Evelyn, the Electrician

"Evelyn, you already know what my answer is going to be. Why do you need to make a spice?"

She sounded like she was almost in tears.

"I did the takeoff's and calculated the length of five hundred MCM we'd need. I ordered three reels four hundred feet long. They came in today, but what I got was three reels three hundred feet long and three reels a hundred feet long. I called the supplier and told him he had to take it back but he said that's what we ordered so he wouldn't. I kept a copy of my requisition so I know I ordered the right length, but he won't believe me. Unless I can use a splice in each phase, what I've got is almost thirty thousand dollars worth of wire that I can't use and I'll have to order it again for another thirty thousand. Isn't there some way you can help me out? If you can't, I'll probably lose my job."

It wasn't my place to do anything except to tell Evelyn she couldn't use a splice. Splices in high voltage cables are allowed, but only under certain conditions, and being in an underground conduit isn't usually one of them. After the mistake with the riser locations though, I didn't think she was trying to cover up a mistake she'd made.

"Evelyn, who was the wire supplier?"

I heard paper rustling before she said, "Mid-South Wire and Cable". Why?"

"Well, I know the owner because he does a lot of budgetary quoting for our jobs. I'll give him a call and see what he has to say. I'm not saying I can do anything, but maybe I can talk him into taking it back with just a restocking fee. I'll let you know."

After I hung up, I called Harry Mitchell, the owner of Mid-South Wire and Cable. We went through the normal pleasantries before he asked me what I needed.

"Well, Harry, I've got an electrical job in a building going up and the electrician who ordered the five hundred MCM feeder cables asked me if they could put a splice in the feeders. They say they ordered three reels four hundred feet long each but what they got was three reels three hundred feet long and three reels a hundred feet long.

"They talked to your sales staff and your guy says you shipped what they ordered. I know it's a bother, but can you check what they ordered? The electrical contractor is Edrington Electric."

Harry said to give him a minute. I heard computer keys clicking in the background and then quiet for a few seconds before he picked up the phone again.

"Mark, I'm looking at the order. The original order was like you said, three reels four hundred feet long. That was on the twenty-first. On the twenty-sixth Don called the site and said we'd ship in two more days after we cut the cable and sealed the ends. Whoever he talked to at Edrington said they still needed the same amount of cable, but needed three lengths three hundred feet long and three lengths a hundred feet long. That's what we shipped to the site."

I asked Harry if he knew who they'd talked to at Edrington.

"No, I don't. All that's on the order is the change. Let me put you on hold and call Don. Maybe he remembers."

I listened to five minutes or so of elevator music before Harry came back on the line.

"Harry, Don says it was Mack Mason who changed the order. He gave Don the order number so Don believed him. We do a lot of business with Edrington and Don knows Mack, so Don didn't think it was necessary to get a written request for the change. I'll make sure that doesn't happen again, no matter who makes the call."

"OK, I see. Harry, Edrington isn't a very big outfit. Eating the cost of that much cable is going to hurt them bad. Any chance you might take it back and ship what they originally ordered?"

Harry didn't say anything for a while, and when he did, it was better, but still not great.

"I can probably do something with the three hundred foot reels, but nobody wants just a hundred feet of cable that big. What I can do is take back the three, three hundred-foot reels and send them three, four hundred-foot reels and just charge them for the extra three hundred feet. I can't take back the short reels. I'll just end up selling them for scrap copper. You can give them this return number. It'll have to be on the purchase order."

I said I'd have Edrington write the purchase order that way and then thanked Harry. As soon as I got off the phone, I drove out to the site to talk to Evelyn.

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When I got to the electricians shipping container, Evelyn was there by herself and writing more requisitions. She wasn't smiling when she asked if I'd been able to help her. I said I had some.

"OK, Evelyn. Here's what you do. You write a purchase requisition for three more reels of cable four hundred feet long and then write that you're sending back three reels three hundred feet long. Put this return number on the purchase requisition. That's all I could do. They won't take back the short reels. When they deliver the new cable, put the three, hundred foot reels on the same truck and send them back. Oh, and don't tell anybody anything except that you got it fixed by ordering new cable, OK. I want this kept between you and me."

Evelyn said she could do that and then looked around to see if anybody was looking into the container door. A second later, she hugged me and kissed me on the cheek.

"Mister Wright, you're the only one who believed me and you fixed my problem. I don't know how to thank you."

I grinned because she was still hugging me.

"Well, most women who hug me call me Mark, so that's a start."

Evelyn blushed and let me go then.

"Sorry. I did that without thinking about what I was doing."

I chuckled.

"I didn't say I didn't like it. All I said was you should call me Mark from now on."

I had a brain fart of my own then. Well, part of it at least was calculation on my part. The fact that I actually said what I was thinking wasn't like me at all.

"You know, besides calling me Mark, maybe you'd like to join me for a cup of coffee after you get off work. I'd like to hear more about you and Mack. There's a little coffee shop about a mile from here. What time do you knock off?"

Evelyn's mouth fell open for a second.

"You mean like I'm dressed now?"

"Sure, why not? We're just two people who work together having a cup of coffee."

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Evelyn was standing beside her pickup when I drove into the parking lot of the coffee shop.

"I didn't go inside because I wasn't sure you'd actually show up."

I smiled.

"Evelyn, I don't make promises I can't keep. Now, I want to hear about you and Mack, so let's go in and get a table."

Evelyn was still nervous once we got our coffee.

"I'm not dressed for this place at all. I must look like some homeless person."

"No, you just look like an electrician. Now, tell me about Mack."

Evelyn shrugged.

"There's not much to tell except that he doesn't like me. The first day I was on the job he told me no woman could do a man's work. I think I made him mad when I laid out the trench for the feeder conduits. He gave me that job thinking I wouldn't know how to do it, but I spent half a year doing that when I was an apprentice. I made the dirt guys do it according to code and I ordered the right number of stools and set them per code. He tried to find something wrong but he couldn't.

"After that he gave me a new drawing for the feeder conduit runs and said you'd made a change. It was that drawing I used to mark the riser locations. I didn't know there was a problem until the concrete crew started digging the footers. Mack didn't even look at the drawing. He just said I'd screwed-up and he thought I should be fired.

"That hurt because I knew I was right, but I'm not a woman to back down to any man, not when I did better than most of my class in school and got good performance marks during my apprenticeship. I said we needed to get the engineers and the electricians and the concrete guys together to get it straightened out. That's why I called you that day."

After I'd heard all that, I was convinced that the ink I'd seen on the drawing was put there intentionally to make Evelyn look bad. The fact that Mack had given Evelyn a supposedly new drawing when I knew I hadn't made any changes convinced me that Mack was the one who changed the drawing so Evelyn would put the risers in the wrong place.

I again told Evelyn that I didn't think she'd done anything wrong. We finished our coffee and then both went home, but I was thinking Evelyn needed some help in the fight she seemed to be having.

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The next morning I called Gabe Edrington, the owner of Edrington Electric. I had a good working relationship with Gabe because he'd been the low bidder on several of my projects and his crew normally did really good work. These two screwups weren't normal and I thought he should know about them.

As it turned out, he already did.

"Yeah, I heard about them from Mack. Shame really. When I interviewed Evelyn she seemed to know what she was talking about and she had a whole stack of references from journeyman electricians that said the same thing. On top of all that, I really liked her personally. She seemed to be very professional.

"The first mistake is something anyone could make I suppose. It cost me a couple days of labor, but my contingency will cover that. The mistake with the cable is going to cost me almost thirty grand and I can't handle that with my contingency. It's going to come out of my pocket. Her being a woman and the way the law is, I'll have to give her one more chance, but that's it. I can't have anyone on my crew who makes apprentice mistakes like this. If it happens again, I'll have to let her go."

I told Gabe about the arrangement I'd made with Mid-South.

"Gabe, I kind of overstepped my bounds, but it doesn't do either of us any good if you get stuck with a bunch of cable you can't use. I know you can't take a hit like that and stay in business very long. You'll have to make it up on future projects and that'll put both our companies at a disadvantage when we're bidding on a design.

"I talked to Harry at Mid-South and he's willing to take back the three, three hundred foot reels and send you three, four hundred foot reels at just the cost of the extra hundred feet on each reel. You should be getting a purchase requisition from Evelyn today that reflects that."

I thought it was time Gabe heard another side to this story too.

"Gabe, I don't have a dog in this fight except I need my electrical system built like I designed it. I'm quickly losing faith that that will happen and it isn't because of Evelyn. I don't think she made a mistake in either incident. I think somebody is trying to get her fired and I think that person is your lead electrician, Mack Mason.

"The drawing Evelyn used to lay out the conduits looked like it positioned the risers exactly where she put them. What I noticed was that her drawing had a couple tiny little blobs of ink that made the dimension from the property line to the footer look like three hundred and eight feet instead of the three hundred and three feet like the foundation drawing said. Since my drawing located the risers off the footer, she was five feet short.

"There shouldn't have been ink of any kind on that drawing because it was made on a laser printer. At the time, I thought it was just an accident, but I don't think so anymore. It's hard to believe that those two little blobs of ink just happened to be in exactly the right place to change the dimension on the drawing. When I talked to Evelyn, she said Mack gave her a drawing he said I'd changed before she laid out the conduit runs. I didn't make any change, but I checked with the print room and they did get a request for an extra set of drawings a week before you started putting in the feeder conduits. Cheryl said it was a guy named Mack who asked for the extra drawings.

"When I called Harry at Mid-South I asked him to look up the order for the feeder cables. Evelyn ordered the right length of cable, but somebody changed the order just before they cut and sealed the ends of the cable. The sales guy said it was Mack, your lead electrician, because he knew Mack and had worked with him before.

"I think Mack altered the drawing Evelyn used for the feeder conduit layout. I can't prove it, but when I went to the construction meeting to figure out what went wrong, everybody in the room was mad and pointing fingers at everybody else except for Mack. He was just sitting there and grinning.

"Did you know that Mack won't let Evelyn do anything except keep the records straight, do takeoffs and ordering, and do the initial layouts?"

Gabe said he did know that was the case, but that Mack had told him Evelyn wasn't strong enough to do anything else. I had to laugh at that.

"Gabe, before you started this company, you worked as a commercial electrician for fifteen years. When was the last time you broke a sweat on a construction site? You pull cable with an electric puller. Anything remotely heavy gets moved by a Lull or some other construction lift truck. Electricians don't even bend conduit by hand unless it's under an inch. How strong does an electrician really have to be?"

Gabe was quiet for a few seconds.

"So what you're saying is you think Mack is trying to make Evelyn fail?"

"Yes, that's what I'm saying. So far, Evelyn has caught the errors before they got too far or too expensive. What worries me is she might not catch the next one until it's too late, and that'll cost you a bunch. If somebody gets hurt, it'll probably put you out of business. If it's another drawing thing, my company could get sued too."

Gabe said he didn't know what to do because Mack had come highly recommended too and had always done a great job. I told him I had an idea.

"Gabe, if there's another problem, it'll probably be with the switchgear. That's about the only thing that would be really costly and would take a long time to fix because of the lead-time. You need to check Evelyn's requisitions to see what she ordered and then check the supplier to make sure that's what they're building. I specified everything in detail right on the parts list, so there can be no excuses as to what got ordered."

Gabe said he'd do that the next morning.

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The next afternoon I was filling out the panel load list for an electrical panel in a warehouse when I got a call from Gabe.

"Mark, I checked with our buyer to see what Evelyn ordered for switchgear. I compared that with your print and they were identical. Then I called Square D and asked them to confirm the order.

"Your drawing called for switchgear fused for three hundred amps at twelve-four-seventy volts and that's what they're building. The problem was in the transformers. You specified transformers rated at four thousand amps at four-eighty volts, but what they were building was transformers rated at two thousand amps.

"I asked them why they'd changed and they said the got a change request from my office. They said it was a paper request they got through the mail. Mark, I never issued any such change request and neither did any of my staff. We haven't used paper for at least two years now. If we had made the change, we'd have done it electronically so there would be a permanent record. We'd print the purchase order and send it in by mail, but the first step would be the electronic version. I checked and there is an original purchase order for the right equipment, but nothing for the change. The only thing I can figure out is somebody got an old paper purchase order from the office, filled it out to make the change, and sent it to Square D.

"I got Square D straightened out. I'll add a month to the lead-time, but we should still be all right. We can set the breaker panels and start wiring to the building and set and connect the transformers when they come in.

"I think you're right about somebody setting up Evelyn to fail. I just don't know how to prove it. Mack did have access to the office several times over the past four or five years he's been my lead guy, but so did a few other people."

I asked Gabe if he'd said anything to Mack about the switchgear order. He said given my suspicions, he hadn't said anything to Mack or to anybody else. I told him I had an idea that might work if he was willing to play detective.

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Three days later, I drove over to Gabe's office for a meeting Gabe had called. It would be just Gabe, myself, and Mack.

Gabe and I were just fixing a cup of coffee when Mack showed up.

"Sorry I'm a little late, but I had to get Evelyn to order enough pulling soap to let us pull the feeders through the conduit."

He shook his head then.

"You'd think a journeyman electrician would have checked our supplies and ordered more, but she didn't."

Gabe told Mack to get a cup of coffee if he wanted one. While Mack was doing that we sat down at the conference table in Gabe's office and I pressed the record button on the little voice recorder in my shirt pocket.

Gabe looked at Mack when he sat down.

"Mack, we have a major problem with the job you're working on. I called Square D to confirm the delivery date for the switchgear and they told me it would be delivered a week early. That week was because we'd changed the transformers from four thousand amps at four-eighty to two thousand amps. I thought maybe Mark had called them and made the change, but he didn't. That only leaves one person who could have and that's Don, my buyer. He's on vacation this week so I can't ask him why he did it. I'll take care of him when he gets back.

"I changed the transformers back to four thousand amp units, but it's going to cost us an additional six months before they come in. What we have to do today is figure out a way to get the building wired and ready to inspect without those transformers. If we can't, it's going to cost me my early completion bonus. If it drags on past the contract completion date, it'll cost me ten grand a day. You know how the transformers have to be set and connected. Any ideas?"

Mack frowned and shook his head.

"Nope. The first equipment that has to be set is the switch for one of the transformers. Then you set the transformer because it has to be bolted to the switch and then the buss bars connected. You can't install the breaker panels until the transformer is set and connected for the same reason. You have to set the breaker panels down and then slide them up to the transformer and bolt everything together. After that, you set the crossover switch, the other breaker panels, and the other transformer and connect it, then set the switch for that transformer and connect it.

"You can't pull the feeders from the main gear to the transformer switches until they're set either. It looks to me like we're shit outta luck Gabe. I'll work my crew overtime once the transformers come in, but we won't make the early completion date and probably not the completion date you quoted. I'm sorry but there's only so much work you can do in a given amount of time. Before you ask, more people won't help. They'll just get in the way."

Mack shook his head again.

"It's my fault. After her last two fuck-ups, I should have checked the order for the switchgear myself. The riser locations were bad, but the feeder cable thing was not something I could excuse. She told me was sorry but that she'd fixed it. She said she'd ordered new cable. That's gonna cost you a bunch, Gabe.

"I thought I'd give her one last chance because she's a woman and I know you have to have a certain number of women working for you. It'll be the last time I do that with any electrician. I knew from the start that she wasn't up to the job, but I understand why you hired her. It's that equal rights bullshit the feminists keep screaming about.

"Well, you see what that leads to. A woman just isn't equal to a man. Never will be. She probably fucked her way through school and her apprenticeship in order to pass the classes. It's been done that way before, not in my trade, but it was only a matter of time. You gonna fire her?"