Going Back For Tools

One of the shops I worked for in Havre, Montana supplied us with our own pick-up trucks.  At the time, locks were not a general consideration for vehicles and these pick-ups were not equipped with locks.  I supplied my own tools, but without locks on the vehicles, and with the vehicles parked out back of the shop, I either left my tools in the shop at night, or, if I had work to do at home, I would take them with me when I went home.

 

The pinch would come when I went to work the next morning.  My tools were just one more item to remember.  A few times I would be on my way to work and remember that I had left my tools at home.  Since we lived about 5 miles out of town, turning around, going back to get them, and then heading back to town, was a situation that did not lend itself to getting to work on time.

 

There was a time that I was sent to a job on a farm about 20 miles out of town.  When I got to the job site the first thing I did was look the job over and make a material list.  When I started doing the actual labor I realized that I had left my tools back at the shop.

 

I tore back to town, went in the back door of the shop, and grabbed my tools.  Then I tore back to the farm.  I wasn’t noticed when I grabbed my tools, nor when I was burning up pavement from one place to another.

 

Sometime later I was telling another guy at the shop what had happened.  He laughed and said one other guy had done the same thing.  The difference was that it was well past noon when he missed his tools.  When he came back to get them he got caught!  How can you work for five hours without tools?

 

I learned to always remember my tools.