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Best: I’m good at it and I self taught in 18 months what was supposed to take 5 years. Having something(s) to take pride in is strange and nice.
Worst: I’m bored now but very busy.
This was a very hard question to answer in a short format. Well done.
What is it though?
By title I run the kilns at a lumber mill. That was the biggest skill and learning. Their previous operator got poached and they had no one cross trained so ‘figure it out’. Had nothing to work with so developed my own inventory and moisture tracking system and a few statistical modeling tools to predict the moisture variability. Part of making that inventory system somehow led to doing project management for a 3 person ios dev team in Turkey. Basically I found a couple of textbooks online, don’t function without computers and just kind of went from there.
There may be one other person that reads and understands this but fwiw I tested a kiln charge that was for a heat treatment order on Thursday after it was dressed at the planer. Customer requested 12% MC. I hit 12.2% MC average with a standard deviation of 1.2. Cut dates range of 1 week prior to 3.5 months prior. Piled air dry and standard box piled mix. Sales guy had an order to fill for a face size we ran low on and said ‘do your best’.
I also run the round saw filing cnc machine(I make saws sharp) as another ‘we need someone to figure this out’. It is painfully boring but I eliminated about 12k/week in opportunity cost in my first 60 days of doing it so they won’t let me stop.
I also fill in driving front loaders on a regular basis. I can run forks, grader blade or bucket. If you ever want to learn about Marx’s theory of the alienation of labor drive a front loader for a bit.
And occasionally I fill in on the planer if they need help with a set up.
Hired June of 2021 from 4.5 years of disability and 10 years in Apple retail. I put in my resume because I figured it would be a cool tour and took the job figuring I’d wash out in the 90 day probation period. Just over 2 years later and I’ve learned a few skilled trades and I’ve personally improved the business’ margins in 3 different areas.
That's awesome actually. Hopefully they compensate you well for your contributions.
Thank you! Like I said in my OP it’s weird to be proud of myself and something I’ve done.
It’s not bad by any means and I’m pretty lucky. I make the Canadian median wage(54k/yr) with no post-secondary and almost 6 years of disability in 18 years of working. I’m doing fine but it’s frustrating to be able to point to multiples of my income that I’ve pushed personally(in a 200 person operation) and still have to fight for a greater than inflation wage increase.
I’ve got irons in the fire and plan to be moving on in the next year or so. Need to get a hold of someone that can do patent discovery.