If you instruct me to do something in a certain way I will for ever do it that way. If you want me to do it an other way you should change your instructions.
I don’t know whether this is good or bad thing, but to me it’s just a trait of autism.

The department I work at has a machine that cuts strands of rubber to a length of 2 meters 39 centimeters and 5 millimeters. About a 400 a day.
My workstation is behind that machine and my work is to check whether this machine works the way it should. Sadly it doesn’t so about half the strands are longer or shorter then there supposed to be.
When I first started working at this task, early last year, I was instructed by the foreman that the strands had a tolerance of 5 millimeters but if a strand was less then 10 millimeters too long I wasn’t allowed to cut it because it would shrink and if it was less then 10 millimeters too short I wasn’t allowed to through it out because it would stretch.
These instruction didn’t sit very well with me. I’ve always been taught that you shouldn’t mess with your tolerance. But instructions are instructions.
Last year I have had to do this very boring job for something like 8 times. Every time I complained about I was told that I had to do it because of the high quality of my work.

This week was the first time of this year I had to this job again. After 5 mind numbing day some one of quality control noticed that I had an odd way of cutting the strands to length.
He told me that a tolerance of 5 millimeters meant that I should cut the strand if it was more then 5 millimeters to long.
I answered that if it were up to me I would have done so from the start but these were my instruction. So this guy from quality control called my foreman who immediately started to cover his ass: “No, he never gave me those instruction”. “No, he would have never told me to ignore the tolerance”. “No, he is never wrong”.
It’s all my mistake. I didn’t listen to the instructions. To punish me I have to re-check the 1200 strands I’ve checked in the last few days.

You can imagine that was was very angry. Not only do I have to do this very boring work. But the moment something is wrong I’m blamed.
Not to mention that only yesterday this same foreman complimented me on the quality of my work.

For a while I was thinking about ways I could take my anger out on my work.
I could cut the strands shorter than they should be. Or I could ignore strands that are to long. Or I could miscount the amount of strands I put in a box.
But all those those things would hurt the company much more then it would hurt the foreman. And it is not me. I can’t work that sloppy.
After 10 minutes I realized that I don’t have to take revenge the company for allowing this attitude.
They are doing that them selfs:

Two weeks ago I’ve been told that I would get a new job.
One of the largest companies of the Netherlands has given Promen a very large order.
This company needs 4 little holes drilled into thousands of pieces of rubber. Because of the noise some one has to work on his own in a little room. The foreman boasted that he had recommended me for the job.
The job is to be done very precisely so he and an other foreman spent two day positioning a template before making 10 samples. Apparently not satisfied the company asked for 16 more samples.
Since it’s supposed to be my work the foreman showed me how to do it.
But after doing 10 of the second batch of samples the foreman noticed that the holes were a millimeter off and I noticed that there was something wrong with the method we used.
I told him about my concerns but as ever the foreman told me that he is never wrong. He took a few hours to reposition the template and made the other 6 samples.
So instead of calling the customer and telling them that we have made a mistake and that we will make some more samples, we are now waiting for approval.

I would be very surprise if we’d actually get the order.