Every Step Counts

When I began work at the shop, I thought I knew what I was doing. Electronics assembly should be a piece of cake, right? I had used a soldering iron many times and could use a screwdriver and drill as well as anyone else. But Glenn caught onto my ignorant arrogance right off the bat.

The first project he put me on was assembling relay boxes, which we use to power up amp racks. He showed me a completed one first.

“All right, so this is what you are going to be building. Now, what I want you to do is cut ten pieces of this wire to exactly three inches in length.”

“And then what?” I responded.

“I just told you. I want you to cut ten pieces of this wire. Then I will tell you what to do next.”

I cut the wires and then asked Glenn what was next. He told me to crimp lugs onto one end of each wire. I did that and returned.

As this whole step-by-step process continued on and on, I got increasingly annoyed. I wanted him to just give me a picture or open up a completed box for me to look at, and then just let me do the job! I raced through each step just to show that I knew what I was doing and didn’t need to be treated like a baby. But Glenn still only gave me one small step at a time.

When I was finally finished, I proudly set the pile of relay boxes on Glenn’s bench.

See, a piece of cake! I thought to myself.

But the next morning, the relays were back on my bench!

“Ryan, meet me in my office,” Glenn said. That meant he wanted to see me at his workbench. So I came over and asked about the boxes.

“Well, they don’t work,” he said simply. “They aren’t complete if they don’t work.”

“What!” I responded, “What’s wrong with them?”

He walked over to my bench and opened up each of the boxes. Then he began pointing out all the problems: a crossed wire here, forgotten heat shrink over there, an un-tightened screw right here… the list went on and on.

I was shocked. I was so sure that I had done everything right. But I obviously had a lot to learn. And slowly over time, I did learn. As my pride shrank and my maturity grew, I learned a lesson from Glenn I’ll never forget.

I realized that if I wanted the completed product to be right, then every single step is important too. But just as crucial, every step is also another chance to check my work.

When I would build something, Glenn would spend a long time afterward checking it. But when he would build something, he didn’t take as long. Why? Because he already knew he had respected every single step of his work and had checked each one along the way.

That’s the first important lesson Glenn taught me. Learning to respect each step has made me a better worker, and maybe even a better person. I rarely have to fix items nowadays that I’ve assembled, and that’s due in large part to what I learned from Glenn.