The Line in Garden City That Never Runs on Schedule

There’s a processing plant in Garden City I’ve been out to enough times now that the security guard at the gate knows my truck before I’ve even rolled the window down, and every single visit, every one, has started with some version of waiting. Waiting for the line to clear so I can get access to the unit. Waiting for a supervisor to sign off on a shutdown window. Waiting for a part that was supposed to be there when I arrived and instead shows up two hours behind schedule, same as it always does. I used to plan my day around the appointment time on the ticket. Nine years in, I plan around the appointment time plus however long experience tells me this particular plant is going to make me sit in the parking lot first.

I think this is the part of the job nobody warns you about when you’re starting out, that a huge amount of skilled trade work is actually just skilled waiting punctuated by short bursts of the thing you trained for. The diagnostic itself might take forty minutes. Getting cleared to do it can take three hours. For a long time that ratio genuinely frustrated me, felt like wasted time I couldn’t get back, and I’d sit in the cab of my truck doing essentially nothing, whittling idle hours away scrolling a phone with one bar of signal.

The travel case changed that more than almost anything else has. Now those same three hours are a chance to finish a chapter, or run a quick two-player game if Reyes happens to be on the same call, or just sit with something instead of stewing about the delay. I’ve come to think of a plant like Garden City’s specifically as good practice for a thing I care about a lot when I’m reviewing games, actually, how much a system makes you sit around doing nothing between the moments that matter. A job with too much downtime between the interesting parts wears on you the same way a board game does, and I think I only noticed that clearly because I’ve had so many hours in so many parking lots to think about it.

The plant itself runs fine, mostly, whatever delays it, it’s a genuinely well-run operation once you’re actually inside working the problem. It’s just never, not once in nine years, been ready for me exactly when the ticket said it would be. I’ve stopped taking that personally. I’ve started packing for it instead.