Insane Hydraulics
Bold and audacious blog about fluid power
Bam! A pair of goggles whizzes through the air and hits the wall - "Unbreakable my ass!" - flashing through my mind as I watch the lenses shatter. Bam! A bearing puller flies in the opposite direction and hits something made of wood, or at least the impact sounds like wood... I leave the workshop before I break anything else. Punch a drywall on my way out - "Somebody's gonna have to fix that tomorrow..." Breathe-in, breathe-out - urge to kill fading... fading... rising... fading... gone...
This isn't another episode of American Chopper. Believe it or not, the author of this "emotional explosion" is the person writing this very article about the sensitive matter of workshop rage, which, as opposed to road rage, has never been given much attention and consideration.
When I use the term "workshop rage" - I refer to the explosive manifestation of discontent by a workshop worker, expressed through either high-speed projecting of "liftable" workshop equipment or, alternatively, inappropriate and/or generally exaggerated use of the same equipment for "hitting" and "hammering" purposes. Everybody who has worked in a workshop long enough has witnessed or experienced a burst of "workshop rage."
Here's what I think of all this: Anger is a normal and healthy human emotion. There is no way of stopping bad things from happening, and there will always be unpleasant situations and assholes driving us mad - therefore - feeling anger is as inevitable as taxes. What really matters is how you express your anger. So, as long as you don't express it in a way that can hurt yourself or others, you are doing nothing but being human!
To make my point as clear as possible, I would like to use a metaphor easily understood by hydraulic technicians: stress and anger are just like fluid inside an accumulator - the more of it inside, the higher the pressure. Cram too much of it in - and the vessel will burst catastrophically. Vent it slowly - and you're safe. There's no time to vent the pressure slowly? - Use the emergency discharge! But before you "pull the red lever," remember to point the jet away from yourself, the audience or, which is even better - avoid the audience altogether (read - leave the room)!
My advice for workshop anger management therefore is - find a needle valve to discharge your accumulator and use it when needed (I personally jog, read books, code and play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2). But if you have to go nuts - do it responsibly, and direct your destructive burst to cheap and replaceable things rather than yourself and, God forbid, your co-workers. Angry is one thing, violent is completely opposite and completely unacceptable!
Now, let me tell you a short "emergency pressure discharge" story, which still brings a smile to my face whenever I recall it.
A long time ago, I was employed at a company that was manufacturing and servicing industrial fishing equipment - stuff like winches, cranes, etc... One sunny morning, our foreman (my good friend till today) had to take apart an old purse seine winch. If you never worked with used marine equipment - take my word for it - rust and sea salt make any disassembly an unpleasant endeavor that involves ample amounts of sledgehammering, torching, and cursing.
So there he was - with an oversized sledgehammer in his hands, pissed off at the stubborn part he'd been trying to wedge out for the last two hours. I could tell by the vein on his forehead that his patience was running out with every blow - and finally - the "bubble burst". With a roar that would make King Leonidas himself jealous, he vigorously swung the hammer over his head and hit the wedge as hard as it was humanly possible! Unfortunately, the hammer struck the wedge with the wooden handle just below the steel head, which immediately broke off and flew away at the speed of light - leaving the man clenching a lonely and sad-looking stick with a splintered end. He stared at it for a second or two, and then with an even louder roar (which sounded like a Portuguese equivalent of "you f@#&ing bastard") he projected the handicap handle in a random direction... Tough luck he had, because the handle crashed smack dub in the middle of a bag containing several bottles of expensive red wine - the same very bag that he had lovingly stored under his workbench earlier that day to protect the fragile vessels from the "harsh workshop environment". It took me several sentences to describe "the circus" - but in real life, it was a continuous "single shot" that lasted no more than four seconds - A-a-a-a! - Bam! - Crack! - You f@#&ing bastard!!! - A-a-a! - Bam! - Smack!
And me? I had to flee to the locker room to prevent my sides from splitting in front of the poor guy! I laughed hysterically for a full ten minutes before I could go back to the workshop, where I found the "hero" mopping the floor and mourning the wine - in a much, much calmer state of mind...
See? "Emergency venting" is a fast and effective way to calm down, but it carries a risk of unexpected expense and/or property damage, whcih is why it should only be used in "emergency" situations and preferably away from people.