Isaiah Tibbitts

As an assembler at Hero Design, I familiarized myself with the processes and quality control involved in the pursuit of child accessible art. My time at Hero Design was spent sanding and chemically treating the wood, or programming and flashing electronics of the art displays. When the required parts had been produced, I would be responsible for getting the basic electronics and structure together. After a manager completed the rest of the electronics, the display would be placed in an assembled shipping crate and sent out to child-enrichment centers and museums worldwide. My coworker and I were responsible for the assembly of the 500+ part displays, as well as the worldwide shipping of large scale projects. Often I would find myself working hand in hand with my coworker or manager to assure that the displays were quality tested and loaded aboard the shipping truck on time. Besides general assembly and production procedures, my daily work involved taking stock of parts, sweeping and general clean up, maintenance of the CNC machine, various hand tools, and forklift.

After about two and a half years in the chemical production department at Auto-Chlor, i was promoted to the rebuilder position. As a rebuilder, i was required to meet a quota of 8-10 dishwashers rebuilt each month. In this position i received the plumbing and electrical knowledge needed to fully refurbish a commercial dishwasher, along with a deeper understanding of the job our managers and sales team did. Additional requirements for this position were; opting in to bi-monthly on call work, delivery of chemicals and machine parts to service technicians around nor-cal, in the field repairs, the scheduling of machines to be rebuilt up to three months in advance, and the shipping/ receiving of dishwashers to and from other Auto-Chlor warehouses.

In this role, I became familiar with both general warehouse safety, and the EPA's guidelines for the handling and production of hazardous chemicals. Daily tasks in this role consisted of: use of forklifts and pallet jacks, following recipes and procedures to create detergents and soaps, titration to determine the potency of received sodium hypochlorite, wastewater disposal procedures, the cleaning of chemical tanks up to 1250 gallons, on-loading and offloading of raw chemicals from semi-trucks, and the scheduling of chemical production for up to three other Auto-Chlor chemical warehouses in Northern California.

While washing dishes and waiting tables at The Eskaton retirement community, i was able to get an understanding of the patience needed to work with the elderly. I was able to build fulfilling connections with some of the residents and had the pleasure of working with great people in the kitchen.