Brick Walls

Whilst driving along the passenger terminal, all the planes parked nicely in a line along side. "J" n me spotted one of our planes with a very strange looking set of stairs attached to the rear most door. As we drove closer it was actually those inflatable escape slides that planes have. Some fool didn't disarm the door before the opened it. Was pretty amusing as there were about 10 of the local engineers all standing around looking up at the slide, fingers pointing away. Not wanting to get roped into all the fuss "J" and me drove on.

But true to life. About 1 hour later we get a call from the local engineers saying they have removed the slide and need us to fit a new one. So we head down, tools and new slide in the back of the truck. Lug the slide up into the plane and proceeded to fit it. But before we can get anywhere the guys from our quality dept appear to carry out quality control on our work... At every step he butts in asking to check this and check that. Wouldn't have minded but everything he was checking was on a sealed unit. And the other stuff he was checking was the door. There is nothing wrong with the door! Half way thru fitting the slide he asks where the maintenance manual reference print out is. To which the inspector in charge "V", said" nope, no manual print out. No point anyway. All the manuals you supplied us are around a year out of date anyway, so no point using them"

"Yes I know, but you need the manual, you cant do the job without the manual" the quality guy replied.
"But all your manuals are out of date and as such are all invalid." "V" said.
"But you need the manual, you cant do the job without the manual" the quality guy replied again.
"There is no point having the manual here, its out of date, invalid, useless." "V" said unbelievably.
"Yah, but you need the manual, you cant do the job without the manual"...

Anyway this went on till "V" thought sod it and sent someone back to the hanger to get the out of date manuals. So everyone sat about twiddling our thumbs. While the guys from the airline pestered us how long we would be and passengers were being pissed off at being delayed. Not our fault... When the manuals arrived we slung it in the corner and carried on working. All of us had done this before several times and were well versed with it all.

When it came to filling up the inflating bottle with nitrogen the quality guy said " pump it up to the green band and leave it unlocked so if its not full enough when I inspect it it will be easier for you to top up."
We do as he said. He inspects it and gets back to us "Yah, it is good. Middle of the green band, very good. But you forgot to lock the bottle up!" he exclaimed, proud that he had spotted a mistake...
"But you told us to leave it unlocked" "V" responded.
"Oh yah, so i did!"

All the while during the installation in between him poking his nose in every other second and holding up our progress, people from the airline would keep rushing us, telling us the passengers were getting pissed off with being delayed etc. When we were finally done the quality guy moved off. The moment he did 1 of the guys with us "Mo" threw his arms up and yelled" ARRRgggghhh, it only takes 30minutes to do this bloody job!!!! And its taken us best part of an hour!"

Then this hostess pokes her head round the corner and asks gingerly," Oh so, um, your done then? Couldn't drag it out a little longer could ya? We have almost hit our max working hours. Don't really fancy doing this flight"