https://youtu.be/9Ewehd9b0_o?t=556
I was younger and did not speak up when I could have. I have learned to be a loud sonuvabuck since then. Fighting corruption and error can save lives (both spiritual and physical) and helps you to sleep at night. This event was pivotal and shaped me. I have been a fighter ever since. I kind of relish finding these pieces of Shiz and doing Coriantumrs on them.... They are corrupt, selfish, ego-centric and are usually beady-eyed pathologicals with no emotion or feeling in them. I am having to deal with one (the workplace asshole) in my current situation...and several past situations. They leave an unethical trail of wreckage where ever they go. If they do not follow good principle, I seek to move them along to other situations so the rest of the pack that have consciences can have peace for 8 hours a day. Management usually love them because "they get the job done". When, in reality, they are just a massive liability to the company (in the long run). The problem with those types, is they get the 737Max out on time, or the Alaska jets turned around in record time - but in the end, the few millions they might save the company, get wasted on the billions in payouts and legal fees to cover the companies' arses....
The guy in my Renton, WA ward that I was home teacher over, worked on the Alaska ramp maintenance crew that was responsible to keep these Alaska planes maintained.
Right after 9/11 (November of 2001), he and I were having an airplane chat after visiting with his family. He said, "You know Brother "Wood Zone", it is not a matter of IF we have a crash at Alaska, it is a matter of WHEN". I really did not know how to take what he said other than 'yeah, we are in a risky business.'
He then followed on with the revelation that they were forcing him to sign off on maintenance (MPD Task Cards) that they were not completing. The horizontal stabilizer access on the ramp requires a genie lift and in wet or windy weather, that is not often possible to effectively complete when turning an airplane around. Especially when there is a schedule to keep. Some corrupt piece of work was telling them to defer and sign off on critical maintenance items. The horizontal stabilizer was my system in 2001 at Boeing.
When I was driving home from my job in Feb 2002, I had the radio on and was listening to the drama and horror of what happened off the coast of California that day. I raced home and was pegged to the news until I knew it was not the Alaska Boeing product, but indeed the MD product. I needed to know I had not somehow contributed to that loss of lives.
That crash saved my job and career at Boeing.
GOING BACK A LITTLE: Six weeks before Sept 11th, I had come home and told my wife, "Something big is going to affect my employment. It will happen in the next six months." My wife asked me "What do you think it is?" I said, "I don't know exactly, but I think we will be okay if we pay our tithing religiously (every two weeks with each paycheck), and if we double our fast offerings". I really had no clue. But I followed the whisperings of the Holy Ghost and led my family the best I knew how.
Six weeks later, I got my answer. We had already started paying every two weeks instead of letting it slide until the end of the month, quarter or year like we had done in our first 10 years of marriage as we navigated college, new jobs and other financial challenges of our first home and remodel.
Now, we lived both laws of the fast and tithing to exactness and put the Lord to the test.
Obedience to God's laws brings blessings. Exact obedience brings miracles.And some smartass at work today implied that anyone that believes in the afterlife is a purple kool-aid drinker..... Just days after I sign papers on agreement that there will be a division-wide roll-out on diversity and tolerance training. And this puke was fully aware of that detail..... I told my wife tonight that normally, the guy is okay - but that smartasses like him end up with broken jaws.... Not at my hand - just in some form from a higher power. He needs to sip pureed carrots from a straw with his mouth wired shut until he figures life out and is a little more humble around people of faith..... People of faith experience amazing things precisely because they believe, not because they have sipped a little too much kool-aid, Jim Jones style. Well the same sonuvabuck dropped the F-bomb on our Director of Quality a few weeks ago. The company may just bust his chops for that. I know I would, given the authority to do so. I am feeling regret for not marching his arse right into the HR Director's office today and saying, "I rest my case". It was said right in front of my manager, too. AGAIN, failed to do anything about it..... Grrrr......
Man, I am getting pissed off. Nasty lawsuit pissed off..... I am not going to take much more before I blow this whole corrupt thing wide open.... Either this popsicle stand walks the walk, or they do not..... But it is popular sport these days to trash on conservative Christians. I may just make it my business to prey on those who refuse to do something about it.... Alma 44 style.
Anyway, I digress. So when they cut half of the 106,000 employees right after 9/11, I was told the cuts would be to the 20 year mark. I was at the 4 year mark at that point. I felt I had no chance, until my manager tapped me one day and asked me to come into his office. The FAA had just been there and mandated that anyone that worked on the Hor Stab System MUST stay. No exceptions. Well, there was also a directive from HR that they had to cut up to the 20 year mark and could only keep Level 3 Engineers or above with no exceptions except for critical skills (new program development, etc).
My manager could not figure how to resolve the two mandates. I mentioned that I had BYU Capstone experience and summer work that might qualify for "years of service". He asked me to put a quick summary of my additional outside work experience together which I did. To become a level III engineer, a minimum of 11 years of service or 7 years + a Masters Degree was required. I had just BARELY qualified for Level II..... I did not hold much hope. In fact, I had just dropped tens of thousands of dollars on my Montana timberframe project including buying a Ford Extendahoe backhoe and a 24' boxtruck with liftgate to move equipment, etc. I had just bought 60,000 lbs of glu-lam beams from a warehouse demolition project and stuffed a 40' shipping container silly in prep of the "big layoff" in case it came my way. I was locked and loaded for what I expected was the next phase of life. That never came.
My boss called me into the office a week later and he was super excited. He was a gay man with a huge heart and probably wept over all the people he had to lay off - but he got to keep his Mormon who would later become a huge and outspoken proponent of traditional marriage.... Life is full of ironies!
Anyway - he got me my Level III. At the time, there was a mandatory $5,000 pay bump for Level increases, in spite of the $5,000 I had just received in the past year over the Level II increase, plus we had just been given the annual spring bonus which was rather large due to half the people with the same pool of money to spread around. I walked away that year with about a $20,000 USD bump (in today's dollars). The funny part was, that in spite of the financial goodness that came from that, I was not a happy camper because I had actually gotten used to the idea of heading to MT and building my dream home with my young family. Looking back at all I have been through, that was one of the most interesting scenes of my life.
Within a month of all that drama, my middle child (youngest child of our three at the time) died of SIDS (many other blog pieces on that if you type SIDS in the search field). That event has defined the last 17 years of our lives. Not a day goes by that I am not reminded of or acutely feel the effects of it. It profoundly affected my wife's health. One day, I know the effects of it will catch up with mine due to the chronic stress I have endured. I would never wish that event on my worst enemy - but at the same time, I am not sure I would trade it for another alternate scenario that I can think of - because I am not sure I could learn more than I have but from that event and the outfall.
I have learned - but not mastered - the concept of never complaining about the current station in life, because "things can always get worse". I have also learned that the challenges of life, including a really interesting one I have just entered in my family life, are really just put there to increase our abilities to love, understand and be more like the Father of us all. We all have to be molded in His image before we pass over, if we expect to receive eternal glory.
I have have also had it driven home over and over that "what does not kill you, makes you stronger".
That year, along with the later loss of my mother was the most event-filled thing I expect to go through. I have not even scratched the surface with this blog piece.
God is good and He is mighty to save. I do not mind keeping that to myself, though it is hard not to share it - but I take great exception to those who try to pick away at such amazing things, just because they are too wretched of a being to step up to the plate and put in the necessary effort to attain similar results. From the Cardston Apostate to the smart-arsed guy that needs a jaw adjustment, spiritual apathy and mediocrity will get you nowhere. The opposite will guarantee the best bang for your buck on this mortal journey.... Truly, wood you believe it? I do.
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