down.....five more to go......


Quote of the Day:

"Gosh, no matter how much you jiggle, the last drop always gets on your pants!"
-Brad


Ron's Trash Talk of the Day:

Quinn: "It was freezing in the clean room this morning!"
Ron: "It was not you big baby!"