My work day

06:00 Alarm goes off. Switch snooze button on

06:10 Alarm. Switch it off

06:35 Overslept – shit shave shampoo and in car

07:05 Leave for work (50km away), listen to last bit of news on radio, and get told that 12% of women have painted their toenails while driving their cars. Sobering thought that. No wonder women aren’t allowed to drive in Saudi..

07:40 Arrive at work. Do drive by inspection up the mountain to see how the excavators and dump trucks are loading, how the drilling has progressed for the next blast, and whether the bastards have remembered to water the roads. So far so good.

07:55 Get down the mountain to the plant – production plant (jaw crusher, cones, VSI’s, screens) all running. Dust suppression off.

08:15 Get to workshop. Dump truck with no brakes, Excavator, with hydraulic problem (almost fixed), excavator with bucket link broken. Someone forgot to order the pin – loss of production 3 days as a result. Small pickup gearbox fucked, and someone drove a wheel loader into a conveyor belt. Police have to investigate for insurance purposes. Aircons on 3 vehicles not working, so drivers won’t go out (can’t moan, it’s early morning and already 42 deg C.

08:35 Pitstop at admin. Three companies want to buy material we don’t have, other don’t want to pay decent prices for what we do have. Two tyre loader drivers chased the clients trucks off site because the drivers pissed them off. Retraining in progress. HR guy gone back to Jordan – his family has been in car accident. Replacement HR guy can’t speak English.

09:10 Get to office, order tea. Five people phone (all sales guys) – tell them politely to deal with purchasing. Meeting with Production guys. They checking scales, removing burnt motor from dust suppression. Speak to owner – he arrived from overseas at 2 am and is still grumpy.

09:25 Decide to do surprise inspection in plant. Tools lying all over the place, pulleys with v-belts missing, water spray system U/S. but otherwise not too bad. Give them 24 hours to fix.

10:00 Caterpillar rep comes to see me – we are buying some more equipment and I need him to quote on stuff.

11:00 Send 5 faxes and 3 emails to South Africa. Make sure equipment being manufactured according to agreements in place. Two calls from head office regarding monthly finance figures and monthly production to date. Make to-discuss-list for Ops Manager who will be back in office tomorrow. Speak to
production staff re non-production of 5 – 25mm product that they promised me 3 weeks ago. Find out 6 electric motors have burnt out in last week alone. Power trips. Have to get the guys with shovels to empty all the conveyor belts.

12:00 Plant stopped. Instructions from government, not enough power on the grid, so all crushers have to stop operations from 12:00 to 16:00. Everyone does maintenance, has lunch, hides from the sun. Quarry department brings boulders down from the mountain. We chuck those in the sea to make islands.

12:50 Inspection times – quarry, workshop, welding shop. Find someone totally screwed up the excavator boom will trying to attach the bucket. Accident investigation – turns out the failed to report accident. One final warning, one dismissal. Excavator down for an additional 36 hours. Damage cost, $400. Lost time cost, $100,000.

14:00 Cup of tea number 2, quick peek at newspaper, attempt no 5 to check email (dialup affected by shamal winds, or the heat). One spam, one nude pic, one note from head office, one unsolicited CV (resume) full of spelling and grammar errors. Cannot access blog. Email software tells me that head office does not exist anymore.

14:15 Visit crusher area via outside temp guage. Only 47 degrees (117 F). Humidity at 52%. One of these days it will be summer.

15:00 Write two internal reports for head office, one regarding increase, and the other regarding financial due diligence on new capital expenditures. Reboot computer. Head office exists again.

16:00 Plant production starts up again. Check on quarry manager, he standing sweating in the sun, teaching Philipino dozer driver how to push rocks, and how to swear in Afrikaans. We measure angle of new incline road. It has to drop by 6 metres to get to the 1:10 ratio. Discuss Wednesday’s blast. Get water truck to spray roads. Roll a rock down the cliff face.

17:15 Go home, make 3 phone calls, receive 4.

17:50 Arrive at home. Say hi to family, kick the dog (not really), play with ferrets, have supper.

18:30 Help daughter with homework, write this blog.