Laughter on the Job

 Once again, Larry shares a funny memory. I think we can all use some humor about now!

I’ll call him Henry. He was a middle aged “good ol’ boy” from Oklahoma, born and raised in the oilfields. Henry didn’t have advanced degrees or college smarts, but he knew more about petroleum refineries and how to keep them running than anyone I ever met.

In the early 1970s, I was working a turnaround on an older oil refinery in Indiana. A turnaround is when a refinery plant is shut down for maintenance. It’s when exchangers are rodded (the tubes roto-rootered), towers are opened, inspected and repaired, furnaces re-bricked, and any piece of equipment which cannot be fixed during normal operation is repaired or replaced. Special crews of experienced engineers and operators are brought in specifically to run the turnaround.

Since any plant shutdown can cost upwards of $100,000.00 per day in lost revenue, downtime must be kept to a minimum. If done right, the plant should be able to operate for eight-to-ten years between turnarounds.

At the end of the first day, we had discovered several critical problems that could stretch beyond the one-week allowed for this turnaround. The situation was serious, tension was high, and tempers short.

At dinner in the refinery cafeteria, the ten-person day crew hardly talked, each of us enmeshed in solving our own problems. Someone suggested we needed a break and noted the movie house nearby was showing 2001: A Space Odyssey. Since there was little to do in this small factory town, we decided to go. We all piled into two cars for the short trip.

For the late showing, the theater was almost empty. We filled two rows in the back.

Midway through the movie is a sequence often referred to as “the psychedelic light show.” Walls of lights flash toward the audience giving the viewer a sense of flying down a neon corridor, while loud music assaults their ears. The lights become faster and, the music louder and more discordant until it finally crescendos into…

Total silence. A blank white screen slowly morphs into a white room.

As we sat in awed silence, from behind me, I heard Henry’s not-so-quiet stage whisper in his Oklahoma twang. “Shee-at! That was great.”

Our snickers turned to laughter, then outright guffaws. The entire audience joined in. I laughed so hard there were tears in my eyes.

I’m sure Stanley Kubrick never expected this response, but it was just what we needed.

We returned with a far different attitude and bonded as a group to face the next day together. And we finished the job on time.