this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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I used to be a repair tech for a company that makes postage meters and mail processing machines. Everything from a desktop stamping machine to big industrial sorters larger than some apartments I've lived in. I mainly worked on the big ones and the techs for the smaller machines liked to make fun of us for frequently defaulting to banging on stuff with hammers because we used the term "percussive maintenance" unironically. Also "four by four engineering," used to describe employing a long wood 4x4 as a lever for lowering and raising the hundred and fifty pound gearbox from it's inconveniently placed mounting on a certain model of inserter.
I am an engineer and used to struggle pretty hard with mechanic things because my instincts say that if something isn’t doing what I want that means I’m doing it wrong and forcing it will break it.
The thing that broke that block was a coworker at a startup who was both an engineer and our aircraft mechanic. He told me, “in my experience the best aircraft mechanics are basically just big dumb apes that wail on airplanes with hammers until they do what they want.” Sometimes I would help him do aircraft maintenance and would balk at a task worrying that I’d break a $2M airplane. We had another tech that would say, “who cares? I promise you can’t break it bad enough that we can’t fix it after”
Those things have stuck with me for years and I am no longer afraid of pulling out the big boy breaker bar when I need it.
You should also know that orthopedic surgery is basically shop class with air-powered tools.