Nice Stuff in the Garbage

ddickey

H-M Supporter - Gold Member
H-M Supporter Gold Member
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Can't believe how much nice stuff gets thrown away were I work. I saw a nice carbide lathe tool the other day that looked perfectly fine. Nice peices of alloy that I would love to have. I don't want to get fired yet though so to the recycling place it goes.
 
I feel your pain. I used to see the same sort of thing from time to time at employers I've had in the past.

Here's a good one for you, at my current employer: We ended up with a new maintenance manager a couple of years ago. He decided that the mechanics did not need a heavy bench with a nice large Wilton vise on it. So the whole bench got cut up and placed in the scrap bin, vise and all. The bench grinder got tossed out too, a nice 10" Delta. They also had a nice Ellis horizontal bandsaw that suddenly quit working. It needed a motor, and the new manager being a self proclaimed expert decided that we no longer needed such a saw and that it should be disposed of. Sure enough, a number of people (including yours truly) offered to purchase the derelict saw, but instead one of the employees (who the new manager has taken an extreme liking to) got to take it home for free!

Advance the clock 18 months and now the shop has a new shop built steel bench and a brand new Ellis bandsaw. The same manager suddenly had a change of heart for who knows what reason.

The truck-trailer shop used to have a man-lift so the mechanics could work safely on the upper portions of the trailers. The maintenance manager decided that the processing plant needed the man lift more than the truck shop does, so now the man lift sits in the plant, rarely if ever used. Over the last couple of years the truck shop mechanics have placed several requests for a man lift, but they were told that they don't need one, and that ladders are just fine. Two weeks ago one of the trailer mechanics fell off of a 12 foot ladder while working on the lights at the top rear of the trailer, suffering broken bones and other injuries. Guess what suddenly showed up in the trailer shop yesterday?? I won't tell you, because the answer is just to obvious, but I can tell you that it has shiny new paint!
 
i always made it a practice to simply ask my employer if i could have whatever might otherwise get thrown out.
after a couple weeks of faithfully asking my boss, He said i could take whatever i wanted and not to ask him again for permission ;)
 
Someone is going to have a serious discussion with the maintenance manager someday, Terry.

Maybe. He started as the maintenance manager, then became the production and maintenance manager, and recently became the general manager, also putting him over transportation. Needless to say, I don't like the guy and don't get along with him. That's all I am going to say about him because I was brought up learning "if you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all."

Oh, did I happen to mention that he is the brother of our regional manager? That may not be enough protection for him though, as I suspect that there will be multiple lawsuits over this latest accident and the corporate big shots will be looking for a head to put on a platter.

On top of it all, this manager is now "leading the charge" to start a fund raising effort for the mechanic that fell.

I better not say any more. My blood is already starting to boil... again.

Enough said on that. Besides, we need to get this thread back on track and it's original subject.
 
i always made it a practice to simply ask my employer if i could have whatever might otherwise get thrown out.
after a couple weeks of faithfully asking my boss, He said i could take whatever i wanted and not to ask him again for permission ;)


I always had permission to take unwanted items and scrap home, and in the 23 years I worked for the company --many times when machines broke down and they couldn't get parts ---I would bring back parts needed to keep production running ----I would just tell them to give them back when they were finished using them---I have been retired now for 12 years and still have a lifetime supply of supplies from being a good scrounger---remember that most items have many other uses besides what they were made for---what is sad is when the items just get thrown in the trash garbage so no one can salvage them----Dave
 
I happened to be in Florida years back and knew a guy that worked for Pratt and Whitney in Palm Beach. I was able to visit their "dump" on one occasion and never forgot the site. Besides keeping an eye out for gators, (it was in the middle of a swamp) there were EDM's, drills, mills, grinders, millions of pounds of equipment, tons and tons of drills and cutting tools in crates, ( and I'm not talking a #60, they were 2" and up), all sitting outside in the Florida sunshine uncovered. I stood there looking at all that stuff rusting away and couldn't believe it was scrap, and thinking even with all the rust on them, SOMEONE would want and need them, remembering some shops I worked in had machinery that looked worse. I'm sure in some way we paid for all that, and it was easier to replace than keep.
 
We shared building with an engineering firm. Some time in the distant past, when salvaging was allowed, an employee of theirs was spotted loading a newly constructed workbench into his pickup truck. A manager asked him what was up and the employee replied that i the workbench had been scrapped. The manager happened to know that the bench had just been made. The employee was fired and a strict policy of absolutely no salvage allowed.

Fast forward. They were shutting down their operation and threw decades worth of accumulated stuff into the dumpster. Employees were hauling out cart loads of various items. I managed to snag two lab ovens, unopened boxes of nitrile gloves, new personal protection suits, and a like new 10 lb. sledge w/ fiberglass handle, a roll of 1" Tygon tubing, along with other items.

Our company was a startup and generally strapped for cash. We spied them throwing out office partitions and asked if we could have them instead. They agreed and even sent two of their maintenance people to set them up for us. Much better than going into landfill.

Many companies institute no salvage policies to combat employee theft. It is a shame that a few bad apples force policies like that but that seems to be the way the world works.
 
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