Shortcuts Don't Always Work
The best (and sometimes the worst) part of safe work is that onlookers usually don't know how hard the safe tech is struggling. It all evens out, sort of . . . A couple of weeks ago I figuratively had my head handed to me on a job. The job was a good distance out of town, and it was to open a safe I'm very familiar with. So I had no excuse for what happened. The problem was that I tried to use a shortcut technique that I've been successful with before. Not to bore with details, but the technique is one that can reduce the opening and repairing time for a specific ATM safe from well over to two hours on average to maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. Anyway, my cute and fast technique backfired to cause a technical problem that kept me on the job for nearly eight hours. That's the breaks. The good part (I guess) was that the man who hired me for the job was still impressed by my performance, even though this was not a brag-worthy piece of work. In fact, the only good thing I...