Scrap yard challenge
When Derrick Bradshaw was given a task, one thing was for sure, it was always completed. Now that’s not saying it was the best task going, just that come rain, hail or sunshine he would do everything in his power to finish it.
Derrick liked to think of himself as a grafter, honest and reliable in his twenty years of employment at Envirotech, only missing one days work and this was unavoidable his mother had died of a heart attack.
Derrick worked as an engineer but he preferred the term inventor better this gave him a bit more creative licence, at home that is but not at work, there he had to follow procedures and guidelines and above all safety. There were three engineers working for Envirotech, himself included, it was a fiercely competitive company, your wages were based on your work and designs, the more successful the design and product the more of a bonus you got. Needless to say when their boss Nigel Matthews, set them all a new task to include the following guidelines:
1. Machine must increase productivity by at least 200%
2. Only require one operator to run machine
3. Be more economical
4. Follow strict ISO 3000 guidelines.
The three engineers or stooges as some people liked to call them, were thrilled with the challenge they rushed back to their desks to start a brainstorming session.
Derrick pondered over many idea’s and rejected them all on the basis of them not including one of the above guidelines, His brain was in overdrive it was time for a coffee, nothing like some caffeine to get the brain kicking he thought whilst heading down the stairs towards the canteen. On his way there Derrick seen a poster on the wall, it had a robot with some slogan about medical devices on it, this gave him an idea.
Coffee in hand, and Derrick was off, he ran up the stairs with great enthusiasm, spilling half of the cups contents on his freshly washed shirt. It took him less then an hour to draw up the plans for his new robot machine; It really was something else Nigel is going to love it he thought to himself. He couldn’t help thinking the idea was genius, it was going to do the work that would take three people eight hours, the machine would easily do in one hour only needing one operator to turn it on. I have to win he thought, then he remembered a saying his dear old mother used to say “Derrick dear, self praise is no praise.” Derrick left his submission on Nigel’s desk and went home for the evening.
The next day, the three engineers were called to the office to give their presentations of course Derricks was last, he listened intently but his impatience was starting to show, he was tapping his pen off the table which he didn’t even realise till he seen Nigel staring at him with his beady eyes. After hearing the other two presentations he was absolutely sure his idea was better and this thought was clarified the following
day, when he was called into Nigel’s office and given the good news. He left the office with his head held high. He was very proud of himself. He stayed late for the next two months at work, he worked tirelessly, sometimes into the early hours, giving far more then was asked of him, but he didn’t mind he enjoyed working on his new robot. After the two months the robot machine was finished, He just had some last minute touches to do, like moving some sensor lights around and it was ready.
Nigel was due down in twenty minutes to see this eagerly awaited machine, Nigel knew immediately this was the machine for Envirotech, you could the dollar signs in his beady eyes. Derrick thought he better give it a test run first, just a precaution he thought. He pressed the green start button with his long skeletal fingers; he watched it running for a minute only to discover something wasn’t quite right the stacker wasn’t coming down properly. He opened the door to take a closer look, he broke one major rule of engineering he forgot to turn the main power switch off.
Derrick opened the door and had a good look around but he couldn’t find the fault, so he stuck his head under the stacker to see if anything was stuck underneath, it
Came crashing down on his head like a ton of bricks, the pain was excruciating, but only lasted a minute before it crushed his skull into a million pieces, it shattered on impact the force was too high.
Nobody could understand what had happened, they went over the accident and his design hundreds of times but found nothing. What they didn’t realise was that Derrick had used parts from another machine that had to be dismantled; its nickname was bad robot. Bad robot had caused hundreds of unexplained accidents over the years, Envirotech had bought it without knowing this Derrick after having some very close near misses went and did his research and found it had had numerous accidents so he told management and they ordered it to be dismantled and taken to the scrapyard.
Derrick had always followed orders, but as his project had required him to save they company money he decided to recycle some of bad robots parts and use them on his new machine, eventually leading to his demise, another saying his mother used was a bad workman never blames his tools, with this in mind one must conclude that bad robot was very much alive and running, who says robots don’t have feelings?
