Log 2: Safety Glasses
Today was better than yesterday. A lot of it was spent labeling display frames, which I can do while listening to music - and that’s always a plus. Apart from that, I kept myself busy sweeping the saw room. This might sound tedious, but it was actually a good time because I got to use a pressurized air gun to blow sawdust around before I swept it up. The only downside was that my dad was in the saw room, and he forced me to put my safety glasses on. I find them uncomfortable. I will say, however, I did feel like a total adult walking around with them on. An unskilled and incompetent adult, but an adult nonetheless.
I made two runs to the hardware store today to get eye bolts. During the first run the clerk instantly knew I had no idea what I was looking for, but by the second trip, my rote memorization of the names of the parts I needed seemed to fool the guy who helped me out into thinking I knew a thing or two about eye bolts. “Hi,” I said as I walked up to the register, safety glasses prominently placed on my head. “I’m looking for about 15 dip galvanized 5/16 eyebolts - and I don’t want the zinc plated kind, please.”
When I got back, I was sent to Mike in the metals department to get the bolts “cut down and sanded”. Surprisingly, when I handed him the bolts he handed them right back to me, and took me over to the bandsaw, where I was told to cut down the length of the eye bolts and use the sanding belt to smooth them out. I nodded slowly as Mike gave me a demonstration of how to use the sanding belt. “Yeah, that thing could definitely take some fingers off,” I observed. Literally everything in the office is labeled “flammable,” “danger,” “hazardous,” or “caution”. Some tools also have pictures of fingers getting crushed, heads getting cracked, or limbs being trapped, as if the written warnings aren’t enough. But somehow, I am left to use most of this equipment unsupervised. I kinda like that. At least I know what we’re building now: a booth for a company called Agrify that sells equipment needed to grow weed. Nice.
While walking to lunch, I had a close call, narrowly missing a stack of metal pipes that would have hit me in the face if I hadn’t reflexively limboed under them. This would not have happened if my eyes hadn’t been glued to my phone as I caught up on the latest Love Island season 7 news. Either way, I smirked triumphantly at the pipes as I continued on through the warehouse, thinking to myself, “That would’ve been embarrassing”.
Highlight: On my way back from lunch, still reading the news from my phone, I smacked my face right into the very same stack of pipes and gave myself a black eye. “Should’ve been wearing your safety goggles!” my dad called.
