This is a true story, I hope it does not come back and bite me!
I was a young married man, an electronics engineer, working as a development test engineer in a small west midlands town. I worked in a tiny faraday cage, a metal box on a raised plinth surrounded by copper wire mesh to keep the radio transmissions the equipment I was testing from escaping. This was a dark oppressive place and so I kept the heavy sliding door open whenever I was not actually testing the transmitting parts of the equipment.
I had to slide the door shut before doing transmission test and one day the door bit me, tearing a large flap of skin off the web of my right hand. A two-inch plus strip of skin and flesh about an eighth of an inch wide, was hanging from the damaged wire mesh.
It hurt like hell and though not bleeding when I first looked, there was blood everywhere seconds later. I had nothing clean to put on the wound. I had to struggle to open the door left handed and half staggered down the step onto the main factory floor. I had my hand elevated, but the amount of blood was by now quite alarming. Someone noticed and I was being helped to the nearest aid station chair, while someone went for the company nurse.
A very attractive young woman took my injured hand, found a Red Cross box, and applied a gauze dressing. She got blood all over herself, my shirt was soaked, it looked very bad, it looked as if my entire body was bleeding. Now I knew the young woman, she worked on the rectification bench were problems which were discovered during testing were rectified. We had exchanged pantries quite often.
I was feeling quite light headed when the factory nurse arrived and she took a quick look at the wound, then at the strip of flesh hanging in the copper mesh. She gingerly took it in a pair of tweezers and deposited it in a dressing bag.
The gauze dressing was now showing signs of continued bleeding. Rather than replace it she wanted to get me to hospital ASAP, so told someone to ring for an ambulance and with the already bloody first aid worked supporting me took me to the factory entrance. Although I was wobbly, I was very aware that two very nubile females had me firmly in their grasp. I had an arm round both necks, the bloody hand being held by the aid while the nurse called out for the path to be cleared.
I was taken off to hospital, a surgeon made a passable repair to the major vein that had been ruptured, and micro stitched the flesh and skin back in place. I spent the night in hospital and returned to work next day to a rousing work force, some derisive, others more sympathetic. I sought out the first Aid girl, thanked her for her help, and was invited to sit with her and the other rectification workers, all nubile females, in the works canteen for lunch.
The damaged wire mesh had been replaced. In addition, the cage had been retested. I was not offered any compensation, but did not loose any wages and the management were prepared to let the work fall behind schedule for a while.
I had been a few days in front of the schedule for the production model first test date. I had my arm in a sling for quite a while and the work went a little slower. Then when the dressings finally came off, I had quite a workload to catch up. I now had to work over time and so a rectification person also had the opportunity to work overtime.
The young first aid woman, who I will call Maggie was the person assigned. Although the work progressed well, both she and I were aware that the fifty-yard walk from my test cage to the rectification area was consuming quite a bit of the time. I only had two development models to work on and with a component change required for every test; one of us was always walking one way or the other, carrying one of the heavy military radios.
After the second evenings overtime I informed the factory management of the problem and walked the floor manager through the process. This was to reduce the cost of parts, by using cheaper, lower wattage, or lower tolerance parts in the military equipment and get it ready for its production test. There were still over a thousand components to be replaced, at least twice, which meant someone had to walk 200,000 yards carrying the heavy unit for the process to be completed.
Next day a work crew began installing rectification workplaces on the opposite side of the walkway from the faraday cages. Maggie was the first occupant at the station opposite my cage.
I was soon catching up on the schedule and of course began a good workplace relationship with the pretty young married woman. We had soon exchanged life stories. She was married to a police officer and was desperate for a child. I was an expectant father with ambitions to own a house and move up in the world. I had been reduced to getting around on a bicycle when my motorbike shed a vale and destroyed the engine and gearbox. I cycled five miles to work every day and then five miles back home, this overtime was useful.
The bloody event had had several up sides.
It was early summer and the days were getting hot. The faraday cages were terrible places to work in hot weather, I began to work slower during the day, and this of course stretched the overtime. I was able to fudge the schedule while just about catching up with the work.
Maggie had a magnificent body, a fact she was well aware of and as the summer days got hotter she wore lighter clothes and although we both had to wear factory over clothes, there was always a nice few seconds watching her get into and out of the sturdy overall topcoat. They were collected each evening and clean ones ready next morning, in the clean area we worked in. Mine was White; hers was Blue, designating our work area and status. We had clip on nametags.
The repositioning of the rectification work places resulted in me getting a bonus. My savings were half way towards a car.
My sex life became reduced as my wife had a few complications and the daily contact with Maggie became a very pleasurable remedy for frustration. One evening working in the almost silent factory, Maggie asked me if I could come look at their HiFi record player as it had developed an annoying noise. I asked her what sort and player her some samples from the equipment in my cage.
"Like this?' I played a 100-cycle audio hum.
She said, "Perhaps."
I played a 50-cycle buzz. "Like This?"
She said, "perhaps."
I played a 20-cycle rumble, "Like this then?"
She shook her head, "I don't know it's a bit like all of them mixed up."
I fiddled around and played a combination.
"Yes that's more like it," She said.
I varied the amplitude of the signals while Maggie, her bosoms in the blue coat straining the material was leaning into the open doorway of my cage.
As I was adjusting the levels, she said, "That is it! Can you come and find out what is causing it?"
"Well this noise comes from a bad valve. Probably the last amplifier stage." I played the 50-cycle noise.
"This is a bad power supply which could be just about any component." I played the 100-cycle noise.
"And this is a problem with the turntable motor, or its control circuit." I played the 20-cycle rumble.
"So you have elements of all three, its not going to be easy to tell which can be fixed or which are inherent in the design."
