Hell, I got hired once for my sense of humor! I bombed the weld test horribly (I wasn't expecting rusty scraps with no prep and a random gap...), but I had the foreman and crew chief laughing the whole time. I actually excelled at that job, too, going from welder III pay (the lowest with perdiem) to top-out in four months.
My current job is such an exception to the normal rules... I rarely sweep my work areas more than once a week, and my tools are scattered all over the shop, seemingly at random, as I've usually got at least three projects going at once. There are often rod-butts and cigarette butts, plastic and tape, nuts and bolts, zip-ties, etc. under me all the time. I'll sweep up when they begin to annoy me, or when someone else is working on the same unit and my debris may get in their way.
Sometimes, I'll sweep up just because a process or task is annoying me, and I need to "not think about it" for a while.
Don't get me wrong, we don't allow it to become a hazard, it's just usually more efficient to wait for the unit to be moved, when two or three of us will jump on brooms and clean it up in a few minutes, rather than the half-hour a day it might take to sweep around all the equipment (much of which can't be moved during the processes it's there for).
Actually two things that got me hired at this job were my strong and obvious interest in the work, and the fact that the foreman and I had some history in common. We'd never worked together, but had done the same kinds of travelling construction.
Steve S
