Another day in the office

Here's a story from work:

At our plant we have 3 electric generators (A,B and C) powering 5 huge pumps. These pumps are crucial for our production and therefore, by default so are the generators. One generator down would cause 2 pumps out of action, which means we lose approximately RM 2 million per day. And a few days ago, something went horribly wrong with Generator C, it was out of service and subsequently 2 pumps need to be taken offline. We lose 2 million. The thing is still down until today, so we decided to have a meeting to discuss our plan for this problem. In the meeting we had: 1 Senior Engineer/Old Guy (OG), the generator engineer (GE), myself and about 5 more people.

OG : So what's happening with Generator C?

GE : Well, it's not working, that's for sure.

Me : Yes, obviously.

OG : What were your findings?

GE : There were metal chips in the lubrication line. That's not good.

Me : So what can we do?

GE : What we can do is NOT run it.

OG : Well, that's what we've already done.

GE : We need to get this thing sorted.

Me : It doesn't look like it'll be solved easily, we might need to overhaul the whole thing.

GE : I don't feel very good looking at the amount of metal particles found.

OG : We know that. We shouldn't have anything inside the tubings.

GE : Which is why its not good.

OG : We need to get our production back. And this is holding us.

GE : 2 million a day is a lot of money.

At this point OG starts to look frustrated with the lack of definitive answers.

OG : (Looking directly at GE) Mate, you're the master of stating the obvious.

Upon hearing the comment, I tried very hard not too laugh too loudly. That was the exact same thing I wanted to say!

End of story from work.

See how useless meetings are?