Mine Design, Part 2

I had high hopes for Gordon as a boss. He talked the talk. He believed in standardization, or so he said. He believed in treating his employees fairly and the same, or so he said. He said that he would not rush his group and that if a print was not ready, we would not send it underground.

If only that were true. Gordon did not live up to expectations. He had temper tantrums. He had pets. He had unreasonable expectations. If Operations said that they needed something, we were to deliver it, regardless of the time constraints. But don’t fuck up. Don’t make a mistake. He’d call us into the office if Operations called up to point one out.

I was no exception. One day, shortly after I returned from holiday, Gordon sent me a message: Come to my office, please. He had a print with my name on it on his desk. He leafed through it until he came to the drill tables.

“This went down underground like this,” he said. He pointed at the page.

I leaned over the print and saw that the drill directions were reversed. Oh my, I thought. That could create a world of problems.

But I could not, for the life of me, remember putting out that print. I took the print and skipped back to the beginning. Yup, there was my name. I was perplexed. I looked at the date.

“I didn’t do this,” I said.

“Your name is on it,” he said.

“I was on holidays when this went out,” I said, pointing at the date.

Gordon remained silent. He fumed. He brooded. He pouted. I left his office without another word.
Gordon was not that organized, either. He messed up people’s holidays. You can do that if you don’t actually do your own time. And he didn’t do his own timesheets. He, like all the department heads before him, farmed that out to my partner, Larry, with me as the alternate when Larry was on holidays or off sick. As a matter of fact, none of the other department heads ever did their own timesheets, not so far back as I can remember. Gordon was no exception. So Gordon wasn’t that good at keeping track of when his employees were off on holidays.

He allowed too many people off at the same time, too. Especially at Christmas. You’d think it would be easy to keep track of who’d requested what when you’re the one approving holidays. It’s easy. Keep a calendar. Write names down on the weeks each employee has requested. Use a highlighter. Once a week is filled, don’t approve employee’s requests for that week anymore. Easy. How hard is that? It’s how we did it in Oreflow, and we had greater restrictions. Small groups of people who were qualified to do specific jobs, with restrictions on how many people of that small group could be off at any given time. That required more than one calendar to keep and to highlight. Gordon had only one group of seven designers. I ask you, how hard could that be to juggle? Too hard, apparently.

One Christmas, I was preparing to go on holidays. I decided to bring Guy up to speed on my stopes so that he could see what had been pre-prepared and what to expect for the coming two weeks. Guy freaked.

“You’re off?” he asked. I was. For two weeks. I’d just said so.

“”Hang on,” he said, "Larry’s off, Miro’s off, you’re off, Andre’s off and Mousapha is off. I’m the only one working.”

Guy went to raise his concerns with Gordon. That’s a nice way to put it. He raised his concerns. Gordon called an emergency meeting, the long and short of it being that he was cancelling my holidays so we’d have coverage.

“No,” I said. “I have more seniority than Andre and Mous. Cancel their holidays.”

Andre and Mous did not took too happy at the prospect. But such is life, such is seniority. I’d lived with those rules for decades. So could they.

“Who is travelling home for Christmas?” Gordon asked. Andre and Mous raised their hands. “I think we should give preference to people who have to travel,” Gordon decided.

“No,” I said, “I have seniority. You’ve allowed three guys off at a time and I’m third on the list. You approved my holidays. I’m taking them.

“Well, “Gordon said, “why don’t we walk down to Tom’s office and you can explain why we can’t deliver any prints over the holidays.” Tom was the Mine Manager.

“Let’s,” I said. If we did that, Tom would have to side with me. I like to think that he would, anyways. Seniority is seniority, and there are hard fast policies about such things. That sucked for Andre and Mous, in my books. That would have sucked for Gordon, too. He’d be left explaining to Tom why he couldn’t manage his own crew. Gordon backed down from his bluff.

I left the meeting. Gordon tried to threaten me, further. I stood my ground. Larry and Miro caved. The two guys with the highest seniority. Each of them came in the next week for a couple days. I wouldn’t have bailed Gordon out like that. I’d have let Gordon fall on his sword.

Why? Because Gordon was a cruel asshole.

I had a few face offs with Gordon. He treated us like slaves, just as he, himself, was treated like a slave by Operations. If Ops said jump, Gordon not only jumped, he begged to be allowed to jump again.
I was of a different mind. I didn’t like working for nothing. I didn’t like producing prints that would never be used. So, when I was instructed to produce a print where we’d be drilling from a drift that I knew we’d blasted the shoulders out of, I informed Gordon and our Blast Specialist, Dale, that we should not give them a drill print for that stope until the drift had been inspected.

Gordon yelled at me, out in the open, for all ears to hear. “If Ops says they want a print, you will fucking well give them that print. Do your fucking job!”

I thought I was doing my job. Thinking, planning, was not part of it, apparently. I began the print, knowing full well that it would never be used. That is not hubris. I’d been in this gig for almost thirty years and I already knew what to expect. And remember, I’d just spent four years in Ground Control. So yes, I already knew that the walls would be blown out, even if I had not seen the drift with my own eyes.

Dale took it upon himself to ask Ground Control if they’d inspected the drift in question since the blast that I suspected had damaged it had gone off. They hadn’t. They said they’d inspect it that very morning and get back to us with their findings.

The drift had been destroyed. We could not drill from it without extensive rehab. The print I had misgivings about, but had worked on and completed, the print that was being signed just then would not be needed. It would never be needed. Ground Control refused to send anyone into that drift.

Gordon did not come to my desk to inform me that the print wasn’t needed. That would entail him having to tell me that I was right.

He sent Dale, instead.