Tools

[dougtrr2]

I worked on Minuteman missiles and each team chief had his own tool box.  Normally, we worked in two man teams but there were some jobs that required a crew of 8-10, but still only one tool box was used.  I was team chief on one of those jobs and then the next day I had to go into the shop to do a tool box inventory.  I was missing a lot of tools, but what really made me mad was many of them were tools we would not use on that job.  It was the Air Force and I did not have to pay for the lost tools but I was ticked off.  

So, I made up an inventory sheet for my tool box.  The Air Force inventory sheet was in pretty much random order.  Then I organized and fitted my tool box so I could more easily inventory it.   From that point on I would inventory my box toward the end of those big jobs and no one left the site until all my tools were accounted for.  (The nature of that job was toward the end you could turn people loose early as their tasks were completed.)  Never lost another tool and I had other guys on the crew looking for my tools so they could go home.

Interesting thing was, if you looked around any given site you could usually find a misplaced tool someone else had left.

Doug in SW IA  

[SawyerTed]

When I was a new teacher, teaching industrial arts, I was told by an assistant principal that I HAD to loan tools to the coaches because they HAD to keep the fields ready for games. 

I learned quickly coaches were the worst at returning tools.   We had purchasing agreements with Sears/Craftsman, Porter Cable, etc.  So I kept a set of good tools for students to use and tools for doing repairs and maintenance. 

When coaches didn't return the tools, they learned I'd come looking for them.  The tools were all marked and inventoried.  I wasn't a happy camper and they just laughed about it.  A couple of times I got that assistant principal to go with me when the number of tools "borrowed" started interfering with students work in my classes. That got the coaches to do better for a little while but they fell into their old habits. 

After about six months at the school, I figured out that athletics had more money than I did in my program AND I could buy tools locally on the school's account.

Over the next couple of months I stocked the coaches with tools suitable for their work.  When they came to borrow something, I gave them their tools never expecting them back.   I wasn't disappointed.  Somewhere in there the lock on the shop tool room got changed too!

When they came to borrow a tool I knew I bought for them, that they lost, I showed them the receipt marked ATHLETIC DEPT.  They seemed to "find" their tools.  

Funny how they got a toolbox and started locking it up!

[barbender]

Ted, I have a certain amount of disdain for the deference given to athletics in schools as your story illustrates. Schools always seem to come up with money for athletic programs when other, and in my opinion far more important, things go under or unfunded.

[SawyerTed]

Athletics have their place.   Some students "find their place" in athletics, stay in school and it makes a difference for them.

Equally true, students found their "place" in my program, Ag Ed, Business Ed, Carpentry, Auto Tech, Heath Science, Home Economics, Marketing and all the others. 

The same is true for band, theater, visual arts and chorus.

It just wasn't right that my ability to teach children was being impaired by a revenue generating extracurricular activity.  

[Percy]

When I read the title of this thread, I thought it was going to be a list of names and was checking to see if I was on it :D