Procurement Runs

Filed by Jimmy. PHASE 2, WEEK 5.

Some of my best days were junkyard days. Dad’s car always needed something, and the junkyard was where you got it. He’d find the donor vehicle and get to work, and here is the part that mattered: he’d let me take parts off myself. Real tools. Real bolts. I was a kid loose in a field of dead machines with wrenches.

I had my assignments, but I also had my own procurement program running on the side. Every glove box held a small light bulb. Every fuse panel was full of fuses. No one else wanted them, and I pulled them like found treasure and stashed them in a bin under my bed—because you never know what you might need for a project.

I didn’t have a project. The parts came first. The project would reveal itself.

That was the whole education, really. Dad could fix anything—everyone said so—and what he taught me was that broken machines are just parts that haven’t been reassigned yet. The difference between junk and inventory is whether somebody bothered to pull it and keep it.

I still stock the bin before I know the build. The bin has never once let me down.

Lesson logged: Maintain your parts inventory. The project will tell you what it needs; your job is to already have it.

More field reports declassified soon. —Jimmy