Nov 24th
The ash was fairly busy today, I was back running them because B4aG got a call around 7:40p and went home for the day. I guess something happened with childcare for his kid, either way he left. Before he left, he informed the lead that he was not coming in tomorrow which I found out from a guy who used to work in my bay. Not even my bay coworkers! So I wanted to make sure it wasn't hearsay and asked B4aT if B4aG was in fact not coming in B4aT said it was true and B4aG was not. So both of my Bay coworkers are calling in tomorrow (B4aT told me he wasn't coming in the day before Thanksgiving break over a month ago), but now that leaves leaves me to run the busiest Bay in my department alone... Alone! I think tomorrow will be tiresome...
Nov 25th
Well I was hoping B4aG was going to change his mind and show, he did not. I bet he would have shown if today was a double points day (points go on a record and after so many points, "action, up to termination" can be taken). But awesome, an old Coworker who went to Bay 5a/6a was my helper for the day, since both of my coworkers were out! Super glad to have him back. I love working with him, he makes the day enjoyable. My lead took over Bay 5/6, leaving Coworker from B7C to run 7C and 7D, lots of people are doing double duty.
At the start of shift change there are 10-25 minutes that the two shift are both on. During the time the shifts are together there is this protocol that takes place called 'passdown.' Passdown is when the current shift passes down to next shift the going-ons of the Bay. What tools went down, why, are they up, do they need Qual, how busy the day was, what tools had the most P1 lots, are there any P1's in the tools currently, the counts on the descum (or Bay specific counter tools) and any other questions that are day specific if something different happened that day). Well this is the day before Thanksgiving and a lot of people called in or no showed. So passdown was crazy with all the work that needed to be done.
During passdown the Day 1 guy said that 7 people in the department were not at work for his shift. Leaving his shift with only 13 people in the department. I must have given a dumbfounded look from, what can be seen of the eyes anyway, because the next thing he said was "what?" i wanted to make sure he said that he only had 13 people in that day out of how many normally? 17 normally, and 13 that day... I explained my look because on my shift we start out with only having 13 people in that department, and for this day at least 2 are calling in (the two from my bay). I don't think I've worked a day with everyone there let alone today being a day where people are going to no-show. So that is what I told him, he 'only' had 13 people this day and we 'only' have 13 people, 4 ended up being out from our department and by end of shift were still able to make and exceed both goals for the department and the fab as a whole. Our department goal was 2,000 and we hit 3,200. The fab goal was 98,000 and we hit 103,000. Day shift with it's more people, doesn't make goal often.
And the day is not over...it was very eventful.
Next, just after shift change our department maintenance guy was working on a tool in Bay 3A, but he was in the in between Bay called a chase. It is where the back of the tools are. My sink has a glass around the loading end and you can see into the chase.
He was working on the tool with his back towards me and he had a slight cough. Not a big deal... Until he turned around and I could see his facemask was not over his nose and mouth. It wasn't even over his mouth. It was down under his chin! This is SUPER against protocol, so I told my lead and she told my supervisor. My super said that we've been having a problem with this maintenance man for awhile even when he is in the bays because he feels like since he doesn't directly work with the product, he doesn't need to cover his nose or mouth with the mask, even though both nose and mouth are the biggest sources of contaminants inside a clean room (when wearing protective items properly). My super told my lead to tell me to write an email to the maintenance man's boss because maybe he might finally do something about it. My lead took me to a back corner of a different bay, sat me at the computer and directed me to where I could send the message. ---- (Update: 1/26/16, remember this it comes up again. it a few times)
When we find the bosses message box a pop up comes up that says 'user not allowed. Fab techs can only send messages to supervisors'. So I sent the message to my Super, starting it off as "Supper please forward. Dear [MM Boss]..." When done, I thanked MM Boss in advance for any help he could offer to correct the issue.
At shift change from N1 to D2, the step in coworker (from 5a/6a) went to get water from the gowning room and said there was no one in there changing for the next shift yet. Just around 5:45/5:47, people started trickling in, they were going to be working on a skeleton crew. That sucks.
Monday, January 4, 2016
Sunday, January 3, 2016
Nov 22, Nov 23
Nov 22
B4aG finally showed up today. No tools went down during our shift this day. However, when we came to shift 72 etch Chamber 2 was already down. It ended up being down all day. Maintenance looked at it 40 minutes before shift change and the next shift did not look at it as it was still down on the 23rd. I know this because I'm psychic. No, I wrote this post on the 23rd... That's how boring the 22nd was.
Nov 23
When we came in today, there was a sign that said 'meeting at 5:45, go to lunch room, pizza will be served. The sign didn't lie, pizza was there, yum. The meeting was informing us that the contract was signed and my company was officially sold. But, the changes don't take effect until Jan 4th. Since I don't technically work for my company I'm still unsure if I'll have a job. The people in management are unsure if I'll have a job. They just know that every current (not temp) employee will be given a offer letter. I'm temp. They all say that the new company will keep the temps but unsure for how long. They said int he meeting they would keep them as long as the position needed filling, which means they could keep me until they hire me or hire a permanent replacement that is not me...fun...still not as much to worry about as my last job.
After getting back into the fab...
Today is a day for P1 lots.
I thought yesterday had a lot of P1's...today so far has already passed the total we had yesterday...and it's only 10pm.
We've had one at least every 1.25 hours. I had two in 30 minutes and both went down to 11C, which is a bay I rarely go into. I delivered one to 11C, went back to my bay and had another waiting (which is a NO, NO! Priority One lots need to be hand delivered to a person, not left in a bay because had they put it in a place i never look at it could have waited for hours). But lucky them we have an open space that it was put on and was easily spotted). I ran that on, when it was done it also went to 11C, so went to go deliver it. When I got down there, the lady running the tool it went on, who I've never talked at that moment decided to chew me out. She said, "Each lot takes 25 minutes, just because you bring them to me doesn't me they'll run faster!" I just said okay, who I'm to tell her that according to her tool dispatch, she has 6 lots not dispatched to her, incorrectly staged at her tool. Had she had the correct lots, it wouldn't take an extra 25 minutes (because her tool can run 6 lots at a time). P1 doesn't mean run faster, it means runs 1st, run now. Both P1 were dispatched to her. if she wants to take them to a different tool that can run them fine by me, I just take them out of my name. Oh they would be in my name because instead of being placed on a shelf at track out for someone to pick it up, they are 'placed' on my person and moved to the next location. Ex, if i were to track out a normal lot on my screen it says take to "04A1_O" or ""04A_O" which the program has all ready assigned it and the next persons tool that it runs on their screen tells them which shelf it will be located on. With P1 lots my screen says take it to "[name of person tracking it out]" and where it goes instead of saying where to find it, it also shows them the name of the person who tracked it out.
For the rest of the night we got 1-2 P1 lots an hour, I guess since the sale of the company is final the old company wants to get it's products out fast so it upgraded a bunch to P1s instead of normal production.
B4aG finally showed up today. No tools went down during our shift this day. However, when we came to shift 72 etch Chamber 2 was already down. It ended up being down all day. Maintenance looked at it 40 minutes before shift change and the next shift did not look at it as it was still down on the 23rd. I know this because I'm psychic. No, I wrote this post on the 23rd... That's how boring the 22nd was.
Nov 23
When we came in today, there was a sign that said 'meeting at 5:45, go to lunch room, pizza will be served. The sign didn't lie, pizza was there, yum. The meeting was informing us that the contract was signed and my company was officially sold. But, the changes don't take effect until Jan 4th. Since I don't technically work for my company I'm still unsure if I'll have a job. The people in management are unsure if I'll have a job. They just know that every current (not temp) employee will be given a offer letter. I'm temp. They all say that the new company will keep the temps but unsure for how long. They said int he meeting they would keep them as long as the position needed filling, which means they could keep me until they hire me or hire a permanent replacement that is not me...fun...still not as much to worry about as my last job.
After getting back into the fab...
Today is a day for P1 lots.
I thought yesterday had a lot of P1's...today so far has already passed the total we had yesterday...and it's only 10pm.
We've had one at least every 1.25 hours. I had two in 30 minutes and both went down to 11C, which is a bay I rarely go into. I delivered one to 11C, went back to my bay and had another waiting (which is a NO, NO! Priority One lots need to be hand delivered to a person, not left in a bay because had they put it in a place i never look at it could have waited for hours). But lucky them we have an open space that it was put on and was easily spotted). I ran that on, when it was done it also went to 11C, so went to go deliver it. When I got down there, the lady running the tool it went on, who I've never talked at that moment decided to chew me out. She said, "Each lot takes 25 minutes, just because you bring them to me doesn't me they'll run faster!" I just said okay, who I'm to tell her that according to her tool dispatch, she has 6 lots not dispatched to her, incorrectly staged at her tool. Had she had the correct lots, it wouldn't take an extra 25 minutes (because her tool can run 6 lots at a time). P1 doesn't mean run faster, it means runs 1st, run now. Both P1 were dispatched to her. if she wants to take them to a different tool that can run them fine by me, I just take them out of my name. Oh they would be in my name because instead of being placed on a shelf at track out for someone to pick it up, they are 'placed' on my person and moved to the next location. Ex, if i were to track out a normal lot on my screen it says take to "04A1_O" or ""04A_O" which the program has all ready assigned it and the next persons tool that it runs on their screen tells them which shelf it will be located on. With P1 lots my screen says take it to "[name of person tracking it out]" and where it goes instead of saying where to find it, it also shows them the name of the person who tracked it out.
For the rest of the night we got 1-2 P1 lots an hour, I guess since the sale of the company is final the old company wants to get it's products out fast so it upgraded a bunch to P1s instead of normal production.
Friday, January 1, 2016
Nov 16, Nov 17.
Nov 16th
Outta whack from the weekend today at start of shift, 53 was down for preventative maintenance, so since that takes a lot of time it may be down for 2-4 days or longer if it isn't consistently worked on... Might be longer because at the time of making this note it is 8 pm and no one from our maintenance group has even come to look at the progress. Also 34 sink was down, due to a tank not draining in scheduled time 3rd time in 3 days and each time the maintenance man comes, it has drained and filled itself...so they can't figure out the issue. Fun.
There used to be a guy who worked in building 4 and would bring lots over to building 1 (the building my fab is in) and place them in a section called the "E-Fab". Today he was supposed to be transferred to Building 1 and start training in my bay. Around 6:20 we found out he called in. Great way to re-start your first day back in Building 1. If he shows tomorrow instead of learning easy ash, he has to start the day with a qual.
Around 9pm can you guess what happened? 34sink went down for ...you probably guessed it 'tank didn't drain in programmed time'. Followed by 54ash going down for shuttle failure, 28sink in 5A going down for a chem change which happens every 2 days at midnight, its usually down for 3 hours because 3 tanks need to drain, one at a time. And 18sink in 11D going down basically the sinks decided to say "fuck this day" at the some time.
34sink also has chem changes but it goes down at 8am.
Nov 17th
New guy didn't show again, today and all the tools were back up. Nothing went down this day however at the end of the end of the day Bay 4A coworker (who is Now going to be called B4aT, since i will have two, "new guy" is now B4aG) said that 3 escope slots were missing. Where they should have been: 1234 should have been on rack 11D, 4321 on 11C2, 6214 on 11c3. Where they were: 1234 was on 11D But it was not in a normal black box, it was in a white box that usually the fabtechs don't use, so most probably didn't even notice it (like Prisoner Zero). 4341 was on 11C3, not in a box at all and 6214 was on 12D which is inside a bay not in the hallway like the other shelves, which people weren't looking for it to be on the wrong shelf... Took me five minutes to find them, all they had been missing between 3-10 hours. I should have gotten a prize :) , but I didn't get anything.
Outta whack from the weekend today at start of shift, 53 was down for preventative maintenance, so since that takes a lot of time it may be down for 2-4 days or longer if it isn't consistently worked on... Might be longer because at the time of making this note it is 8 pm and no one from our maintenance group has even come to look at the progress. Also 34 sink was down, due to a tank not draining in scheduled time 3rd time in 3 days and each time the maintenance man comes, it has drained and filled itself...so they can't figure out the issue. Fun.
There used to be a guy who worked in building 4 and would bring lots over to building 1 (the building my fab is in) and place them in a section called the "E-Fab". Today he was supposed to be transferred to Building 1 and start training in my bay. Around 6:20 we found out he called in. Great way to re-start your first day back in Building 1. If he shows tomorrow instead of learning easy ash, he has to start the day with a qual.
Around 9pm can you guess what happened? 34sink went down for ...you probably guessed it 'tank didn't drain in programmed time'. Followed by 54ash going down for shuttle failure, 28sink in 5A going down for a chem change which happens every 2 days at midnight, its usually down for 3 hours because 3 tanks need to drain, one at a time. And 18sink in 11D going down basically the sinks decided to say "fuck this day" at the some time.
34sink also has chem changes but it goes down at 8am.
Nov 17th
New guy didn't show again, today and all the tools were back up. Nothing went down this day however at the end of the end of the day Bay 4A coworker (who is Now going to be called B4aT, since i will have two, "new guy" is now B4aG) said that 3 escope slots were missing. Where they should have been: 1234 should have been on rack 11D, 4321 on 11C2, 6214 on 11c3. Where they were: 1234 was on 11D But it was not in a normal black box, it was in a white box that usually the fabtechs don't use, so most probably didn't even notice it (like Prisoner Zero). 4341 was on 11C3, not in a box at all and 6214 was on 12D which is inside a bay not in the hallway like the other shelves, which people weren't looking for it to be on the wrong shelf... Took me five minutes to find them, all they had been missing between 3-10 hours. I should have gotten a prize :) , but I didn't get anything.
Thursday, December 31, 2015
Nov 11
The sink went down today because a tank did not drain in the scheduled time. It ended up being down for about 3 hours before maintenance came to look at it. When they did finally come, he couldn’t get the tank to respond, so he shut it down and all the lights went off in the sink. The bay went really dark! When he turned the sink back on he walked away to either go look at something or get a tool, and the sink turned off by itself. That was not supposed to happen. All of the tanks drained when the sink turned itself off.
After that I looked at our internal program called “navigo” which shows all the machines in the fab and has a color chart for if they are up, down, in qual, under maintenance, or under engineering observation. When looking at the program, I noticed that 5 of the 9 sinks were down / under maintenance.
My old Bay 4A coworker who is now in Bay 5A/6A came and got me to show me why is sink was down. He was running a single wafer when the robot picked up the wafer out of the cassette and the wafer somehow it tipped out of the teeth of the comb arms and landed flat against them like demonstrated below with a top view drawing.
Turned out one of the teeth had a crack in it, so when the wafer shifted during the lift the tooth behind it did not hold the shift and the wafer slipped. The last time that happened it slipped between the teeth and landed in the hole below but didn’t break.
At the beginning of the shift B4a coworker walked into the bay and said “I’m doing ash today, and there is nothing you can do about it.” I think it was because he got in trouble yesterday for being caught in Bay 11D talking more than six times, and our lead was mad that he left me to run the bay by myself which isn’t hard when it is slow but even when it is slow it is still nice for that extra hand to run sink or scope, or if any work for the etchers.
The Numbers
Last week we had the numbers meeting. I think this also got to B4A’s head with wanting to run ash. Mostly because anyone who runs the ashers will be number 1 in the fab. So he was running ash all day and I was fine with that. However, I was running the sink until it went down for a while, the scope, the descum and helping another bay and was staying on par with his numbers all night which just shows that he is just lazy... Which he is. He sometimes disappears for 30 to 75 minutes at a time.
This really pisses me off because he just got hired to "the company" full time and I still may not have a job because my supervisors still don’t know if the temps will keep there jobs. All the people that are already full time employees are saying the company will "probably" keep the temps because they will need people that already know the job. It annoys me to great lengths that he got hired on as full time. I think they only hired him because they released they had kept him as a temp for 11 months by the time they started the switch over paperwork.
However the temps don’t get paid time off, PTO, holiday pay, vacation pay, or time bank. It was confirmed today that the fab will have a shutdown from December 20 to January 3rd. No one but maintenance will be working in the two weeks. No product will be moving. I get no pay for 2 weeks during the holiday season but my lazy B4A coworker does.
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Nov 10th- oops skipped some days.
Nov 10th
Again this week I forgot it was Tuesday. I was also disappointed to find out it is the long week. How could I forget?? Where has my mind been??
Came into work in my “this morning” to find out 2 ashers were down. 36 due to a gas leak and 53 due to it breaking a wafer in the machine. Unknown how the machine managed to break the wafer without human interference, but it did and a 3rd was going down because our weekly task qual was due on 50 ash. So I had the first 3 hours of the day with 3 of 6 ashers.
Thankfully work has slowed down due to the company being bought out and switching management come the first of the year. Which no one can still answer if I’ll have a job.
Basically i work for a temp company, not "the company." The New company is buying out "the company," but may not take over the contract for temp company. Everyone working for "the company" is getting an offer letter for the New company. I’m not working for "the company" I’m working for temp company. I asked my super when "the company" is doing another round of hiring/ switch over of temp company employees to full time at "the company, and he responded with "after the first of the year"... Which could mean they will have no temps to switch over because as of yet the New company hasn't signed the contact with the temp company. So the temps (including me) are still worrying about if the will have a job in 1.5 months or not... (edit: the temps got an email for the director of payroll Dec 11th stating that the New company did decide to sign the contract and keep the temp employees, and my lead is pushing my super to hire me on full time under the New company "officially" as soon as we get back from the shutdown... which spoilers sweetie...)
In other news my coworker in 11D and only other Doctor Who fan at work thinks I’ve only been here 2 months and I’ve told him it’s been 4 and his mind exploded. We work in a clean room so we had to call someone to pick it up.
And to end my night, I ran my car really hard into a curb and messed it up… messed it up really really good. So I’m out of a car for at least 2 weeks.
(edit: Ended up being 3, but its all fixed up now)
Again this week I forgot it was Tuesday. I was also disappointed to find out it is the long week. How could I forget?? Where has my mind been??
Came into work in my “this morning” to find out 2 ashers were down. 36 due to a gas leak and 53 due to it breaking a wafer in the machine. Unknown how the machine managed to break the wafer without human interference, but it did and a 3rd was going down because our weekly task qual was due on 50 ash. So I had the first 3 hours of the day with 3 of 6 ashers.
Thankfully work has slowed down due to the company being bought out and switching management come the first of the year. Which no one can still answer if I’ll have a job.
Basically i work for a temp company, not "the company." The New company is buying out "the company," but may not take over the contract for temp company. Everyone working for "the company" is getting an offer letter for the New company. I’m not working for "the company" I’m working for temp company. I asked my super when "the company" is doing another round of hiring/ switch over of temp company employees to full time at "the company, and he responded with "after the first of the year"... Which could mean they will have no temps to switch over because as of yet the New company hasn't signed the contact with the temp company. So the temps (including me) are still worrying about if the will have a job in 1.5 months or not... (edit: the temps got an email for the director of payroll Dec 11th stating that the New company did decide to sign the contract and keep the temp employees, and my lead is pushing my super to hire me on full time under the New company "officially" as soon as we get back from the shutdown... which spoilers sweetie...)
In other news my coworker in 11D and only other Doctor Who fan at work thinks I’ve only been here 2 months and I’ve told him it’s been 4 and his mind exploded. We work in a clean room so we had to call someone to pick it up.
And to end my night, I ran my car really hard into a curb and messed it up… messed it up really really good. So I’m out of a car for at least 2 weeks.
(edit: Ended up being 3, but its all fixed up now)
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Nov 15--- SO Far behind. I write my posts down daily, but i dont type often.
Nov 15th
I've been such a bad Doctor Who fan lately. I force my dad back into it, watch up to current with him and for the past two weeks have made him watch the new episodes alone because I had friends spending the night so I'm two episodes behind and this weekend I don't have anything planned yet so I might be able to actually watch the two I've missed and the new one with him. If he doesn't mind re-watching them. For the last two nights I've slept on my guest mattress and it has been painful. I love the bed, I hate the mattress. It is like sleeping on the rock the Flintstones sleep on.
My body hurts so much today. I'm four hours into my shift and I am fighting to stay awake. It is my fault though. My friend asked if I was sure about switching beds for the weekend and I said yes because I needed to work on the computer. Ouch, never again! Note to self, when out of debt, new mattresses. For now the main one i sleep on has a memory foam pad over the mattress and that does help out a LOT! But still..... new awesome soft mattresses in years to come.
I've been such a bad Doctor Who fan lately. I force my dad back into it, watch up to current with him and for the past two weeks have made him watch the new episodes alone because I had friends spending the night so I'm two episodes behind and this weekend I don't have anything planned yet so I might be able to actually watch the two I've missed and the new one with him. If he doesn't mind re-watching them. For the last two nights I've slept on my guest mattress and it has been painful. I love the bed, I hate the mattress. It is like sleeping on the rock the Flintstones sleep on.
My body hurts so much today. I'm four hours into my shift and I am fighting to stay awake. It is my fault though. My friend asked if I was sure about switching beds for the weekend and I said yes because I needed to work on the computer. Ouch, never again! Note to self, when out of debt, new mattresses. For now the main one i sleep on has a memory foam pad over the mattress and that does help out a LOT! But still..... new awesome soft mattresses in years to come.
Nov 8. Nov 9
Nov 8
49 Ash - error "Right paddle wafer detector indicates water has been lost." Where'd it go? The machine was down all night but came up 10 minutes before shift change and needed a qual. The qual takes usually about 1 hour so we didn't start it. Had to tell next shift it needed done.
It ended up going down because when the arm went to go pick up a wafer it somehow took the whole cassette with it and all the wafers dumped into the machine. Amazingly none of them broke, however the mechanic did break one when he was manually moving the arm to return the wafers back into the cassettes. The arm was moving too swiftly and the wafer flipped off.
Nov 9th
The roommate who usually wakes me up went to a dinner party this night. I knew this and thought I set many alarms…not sure if I set any now that I think of it. She did say she would call…and she did not.
So I woke up, looked at my phone and the time looked weird…! I thought, “I never see this time on my phone anymore…” Well shit it was 6 pm and work starts at 5:45pm. That’s why I haven’t seen this time in nearly 4 months!
So I was angry and upset. I was rushing to eat, make lunch, and drive to work. I got to work at 6:25. 40 minutes late!! This was just the start of my good ol’ craptastic day. The rest of the day didn’t have much to do with work though. (Added edit: Apparently I didn’t write down the rest of what happened, so we are both in on this cliffhanger.)
When I got home, I looked up classes for the next semester of school. I have to get school going again, and get it done with. … I’m just so lazy.
49 Ash - error "Right paddle wafer detector indicates water has been lost." Where'd it go? The machine was down all night but came up 10 minutes before shift change and needed a qual. The qual takes usually about 1 hour so we didn't start it. Had to tell next shift it needed done.
It ended up going down because when the arm went to go pick up a wafer it somehow took the whole cassette with it and all the wafers dumped into the machine. Amazingly none of them broke, however the mechanic did break one when he was manually moving the arm to return the wafers back into the cassettes. The arm was moving too swiftly and the wafer flipped off.
Nov 9th
The roommate who usually wakes me up went to a dinner party this night. I knew this and thought I set many alarms…not sure if I set any now that I think of it. She did say she would call…and she did not.
So I woke up, looked at my phone and the time looked weird…! I thought, “I never see this time on my phone anymore…” Well shit it was 6 pm and work starts at 5:45pm. That’s why I haven’t seen this time in nearly 4 months!
So I was angry and upset. I was rushing to eat, make lunch, and drive to work. I got to work at 6:25. 40 minutes late!! This was just the start of my good ol’ craptastic day. The rest of the day didn’t have much to do with work though. (Added edit: Apparently I didn’t write down the rest of what happened, so we are both in on this cliffhanger.)
When I got home, I looked up classes for the next semester of school. I have to get school going again, and get it done with. … I’m just so lazy.
Monday, December 28, 2015
So far behind. Nov 3
Nov 3
I forgot it was Tuesday. On Tuesday we have to complete a "weekly task" goal on 50 ash by 10 pm. I usually get it started right away and have it done by 7p but today it completely slipped my mind and my coworker was starting the qual. I didn't even know until after I tried to load the tool with more product and the door was sealed.
D1 shift told us that 36 as went down and just before shift change maintenance fixed it and brought it back up to qual. So after it took my coworker 2 hours to do the first qual (which takes me < 1 hour), he is starting the second...I would have done them at the same time. Most of the time he just doesn’t think ahead.
(when i write these notes down on my paper at work it looks like the posts are going to be so much longer than what they actually turn out to be.)
Sunday, December 13, 2015
Nov 1 & 2
Nov 1
Today was a slow but good day. CWB4A was working on a qual for 24 etch all day. I think we maybe ran 15 lots all day which is fine, more for me. Better my chances to stay # 1. :)
Also the maintenance people finally got 12 ash back up. It has been down for a week! We have to qual It and then run some product on it to make sure it runs.
Nov 2
It ran with no problems in fact after 12 ash came up there was tons of work for it so it has run non-stop since being fixed.
We had a kind of meeting today. It wasn’t really a meeting about the products or company but about the numbers of the shifts and company in general. The spreadsheet my super had was from Sept 20th to Oct 25th. On the days I work I’m usually number on in track outs. But when these numbers were taken over the last 5 weeks I was on vacation in Alaska and Canada for 2 of the 5 weeks. Because of my vacation I wasn’t doing any track outs so I dropped in rank from #1 over all to #3. I wonder if we’ll have another numbers meeting again. Other things in this meeting were over-all product moves between all 4 shifts, and N1 (my shift) was WAY above the over shifts. There was also a “compliance” rating when it came to following our product program. The program is integrated into all of the tools. On all of the computer screens attached to tools it shows a list of products that should run on that tool. When there are many of the same tools the program decided which product runs on which tool, but the product can run on any tool. The shift gets points for every product you run on the tool it has been assigned to. Our shift was in 3rd of 4, mostly because we haven’t been following the program in my bay. Oh well. The goal is to get the compliance above 80% by the end of the quarter.
**Update as of Dec 12th, we still haven’t had another. I guess my super doesn’t want to show everyone that I’m kicking ass. Also we don’t know where our compliance rate it. I’m thinking it still isn’t in the 80s yet.
Today was a slow but good day. CWB4A was working on a qual for 24 etch all day. I think we maybe ran 15 lots all day which is fine, more for me. Better my chances to stay # 1. :)
Also the maintenance people finally got 12 ash back up. It has been down for a week! We have to qual It and then run some product on it to make sure it runs.
Nov 2
It ran with no problems in fact after 12 ash came up there was tons of work for it so it has run non-stop since being fixed.
We had a kind of meeting today. It wasn’t really a meeting about the products or company but about the numbers of the shifts and company in general. The spreadsheet my super had was from Sept 20th to Oct 25th. On the days I work I’m usually number on in track outs. But when these numbers were taken over the last 5 weeks I was on vacation in Alaska and Canada for 2 of the 5 weeks. Because of my vacation I wasn’t doing any track outs so I dropped in rank from #1 over all to #3. I wonder if we’ll have another numbers meeting again. Other things in this meeting were over-all product moves between all 4 shifts, and N1 (my shift) was WAY above the over shifts. There was also a “compliance” rating when it came to following our product program. The program is integrated into all of the tools. On all of the computer screens attached to tools it shows a list of products that should run on that tool. When there are many of the same tools the program decided which product runs on which tool, but the product can run on any tool. The shift gets points for every product you run on the tool it has been assigned to. Our shift was in 3rd of 4, mostly because we haven’t been following the program in my bay. Oh well. The goal is to get the compliance above 80% by the end of the quarter.
**Update as of Dec 12th, we still haven’t had another. I guess my super doesn’t want to show everyone that I’m kicking ass. Also we don’t know where our compliance rate it. I’m thinking it still isn’t in the 80s yet.
Saturday, December 12, 2015
Oct 28-31
On Oct 28 when I was on my 4am break I got a Facebook message from the parents of the girl I babysit for. They were asking if I could last minute babysit at 1pm on the 29th. 1pm is usually the time when I'm still sleeping due to my schedule but I don't go in on Thursday nights so I agreed. I could use the extra cash where I can get it. Then on the 29th her mother calls me at 12 to last minute cancel the babysitting. Okay, I went back to sleep.
Later that night the girl's father sent me a text and asks if I can babysit on the 30th at 7 am. I agreed… just after I agreed he calls my sister and asks if she can come at 7 and asked her if I could just "break" her because he doesn’t' think I'll be on time. She said no, that if I said I’d be there, I’d be there.
It was raining really hard the morning of the 30th so my sister ended up dropping me off. All went well through the day when they got home they invited me to the Halloween party they were throwing at the 31st. I went with my mom and brother. I thought they invited more people to their party but when we got there it was just my family and two other couples they had invited. And most of my family wasn’t able to make it which made us feel bad after.
Later that night the girl's father sent me a text and asks if I can babysit on the 30th at 7 am. I agreed… just after I agreed he calls my sister and asks if she can come at 7 and asked her if I could just "break" her because he doesn’t' think I'll be on time. She said no, that if I said I’d be there, I’d be there.
It was raining really hard the morning of the 30th so my sister ended up dropping me off. All went well through the day when they got home they invited me to the Halloween party they were throwing at the 31st. I went with my mom and brother. I thought they invited more people to their party but when we got there it was just my family and two other couples they had invited. And most of my family wasn’t able to make it which made us feel bad after.
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Oct 27
Nothing interesting happened before 8:30 today. The ash work is still slow but the descum has a lot of work today. I usually only get 10 lots a day and so far have done 9 lots and have 8 lined up in queue and it’s only 9 pm.
Left a letter on the desk of the day shift…hopefully I will get a call by the end of November, I may need a new notebook for work as I keep using it to make letters for the supers if I miss the chance to talk to them in the lab and letters for the other shifts supers for overtime and notes on what I’m going to say in the blog while I remember it. Arg! Only 19 pages left from a book of 100.
Skunk gross!
We have a filtered air system that is supposed to help us with particles, but whenever a skunk sprays in the area the air system picks it up and spreads it through the lab and it smells like purified skunk spray. I wonder if it still has particles, it must or else your nose shouldn’t be able to pick it up, right?
Oct 26
The day started slow D1 shift said it was busy for them…they must have it slower than we do if our slow is “busy”. Again no more than 10 lots an hour and the day has just begun…**yawn**!
Coworker from Bay 2A was standing behind me with a priority 1 (P1) lot but didn’t say anything. I had my back to the opening of the bay so I didn’t know that he was there. As I was humming to myself I turned around to check a lot and jumped out of my skin. He laughed. I laughed terrified. He gave me the P1 and an hour later he saw on his machine that it was coming back to him so he came to retrieve it and pretended to jump when he entered my bay as I was leaving to deliver it back. He laughed again (I didn’t jump that time).
That was the most exciting part of the day and it all happened before 8:30pm… the day was going to be long.
Priority 1 (P1) lots are the only product lots that have to be hand delivered to the next tool. For nearly a hour and a half there was no work dispatched to my bay. Hour and a half! I thought the system crashed. Then just before 10:30, two, I repeat, two lots were dispatched. Then again, nothing. Waiting sucks.
I went to another bay in my department to see if there was any work to do there. Nope. Guess for now the work is stuck in another department.
My lead saw that my coworker and I were bored because we get our work down quicker and were waiting on work to be dispatched to us. So, we were sitting and talking. I was reading a spec about the holiday shut down so she trained him on 36sink and I trained on 28sink. So now when we have nothing to do she’ll probably pull on one of us to do the sink that has the most backed up work.
On a side note, I’ve basically begged for the last two months to get overtime on a N2 shift… I think I’m going to break down and ask the D2 supervisor. (Future note, I did end up asking D2 super, and still haven’t gotten a call for overtime. )
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Oct 25
Today my bay coworker was walking away from the sink with an empty cassette and hit it against the sink wall accidentally and it slipped out of his hands, dropping it. The cassette did a pretty awesome “open book pelvis split”. He has never seen this happen and neither had I. He took it down to the cassette cleaning room where they clean and dispose of broken cassettes. The cleaning lady says it happens nearly daily and had a big pile of broken cassettes.
Also today I loaded 49 Ash and when I put the cassette down on the sensor and the ball bearing rolled out from under the platform and into a small hole. I thought about grabbing it but the door was already starting to close. So… no! Then I went to tell my bay coworker because I didn’t know if it was important. As I was telling him he said “it must have been as the machine just signed itself down”. When the maintenance man came he told him about the ball bearing. The man fixed it and made a comment on our program that it had broken off a sensor. It had been an interesting day and it was all before 8:30. The rest of the day was SLOW. Maybe 6 lots an hour. (on a usual quicker day we could do at least 50 lots an hour)
Monday, November 2, 2015
Oct 19
The latex gloves in this batch are thinner than usual. In less than 3 hours I tore holes in 3 gloves. I usually only tear one hole in a glove once a week. 3 times in one day is unheard of.
I remembered an event today that happened back in August. I was at the mall with two friends and we stopped by Auntie Annie’s Pretzels. At this time they were doing a fundraiser for kids with cancer. The cashier asked if I’d like to donate, I said no. He then said “Oh! I didn’t realize you didn’t like kids, sorry I asked.” … The fuck? His female coworker than tried to cover up what he said by saying “I’m sure you like kids, might not have any money to spare today.” … What? Two judgements in one day and I just wanted pretzels…the fuck? If I wanted your judgment, I would have said I don’t support funds for kids with cancer…nature obviously doesn’t want them to live.
Oct 18
Never have I seen so many blue suits (mechanics) in my bay at one time. There was a burning smell coming off one of the machines and they couldn’t tell which one. So I think they guessed and took down 12ash. During this time, I tell them I think it’s 53ash because a product wafer has been stuck in a back chamber for nearly 2 hours. They ignored me. 30 minutes later my coworker signs the machine down to maintenance because the water is still in the machine. 25 wafers usually takes 30 minutes total depending on the recipe. Not 30 minutes each…ever.
Sunday, November 1, 2015
email notifications
Way back when I started this I set up email notifications to be sent to some people. I forgot about these notifications and those people were still getting them to this day. I didn’t even re ask if they wanted to continue to get them. So I deleted all email addresses that were set up to get them. If you wish to continue to get them again, text/email/Facebook me letting me know you'd like to get post updates.
Back to the beginning
Back in the beginning, when I first got hired at this company, in training class we were told for the first 6- 18 weeks we were to take breaks with our trainer because we were not supposed to be in the bay alone. Apparently they don't tell the leads this- but back to that later.
During my first day I met my trainer in the fab, a young kid, he starts teaching me the way of the fab. The first thing he teaches me how to run is the sink in the bay call "34sink." after we load the product into the sink he tells me "not to worry the sink never goes down" just as he finishes saying this about 3 warnings go off and the sink goes down... and ends up being down for the 2 days. My first week of work is on what is referred to as "the long week"
Good time to pause again and fill in some details.
"Bay" - in the fab there is a main hall way and side hallways on that split from it. Those splits are called bays. There are 16 bays; well technically there are 32 bays. The bays 1-6 are split left side 1-6 A, right side 1-6 B, left 7-11 C, right side 7-11 D, left 12-16 E, and right 12-16 F. In the beginning I am assigned to 4A.
In my bay there are 6 different types of machines. Type 1 is called "the ashers" and there are 6 of them, 36ash, 49ash, 50ash, 52ash, 53ash, and 54ash. Type 2 "descum," there are 3 of them, 11ash, 12ash, 13ash. Type 3 "metetch," just one 24etch. Type 4 "etcher," 72etch. Type 5 "scope," 23scope. Type 6 "sink," 34sink. My bay does not have the most amount of tools, but it is by far the busiest. In the fab there are only three descumming machines, all in my bay. In the fab there are a total of 7 ashers, 6 of them are in my bay. During the fabrication process every product at multiple points during its production run has to go thru the ashers. So if we don’t run the loan asher in another bay every product has to go thru my bay, every day. On a typical day we have 50,000+ products going thru the fab.
Compressed work week. I work a shift called Night One or N1. I work Sunday - Tuesday or Sunday - Wednesday. All work days are 5:45p-6a
My short week is Sun - Tues, my long week is Sun - Wed, they switch between the two weeks every week.
Up or Down. Up means it is able to run the product, down means for any reason under the sun the machine threw a(n) error(s) and shut itself down for maintenance to go and look at it. Maintenance looks at it and fixes the error(s). After they fix the error(s) the sign the tools back up to qual (qualification).
Qual- means we, the fab techs, have to run test wafers to make sure that any partials exposed into the tool catch onto a test wafer and not a production wafer.
Product/ production wafer are interchangeable words.
Machine/ tool are interchangeable words.
Resume
My first week of work was on my long week. So I had to work 4, 12 hour shifts back to back. It was difficult. Back to the sink. The sink was down Sunday and Monday. came back up on Tuesday was up for about 3 hours and was down again for the next two weeks due to some mechanical front end error. During that time I learned to run the other tools in the bay, the scope is by far the most boring tool. I love running the sink.
So I learned these tools for a total of 14 days (or a month of work) and needed to take my certification tests to prove that I knew the tools. During the time of taking my cert tests my lead was getting impatient and was trying to tell my trainer that we needed to start taking different lunch breaks. Which makes since, BUT according to my training class before getting into the fab we were told we could not be left to run the tools without our trainer. So I informed my lead of this. She was reluctant but basically gave me another week to get it figured out. The next week was up and my trainer and I had to figure out new lunch times. When going at the same time the lunch breaks were 11 pm and 3 am. I basically begged my trainer to let me keep the 11am (even though he'd that time for the last 6 months...) he said okay, and I changed my last break at 4am.
During my first day I met my trainer in the fab, a young kid, he starts teaching me the way of the fab. The first thing he teaches me how to run is the sink in the bay call "34sink." after we load the product into the sink he tells me "not to worry the sink never goes down" just as he finishes saying this about 3 warnings go off and the sink goes down... and ends up being down for the 2 days. My first week of work is on what is referred to as "the long week"
Good time to pause again and fill in some details.
"Bay" - in the fab there is a main hall way and side hallways on that split from it. Those splits are called bays. There are 16 bays; well technically there are 32 bays. The bays 1-6 are split left side 1-6 A, right side 1-6 B, left 7-11 C, right side 7-11 D, left 12-16 E, and right 12-16 F. In the beginning I am assigned to 4A.
In my bay there are 6 different types of machines. Type 1 is called "the ashers" and there are 6 of them, 36ash, 49ash, 50ash, 52ash, 53ash, and 54ash. Type 2 "descum," there are 3 of them, 11ash, 12ash, 13ash. Type 3 "metetch," just one 24etch. Type 4 "etcher," 72etch. Type 5 "scope," 23scope. Type 6 "sink," 34sink. My bay does not have the most amount of tools, but it is by far the busiest. In the fab there are only three descumming machines, all in my bay. In the fab there are a total of 7 ashers, 6 of them are in my bay. During the fabrication process every product at multiple points during its production run has to go thru the ashers. So if we don’t run the loan asher in another bay every product has to go thru my bay, every day. On a typical day we have 50,000+ products going thru the fab.
Compressed work week. I work a shift called Night One or N1. I work Sunday - Tuesday or Sunday - Wednesday. All work days are 5:45p-6a
My short week is Sun - Tues, my long week is Sun - Wed, they switch between the two weeks every week.
Up or Down. Up means it is able to run the product, down means for any reason under the sun the machine threw a(n) error(s) and shut itself down for maintenance to go and look at it. Maintenance looks at it and fixes the error(s). After they fix the error(s) the sign the tools back up to qual (qualification).
Qual- means we, the fab techs, have to run test wafers to make sure that any partials exposed into the tool catch onto a test wafer and not a production wafer.
Product/ production wafer are interchangeable words.
Machine/ tool are interchangeable words.
Resume
My first week of work was on my long week. So I had to work 4, 12 hour shifts back to back. It was difficult. Back to the sink. The sink was down Sunday and Monday. came back up on Tuesday was up for about 3 hours and was down again for the next two weeks due to some mechanical front end error. During that time I learned to run the other tools in the bay, the scope is by far the most boring tool. I love running the sink.
So I learned these tools for a total of 14 days (or a month of work) and needed to take my certification tests to prove that I knew the tools. During the time of taking my cert tests my lead was getting impatient and was trying to tell my trainer that we needed to start taking different lunch breaks. Which makes since, BUT according to my training class before getting into the fab we were told we could not be left to run the tools without our trainer. So I informed my lead of this. She was reluctant but basically gave me another week to get it figured out. The next week was up and my trainer and I had to figure out new lunch times. When going at the same time the lunch breaks were 11 pm and 3 am. I basically begged my trainer to let me keep the 11am (even though he'd that time for the last 6 months...) he said okay, and I changed my last break at 4am.
Sunday, October 25, 2015
the bet that my dad doesnt regret.
I was losing faith in myself going thru my calculus classes. I was taking the same class over and over again which was suck. I felt like I was wasting my time and my dad’s money for paying for classes I was failing. However over those couple of years on taking calculus classes I was trying to get my dad into watching Doctor Who. He kept telling me no because he use to watch it as a kid and knew that if he started watching the new series he would have to catch up with all of it. Sometime in the fall of 2014 we were having a late night veg fest watching TV and talking and there were some Doctor Who eps that came on. I took this time to fill in some "before these eps" background story. We watched 4 eps in a row and had to stop watching them because the next few eps were out of order and broke the story arch. At this point we were still talking, and were talking about my fears of the Cal classes... So he made a bet "if you pass Cal 3, we'll watch all of new Doctor Who." Hands were shook. So I signed up for my Cal 3 class.
Months later I started my Cal 3 class, which was an online class, and continued to fear because the class was so difficult... mostly because it was online and I was working a time consuming job. So it was self-taught in I had the time. But I had to make the time even if it was at 10p.
Fast forward months later I passed all my tests, and I totally passed my final.
Then I got fired, and we started our Doctor Who marathon starting from the 2005 series. We finished the marathon of Doctor Who just in time to watch the start of the new season....However the new season started on Sept 20th, and Sept 19th my family went on a cruise for 10 days plus a few extra days in our departure city. When we got home we had 3 episodes to watch. The only thing that is lame about this is that we have to wait a week between each episode…. We can’t just binge watch them.
However next summer it sounds like we may be catching him up on the Walking Dead series.
Months later I started my Cal 3 class, which was an online class, and continued to fear because the class was so difficult... mostly because it was online and I was working a time consuming job. So it was self-taught in I had the time. But I had to make the time even if it was at 10p.
Fast forward months later I passed all my tests, and I totally passed my final.
Then I got fired, and we started our Doctor Who marathon starting from the 2005 series. We finished the marathon of Doctor Who just in time to watch the start of the new season....However the new season started on Sept 20th, and Sept 19th my family went on a cruise for 10 days plus a few extra days in our departure city. When we got home we had 3 episodes to watch. The only thing that is lame about this is that we have to wait a week between each episode…. We can’t just binge watch them.
However next summer it sounds like we may be catching him up on the Walking Dead series.
Friday, October 23, 2015
February.
8 months. A person’s life can change drastically in 8 months. A person’s life can change over a single night. Fortunately I'm not that person. My journey thru life hasn't changed drastically, or overnight. It has changed though, and it has become increasingly more frustrating.
In February around the time of my last post I was probably stressing about my calculus 3 class, which I had every right to... I mean, come on, it was calculus 3.... 3!
Referring back to the last post my (ooo, now then) boss took over the contract as I stated and I took over billing and credentialing. And I was rocking it! I was doing so well..... Or so I thought. Well I was doing perfect, but that only lasted for 2 months. At the end of March she gave me BACK the contract but this time didn’t take anything away from me... So I had LESS hours, TWICE as much work and one day off a week. I was still expected to have everything done in the same amount of time. Then the end of April comes around and the boss has a mental breakdown and disappears for over a week. Doesn’t respond to emails, doesn’t respond to text messages, and doesn’t answer phone calls. So when the coworkers had problems that we couldn’t fix we didn’t even have a way to get them the answers the desperately needed. It was worse when the customers need questions answered and we couldn’t help them. When the boss finally comes back she gave me ANOTHER big project to get started on and still doesn’t take any other responsibilities off my hands. To her everything was a priority one, so since she couldn’t prioritize what I needed to do, I did it for her. Things I felt were less important got done if I got around to them. Then after all that, I GET THIS:
Uber super suck. I got this letter two weeks I finished my final for my Cal 3 class. One of the reasons she verbally told me she wasfiring me "laying me off" was because they just couldn’t afford to be working around my school schedule..... Which they knew when they hired me. I even took OFF a semester of school to give them more time during a transition period. AND I turned in false time cards showing I worked fewer hours than I did. I was too loyal. But funny thing, I totally called it and stuck around like a retard and waited for it to blow up. I, no joke, legit came home one day in march and said to my dad big changes were coming to the company and informed him that I for sure had the job until May and then who knew.... well had the job until may then fired "laid off." At that point I was mad and asked her to pay me for all the things I bought for the office. She said to give her the receipts. It took me a few days but when I got her copies of the receipts, sent via email, she said "who authorized you to make these purchases, who said they would refund you" so I went back and collected my office supplies.
I feel like I don’t give a shit about her financial problems, and that she owes me. But nothing that I can do about it, but she is on the list of people I never want to talk to again. Even though I did offer to help out with billing if she needed it, but now she is promptly blocked from contacting me... so suck it.
After I got fired, call it what it is, 4 of coworker contacted me to start credentialing applications for their private practices. So there are at least 4 of them that are leaving in the next year, and one that started looking for a new job the day I got fired (and found one).
Help me thru the things I cannot change, help me forgive those that don’t deserve, help me get over the anger.
In February around the time of my last post I was probably stressing about my calculus 3 class, which I had every right to... I mean, come on, it was calculus 3.... 3!
Referring back to the last post my (ooo, now then) boss took over the contract as I stated and I took over billing and credentialing. And I was rocking it! I was doing so well..... Or so I thought. Well I was doing perfect, but that only lasted for 2 months. At the end of March she gave me BACK the contract but this time didn’t take anything away from me... So I had LESS hours, TWICE as much work and one day off a week. I was still expected to have everything done in the same amount of time. Then the end of April comes around and the boss has a mental breakdown and disappears for over a week. Doesn’t respond to emails, doesn’t respond to text messages, and doesn’t answer phone calls. So when the coworkers had problems that we couldn’t fix we didn’t even have a way to get them the answers the desperately needed. It was worse when the customers need questions answered and we couldn’t help them. When the boss finally comes back she gave me ANOTHER big project to get started on and still doesn’t take any other responsibilities off my hands. To her everything was a priority one, so since she couldn’t prioritize what I needed to do, I did it for her. Things I felt were less important got done if I got around to them. Then after all that, I GET THIS:
Uber super suck. I got this letter two weeks I finished my final for my Cal 3 class. One of the reasons she verbally told me she was
I feel like I don’t give a shit about her financial problems, and that she owes me. But nothing that I can do about it, but she is on the list of people I never want to talk to again. Even though I did offer to help out with billing if she needed it, but now she is promptly blocked from contacting me... so suck it.
After I got fired, call it what it is, 4 of coworker contacted me to start credentialing applications for their private practices. So there are at least 4 of them that are leaving in the next year, and one that started looking for a new job the day I got fired (and found one).
Help me thru the things I cannot change, help me forgive those that don’t deserve, help me get over the anger.
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Say one thing and mean your mother
I re read my post from August. AUGUST. I sucked so bad at that contract I was assigned to my boss asked if I wanted to trade her contracts. I said yes. She them told me to take a while to think about it. I said "okay. Umm. Yes. You've never complained when I help you with your contract but I get talked to weekly about how I'm working on mine. You can have it back."
Now I'm working on the new contract and I think she just likes picking fights becuase now I feel like she is really looking into every detail to pick at something weekly with the contract im on now. For reals??? Get over your menopause. How do you nicely tell someone to back off?
Also same job since I'm takin off Tuesday's she was nice enough to ask if financially I'll be fine with having less hours? I said I don't know but I'll let you know if it becomes a problem. Now on top of motivating myself to do my homework and tests I have to penny pinch.
I also did not do as well as I gave myself credit for on paying off my loan. What I made all last year was enough to pay off my loan in its entirety with a bunch extra to spare!! How could I have been so stupid?
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