too cheap to meter?

good evening friends,

i spent the day today testing some fire suppression systems at a nuclear power plant. back in t he beginnings of the atomic age, it was forcast that nuclear power could produce energy so cheaply that there would be no need to meter it. this did not come to pass.

our bill for the service we provide is pretty high. if these systems were anywhere else, it would take me half an hour to forty five minutes each to test and generate a one page report on the system status.

once the nuclear industry gets into the act, i have a procedure to follow that runs fifty or so pages. each and every step has to be verified over and over. i spent half an hour first thing this morning waiting for the shift supervisor to give his permission for an operator to give the tech i was working with the key to open the control panel. this is a standard key. i have a coffee can full of them. once, i used the key on my key ring to open one of these panels. this resulted in three seperate reports file to explain why we deviated from the written procedure.

the tech supervisor offered me a job today. i do not have enough patience to work in an environment like this. i am used to actually working and getting stuff done. these guys are way more concerned with the proper forms being filled out than they are with the proper operation of their fire suppression equipment.