Skill Level Four!!!

Randy, I was going to wait until the end of the week when my training was complete to write my last entry, but I had to tell you about last night while everything was still fresh. When I got to work last night, I didn't see anyone in start-up that ordinarily works in the kitchen. I knew Chris (the kitchen operator) was on vacation, but I didn't see Mike Gordon (my trainer) or Mary (the woman taking his place when he leaves for a different position next week). After start up I walked into the kitchen, and Mike was at the computer screen looking over the alarms. I asked where Mary was and he replied "who knows, she's lazy as h*ll, probably out running her mouth". After I stopped laughing, I saw my boss walking by so I stopped him and asked him where Mary was. He told me that she had called in sick and that I would be taking care of the relief/rework duties for the night, and I needed to go clock in as a skill level four! This was pretty exciting as I have been receiving skill level one pay for almost six weeks during my training. I went ahead and did all of the required checks and was actually eager for Mike to go to break at 12:00 so I could test out my skills. It wasn't five minutes after he left that the alarms started going off. I went to the screen and saw that a door had been opened in demoulding and I knew exactly what to do. I went to all four depositors, reset them, put them back in auto mode, reset the line, hit the warning button and hit start. It started right back up and everything went back to running smoothly. I had various alarms throughout the night while Mike was on break but it was nothing I hadn't seen before and I even changed the line speed and temperatures when the buffer went up to 80 something percent. When it went back down to normal, I pushed the speeds back up as well as the temperatures. The line ran fairly well last night, but we continued to have the same alarm time and again for an infrared light overheating. The only problem I encountered that I didn't know how to fix was right at the end of the shift and a warning came up that said the line was out of sync. Mike grabbed a tool that I had never seen utilized before, he plugged it into a guage on the stamping heads, twisted a knob, hit the sync button, jogged the line, reset it, hit the warning button, and started it right back up. He explained to me that sometimes the chain can jump off the track a little bit and it messes with the timing of the stamping heads and depositors. After he explained it to me and showed me how to do it, it didn't seem like anything I couldn't handle.

So after all of my gripping and complaining about the various problems within the Hershey Company in Stuarts Draft, I actually feel sort of at home in the kitchen. It's not really difficult, it's just hot, you have a lot to monitor, and you have to be a little mechanically inclined. Just like a little kid, I've started to get my hopes up about something that may not happen right off the bat. I really would appreciate the chance to have an interview for a supervision position, but If I don't, I don't want to end up disappointed and feel let down. I think it's wise for me just to pursue the skill level four position in the kitchen if Mary decides not to take the position after all. I'm told that's the reasoning for my training to begin with. I'll let you know how things end up in the fall. Enjoy a good summer.