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with none of the heavy lifting. I’d have to be officially rated for the forklift and the overhead cranes, but I was already doing that on the sly anyway. Plus a week off every month. What’s not to like?

So I signed up for another year.

And this is where I learned to get really very good at staying in the eye of the hurricane.

The gang saw crews, you see, are at the very center of constructional stone manufacturing. Ever go into a ritzy hotel, or a government building, or suchlike, and see the polished granite on the walls or floor? The gang saw crews are the heart of the process that makes that go from rock in the ground to architectural ornament. Sure, you’ve got your quarry boys that work like dogs to cut blocks out of the earth, and you have your polishers and hand-workers who finesse cut slabs into puzzle pieces to fit inside your local Marriott. But if the gang saw guys don’t do their jobs, no one gets anything. And so the gang saw chief has to know what everyone is doing, who they’re doing it with, and how far along they are. At all times. See, it takes five days for a gang saw to cut straight slabs through an eight foot deep block, so the saws are set up in fours. If all goes smoothly, the left-most saw should be just starting when the right-most saw is finishing up. In the time it takes to break down and remove the slabs and clean up and reload that one, the inside right should be finishing up. In the time it takes to break down and remove the slabs and clean up and reload that one, the inside left should be finishing up. In the time it takes to break down and remove the slabs and clean up and reload that one, your first saw should be ready and the whole cycle starts over again. And in every step of that process, the chief has to know what the sales guys are doing, know what the architects specs are, wrangle with drafting for shop tickets, and keep an eye on how fast processing is going through slabs. It is very literally juggling with 23 ton blocks, and every other department depends on the gang saw crew humming along, because the whole system collapses and logjams if it doesn’t, and no one gets Christmas bonuses. Nothing like hundreds of guys telling you they want you to personally tell their kids why they’re not getting Big Wheels from Santa to make you keep your eye on your job.

So after I went back and got my degree, my first job out of college was as

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