Submitted by: Submitted by Adna
Views: 10
Words: 2977
Pages: 12
Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 04/03/2016 02:29 PM
Magic Cable
By Joseph Kavanaugh, Henry S. Maddux III. and Harry Gene Redden,
Sam Houston State University
“I think I’ve found what I’m looking for,” Gary Roberts said.
“Oh yeah, what is that?” Jim Handley asked, as he handed Roberts a pair of vice grip
pliers.
“I’m thinking I might have found a way out of this dump. No more tile dust, no more
forty-mile an hour winds blowing through the plant, and no more Al Wright for me”,
Roberts replied.
Wright, the plant manager, and Roberts, journeyman maintenance mechanic for Tile-
Elite, had been at odds for years. Roberts had been hired during a manufacturing plant
expansion at Tile-Elite and Wright had promised Roberts a production supervisor’s job
upon its completion. However, when the expansion was completed and the last
production line was ready to produce, Wright told Roberts to forget the supervisor’s job
because he was more valuable to the company as a maintenance mechanic.
“I know what I said, Gary, but I think you’re going to be a mechanic here even if you
stay twenty years,” Wright had stated at the time.
After that encounter, Wright and Roberts had mixed like oil and water and that was
almost five years ago. Roberts had to admit that he was probably more valuable to the
company as a maintenance mechanic in the short run, but he had been looking at the long
run. He wanted to be more involved in the production process. He had just turned forty,
was recently divorced, and had been involved in maintenance of some type ever since his
military service in Vietnam twenty years earlier. While working full-time at his previous
job, Roberts completed his bachelor’s degree in business. His major had been
Management and it had taken him six long years to graduate. He had then wanted a
position where he could use his management education. The company for which he was
working while going to school had promised him a supervisor’s position when he
graduated, but that promise had evaporated when the...