I get to work with my ex's new boyfriend, but it's my fault because after all, I got him the job. My boss asks me what I think of the guy. You know what I mean? He wanted a personal opinion of this guy.

Funny thing is most people would look at Shawn and decide that he's not worth talking to. He's got the eyebrow peircing, which has become quite blase lately. Everyone has a bit of metal shoved through some part of their body. Then there's the tattoos and the shaved head and the general outward attitude of nonchalance, but I still knew that Shawn was a good guy. I wouldn't have even told him about the job in the first place if I didn't think he was good. Seriously, the guy is dating my ex, he had to be a good guy or I'd have never even thought of him.

So my opinion of the guy that's dating my ex, to whom I told about the job has to be good right. And on my recommendation I suppose he got hired.

(Time Warp)

Nightshifts are good sometimes, and other times nightshifts are bad. Working with the guy that's now banging your ex is hard. I am so okay with her moving on and all that, but sometimes it's hard to let go of everything and be completely cool with it.

There are 3000 pipes in boxes all over the shop. Machining is an interesting trade. To get paid to weld over a little hole and make another hole completely the same size as far as the human eye is concerned is a hard job. It just seems so pointless. Still, if the infamous 'they' wanna pay me time and half to work 12 hour night shifts I'm not gonna complain.

We'd been welding and drilling for about 8 hours when the shop's phone rang. We answer expecting it to be his gf (my ex). It isn't though, it's a customer at three in the morning they wanna get some pipes made as caps for a system that they have to shut down overnight.

Now I'll be completely honest, I'm not a machinist, nor is Shawn and we don't really have a whole lot of experience. Welding over little holes and drilling new ones is easy stuff. I took all the measurements and sizes for the caps and did set up the metal in a lathe to rough it close to shape for when the boss guy came in.

The shop had actually been expecting this little call and we were supposed to call the foreman when we got it, but we waited until four to wake him up. You know, we might as well let him sleep a little bit.

Groggy as he was, Dave, our boss managed to answer the phone and said he'd be in to the shop in half an hour. It was fourty five minutes later and he showed up. Not that I blame him or anything, it was pretty early in the morning and work sucks sometimes. Now here's the kicker of the situation, Dave didn't seem quite himself.

It isn't standard or even common practice to get too falling down drunk on a Tuesday night but Dave had and Wednesday morning was a hurting event. In fact, Dave was still drunk. To this day I'm not sure, but I'm under the impression that he was a little stoned too.

And I hate to say that the shop or it's staff was a bunch of boozing potheads or anything but every once in a while they partook of various chemical pleasures. I suppose it's more and more acceptable. Lathes and mills and a machine shop in general is not a place you want to be with anything affecting your judgement though. When a 60 ton piece of steel starts turning on a huge boring mill, you have to be sure that everything is as it's supposed to be. It's actually a matter of life and death.

Dave was not himself. The machine wasn't the biggest machine, nor was the job really taxing mentally. Dave said it was an easy little thing that I probably could have done but it was better to call him in because he wanted to leave early that day anyways.

It was going okay and after a bit I left the rye soaked aura that surrounded Dave only semi-convinced that he was going to be alright. Things like this aren't funny, and there really is no reason to think of it as amusing, but I got a bad feeling about a minute after started working on the pipes again.

Shawn and I were actually the faster of the two shifts that we had going on the pipes, but that's probably because we didnt' take any breaks and just kept going. We had a very similar work ethic which was one of the only things that made working together do-able.

Dave was screaming. Well, not screaming like a little girl or anything but he was in some serious pain. The tooling had exploded. Somehow he'd set the lathe spinning the wrong way and the ceramic tooling tip had just heated up too much. When he realized the problem and corrected it he had not let the tip cool down. Now, with everything seemingly going the right way Dave began again. The instant that the tip contacted the metal it shattered.

Safety is always a priority, and I suppose I should have noticed that Dave wasn't wearing his safety glasses, but I didn't. No he didn't lose an eye or anything, but he did get some really funky scars.

The pieces of ceramic at near white hot temperatures had attacked his face. In the process of causing serious pain they had also distracted Dave's attention and he ran the tooling mount into the work piece. As the lathe shuddered and bounced he clawed at his face trying to pull the bits of heat out of his skin.

Shawn and I both ran over, but the only thing I could do worth doing was stop the lathe. The piece was ruined as was the hundred and fifty dollar tool holder, and Dave was still searching his face for the remaining bits of the tool tip in his skin.

There's no moral or real lesson to be learned, everything that happened just did, and really it will probably happen to other people in similar situations elsewhere so I'm not going to try and preach about it. I just remember it.

That's all, I remember this.

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