Images Magazine Digital Edition May 2018

www.images-magazine.com 36 images MAY 2018 TIPS & TECHNIQUES She’s a rockstar That is until his new puller, in a desperate attempt to keep up, starts distorting the print on the T-shirt when he yanks it off the board. That circle print now looks like an egg. Twelve or fifteen T-shirts go down the dryer belt before the catcher says anything. “Billy!” she yells. He can’t hear her. The earphones are in, volume cranked up to the max. Eventually, the new puller grabs Billy by the shoulder and thumbs his attention to the catcher. Billy looks up with a scowl because the move breaks his rhythm. “What?” he growls. By now, more T-shirts have been distorted and there are three foldovers on the belt. The puller just can’t keep up. Billy barely cares. It’s not like this is his money going down the dryer belt. He makes a mental note to talk to the production manager, Steve, after lunch about getting a new puller. “This new guy sucks,” he thinks to himself. The opportunist Rosie was one of the best catchers the shop had until last year. During that busy season, the shop’s second automatic printer broke his arm and couldn’t run the press while he was healing. Seeing an opening to make more money, she stepped up and volunteered to give it a try. Nobody else wanted to do it. The shop posted an ad online, which is how they eventually found Billy. Steve spent some time with her on the basics of running the equipment and scheduled easier jobs for her for a while. In a few weeks time, she was already nearly matching the output of the other automatic press crew. Now a year later, she has proven herself. When Steve fired Joe for constantly coming in late, Rosie became a solid choice. What is interesting to Steve is that she works a lot like Fred. Calm and collected, with a steady rhythm. Billy seems to work in hyper-drive all day, and Rosie might appear to be moving in slow motion compared to his frantic rate. But that calmness harnesses focused determination. Steve has noticed that Rosie’s daily output consistently delivers more than what is expected of her. Not to mention she has fantastic quality. Reviewing the production log data, her set-up times are about six minutes a screen now, and her downtime is usually low. She outperforms Billy three out of the five days of the week. Rosie’s review is coming up soon, and Steve has been keeping a close eye on her work. She’s a rockstar. In fact, last week she was showing her catcher, Maria, how to load T-shirts on the press. She just took the initiative. One problem that seems to be surfacing is the tension between Rosie and the new printer Billy. Evidently, Billy has been making comments about her in the break room. It is disguised as good-natured fun, but Steve can tell there is an undercurrent of jealousy or something. Maybe Billy feels threatened by Rosie’s success? In the meantime, Steve makes it a point to work with Rosie more and give her more support.