All the Right Mistakes

Before I began my journalism career I tested my skills in other jobs, including one in which I was the apprentice to a maintenance man at a large warehouse. The job involved fixing anything in the large, active warehouse but mostly consisted of keeping the dozen or so forklifts functioning. The fork lifts were crucial because they moved the giant pallets of products, everything from radios to cat food. Without the forklifts the warehouse was just a giant room with a lot of stuff way too heavy to lift.
I was sort of an apprentice, but if Gary, the maintenance man, needed anything from me it was to serve as an audience to his non-stop chatter. I guess he got lonely in the maintenance room, so I listened, and occasionally hand him a wrench. Gary never stopped moving or talking and kept his tools clean and in perfect order, so I rarely had a chance to prove myself. Until one day Gary called in sick. After telling the warehouse manager, Gary called me and said a part would be delivered that day that belonged in a red fork lift that was in the maintenance room. He said he would install it when he returned tomorrow but he didn’t specifically prohibit me from installing it, which later might be seen to be an error in judgement.
The piece was delivered about 10 am and proved to be a lift/tilt cylinder, which, well it lifts and tilts stuff.
Now I preface this next part by saying I was about 18, thin but in pretty good shape, but not overly bright, a very unfortunate combination. So I still don’t know if the wrong part was delivered or it was “installed” in the wrong place but that cylinder was not a good fit with the part it was supposed to silde into. So I hit it a little, or OK a lot. In fact I spent a decent part of the day and worked up quite a sweat pounding that cylinder into the part it didn’t quite fit into with a sledge hammer. I believe I was still whacking away with it late in the afternoon when Gary called again. I apprised him of the situation and he advised I put down the sledge hammer and go home.
Fork lifts weigh a lot, three times as much as the average car. They have special weights built in the bottom so they won’t tip over while moving very heavy pallets.
So the next morning when I walked toward the maintenance room and saw a 9,000 pound fork lift dangling in mid air and attached only to the tilt/lift cylinder I had recently installed I knew my career as an apprentice had come to a close. Gary had attached the cylinder to chains hanging from the ceiling and somehow lifted the fork lift, hoping, I suppose the immense weight of the fork lift would release from my handiwork. Some of the forklift drivers were gathered around laughing. I guess they’d never seen a forklift hanging from its own lift/tilt cylinder.
I also don’t know whether the warehouse manager just happened to have a broom in his office when I went in to resign, but he handed me the broom and said I didn’t have to quit but I wasn’t allowed in the maintenance room any more.