One of those Days…

Do you know those days where you are at your wits end, everything seems to be going against you, and it just takes one act of reverse brilliance to bring a smile to your face and turn it all around? This is a true story. The names have been changed to protect the … let’s just leave it at that.

If you have ever changed a truck tire or been in a shop that does, you know what a Tire Cage is. For those that don’t, it is a safety cage for dismounting truck tires from their rims. Truck tires are inflated to lethal pressures, and if one explodes while dismounting, serious injury can occur. The idea with the cage is if the tire explodes inside the cage, the cage catches the shrapnel and injury is avoided.

I was working in a retread shop and we had just hired this guy for basic tire changing duties. His claim was x many years of experience changing truck tires and he was great at this and that. Really tooting his own horn. Boy we thought we had hired a winner! We welcomed him right in and immediately put him to work knowing he would have a thing or two to show our less experienced employees. I walked away to let him work on changing a truck tire with duties of my own to attend to. About 15 minutes later I walked back to see the shock of my life. Mr. Experience (not real name) was in the cage himself with the tire on the outside. He was stretching through the cage with one arm trying to change this tire like a monkey reaching for food at the zoo. “What in the world are you doing!” I asked. “Boss I was being safe so I got in the cage. If the tire explodes I don’t want to get hurt.” I thought I was going to die laughing. Just goes to show that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys.