MidReal Story
Electric Betrayal
Scenario: Resistencias eléctricas industriales y comerciales
Create my version of this story
I sat down in the doctor’s office, with my mom and sister on either side, and listened to the bad news.
The nurse had said that Dad only wanted to tell us all at once, so we were waiting for my brother to arrive from the airport.
But then I guess the doctor figured we might as well just get it over with before everyone got there because he came in and said, “Your father has had a heart attack.”
I didn’t have to ask if he was okay, because I could tell from the look in the doctor’s eyes that he wasn’t.
My mom must have known too, because she started crying right away.
I tried to be strong for her, but I was crying too.
The doctor said that he was stable but that they would be keeping him in the hospital for a few days to monitor him.
He recommended that my family take turns going in to see him so that we wouldn’t overwhelm him.
When the doctor left, I sat there for a moment, holding my mom’s hand and staring at the beige wall, trying to wrap my head around what was happening.
The phone rang, and my sister got up to answer it.
She had to go to work, so she wanted to know if I would stay with Mom.
Mom had said she didn’t need me, but I knew that she did, so I agreed to stay with her.
My sister left, and my mom went into the bathroom to freshen up.
When she came out, she sat down next to me and looked at me with red-rimmed eyes.
“Are you sure you can stay here with your brother coming home?”
she asked in a small voice.
I nodded at her.
I can do it,” I said.
“I know you can,” she said, looking at me like she was seeing me for the first time.
She reached out and put her hand on mine, squeezing gently as she added, “You’ve always been such a good girl.”
My brother walked through the front door just as my sister walked out.
He had on a black hoodie over a white T-shirt and baggy black jeans with rips in them that made him look like a rapper instead of an engineering student at a top-notch university.
He looked tired, with his black hair sticking up in the front so that it almost looked like a fauxhawk, and he had dark circles under his eyes from jet lag.
He dropped his suitcase by the door, then stood there, looking at Mom and me with a confused expression on his face.
“What’s going on?”
he asked in Spanish, his eyes darting between us.
“Is everything okay?”
Mom took a deep breath, then reached out to take my brother’s hands in hers before leading him over to the couch.
She sat down next to him, then turned to me and patted the cushion in front of her, telling me to sit down too.
When I did, she took a deep breath before saying, “Your father is in the hospital.”
“What happened?”
my brother asked in a shaky voice, looking at our mom with wide eyes as his lower lip started to quiver.
My mom reached out and squeezed his hand, pulling him closer so that he was sitting right next to her before turning to look at me with a determined expression on her face.
“We need to talk to Alejandro Martinez,” she said in a voice that brooked no argument.
I sat down in Alejandro’s office, across from him and my mother, feeling like I was a little kid again even though it had been years since I’d been there last.
Alejandro looked down at his desk calendar, where he had written out all of the assignments that he was working on that month, then raised his eyebrows at me as if he were surprised to see me there.
“When your mother called and said that she needed to speak with me, I assumed that it was your brother who wanted to meet,” he said in Spanish, looking at me over the top of his glasses with his kind brown eyes.
“He’s busy,” I replied in Spanish, feeling a little nervous now that I was actually there.
For a moment there was an awkward pause as Alejandro looked at me, his head cocked to one side as if he were trying to figure out what to say to me.
He opened his mouth as if he were about to say something, but then closed it again with a thoughtful expression on his face as he looked at me again.
“Your mother tells me that you are going to be taking over the business for your father,” he said in a neutral voice, as if he were asking me a question but I knew that he wasn’t.
“Yes,” I replied coolly, looking at him with my eyebrows raised as if to ask him if he had a problem with that.
He looked away from me, turning to my mother instead, and asked in English, “Is your daughter as smart as your son?”
My mother looked at me with a proud expression on her face before turning back to Alejandro, who had a thoughtful expression on his face.
“She has always been very good in school,” she said in English.
“Hmm,” Alejandro replied, nodding thoughtfully.
I realized that I couldn’t tell what he was thinking from the expression on his face, but I also realized that I hadn’t expected him to say anything else either way; he was one of those people whose thoughts were impossible to guess from his facial expressions, unlike my mother who’s thoughts could almost always be read from her facial expressions.
I knew what I wanted to say to him, but I didn’t know how to start so I just waited there nervously while my mother continued talking to him about some social thing or another that I didn’t understand because my brain was too busy thinking about what I wanted to say to him.
When my mother finally ran out of things to say, I cleared my throat and nervously started talking, feeling self-conscious as soon as I began speaking in Spanish because Alejandro had the advantage over me in this language, but I also knew that it would be better for me to speak to him in Spanish because it would be easier for me to say what I needed to say without struggling for words like I would have if I’d spoken to him in English.
“I want you to teach me about the technical aspects of resistors,” I said in Spanish, looking him straight in the eye even though part of me wanted to look away from him so I wouldn’t have to see his reaction.
Alejandro was silent for a moment, looking at me with his head cocked to one side like he always did when he was thinking.
Then he finally spoke, his voice calm.
“Do you know what kind of business we are in?” he asked.
“We make resistors,” I replied, looking at him like he had just asked me if I knew how to use a fork.
“Yes, I know what kind of business we are in,” I said, realizing from his question that he thought I didn’t know anything about the business.
I had only been working there for two weeks, but still, I knew more than he thought I did.
“Well, it’s not just any business,” he replied coolly, “It’s one of the most competitive businesses there is, and if you want to succeed here, then you have to be better than all of them.” The way he said this made me feel like I was being scolded, but also like I was being taught something at the same time.
My mother nodded at him, looking relieved that Alejandro seemed to understand what she’d been trying to tell me earlier.
Alejandro turned to me, looking at me over his glasses.
“The competition is very strong in our industry,” he said in Spanish, “There are many companies that make resistors, so it is very difficult to stand out in this industry.
The only way that a company can stand out is by having the best products, which are also the cheapest,” he said firmly, “You have to work hard to make sure that our products are always better than any of our competitors’ products, otherwise, our customers will go to them instead.” His words scared me, but I was also excited to finally have someone explain how it all worked to me, even if it was a little overwhelming.
As I spent more time in the factory, I realized that what Alejandro had told me was true; we worked harder than any of our competitors, because we had to.
I had been working at Rodriguez Electric Resistor Company for three months now, but it still felt like I was learning something new every day.
One day, while I was watching production from the walkway above, Maria, our receptionist, came up to me with a worried expression on her face.
“A competitor has apparently been telling our customers that our resistors aren’t very efficient,” she said in Spanish.
I looked down at one of our workers who was using a magnifying glass to look over one of our resistors.
“Is it true?”
I asked her in Spanish.
Maria looked surprised by my question.
“I don’t know,” she said in Spanish, “but Alejandro says that we always have to be improving our products and reducing our costs in order to stay competitive.”
I knew that this was true, but for some reason it made me feel a little panicked.
I knew that we were doing everything we could to improve efficiency in production while at the same time ensuring that our resistors were of the highest quality, but I also realized that there was so much more to what we did than what I had initially thought.
I turned back to Maria.
“What else did Alejandro say?”
I asked her in Spanish.
“He also said that we have to be careful not to reduce costs too much because otherwise we’ll end up with a product that’s not efficient,” she replied in Spanish.
That was true.
I knew from watching production every day that our workers were already doing an incredible job of making our resistors as efficiently as possible while still ensuring that they were of the best quality.
I watched as one of our workers carefully removed one of our resistors from a machine and placed it under a microscope so they could inspect it.
We did this several times for each batch of resistors that we made in order to ensure that they were all perfect before they left our factory.
I turned back to Maria.
“Alejandro is not happy about this,” she said in Spanish.
“I’m not surprised,” I replied in Spanish.
He seemed like the kind of person who wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than perfection.
She looked worried about something.
“What are you going to do?”
she asked me in Spanish.
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly, “but Alejandro will probably think of something.I’ll just have to wait and see what he decides.” The way that Alejandro seemed to be able to come up with a solution to any problem always amazed me.
It felt like he was always one step ahead of everyone else because he was so smart.
The next day, Alejandro came into my office looking angry.
“He’s been telling people that we’re making up fake information about our products,” he said in Spanish when he saw me, “and he’s saying that we’re not being honest about how efficient our products are.”
I knew that Alejandro would never lie about something like that, so I was pretty sure that what he was saying was true.
“Do you think it’s true?”
I asked him in Spanish.
Alejandro shook his head, looking frustrated about something.
“No, I don’t think it’s true,” he said firmly, “but he’s right about one thing; we’re not doing as well as we should be.I think that we need to start working on some new products if we want to stay ahead of our competition.” I nodded at him, understanding what he meant.
Even though our resistors had always been the best on the market, if we wanted them to stay the best, then we had to keep coming up with new ideas for them on a regular basis.
We couldn’t just rely on the fact that we made good products, because if we did, then someone else would come along and take our place.
Two weeks later, I got my first lesson from Alejandro about how resistors were made and what made ours different from all of our competitors’ resistors.
Alejandro had come up with a new type of resistor that he thought would be even better than the one that we were already making.
My family had already been making resistors for more than fifty years, and we were already known as one of the best resistor companies in Spain.
But Alejandro said that he thought we could do even better, and he wanted me to help him.
I was really excited when he told me that, because it meant that I would get to be more involved with the production side of things.
I had always been interested in seeing how things were made, and now I was finally going to get my chance to find out.
But the process was much more complicated than I had ever imagined.
It took me a long time to figure everything out and learn how everything worked.
I spent many long hours after work trying to learn everything that I could about making resistors and how they worked.
The first few days were really hard for me because I wasn’t used to working in an environment that was as hot and noisy as a factory was.
I was used to sitting at a desk all day and doing calculations on a computer, so I wasn’t used to being on my feet all day or having to move around a lot.
By the end of my first week on the shop floor, I was so exhausted that I didn’t know if I would be able to keep going.
But I was determined to do it and prove to Alejandro and everyone else that I could.
I didn’t want them to think that I couldn’t handle the job or that I wasn’t smart enough to be able to learn how to make resistors.
So after a few days, I started to get used to the noise and the heat and the long hours on my feet.
And even though some parts of the job were still really hard for me and I had to work really hard to be able to keep up with everything, I was still determined to do it and not give up on myself.
Maria must have noticed how hard I was working because she started bringing me snacks every day when she came to see me during my breaks.
She would sit down and eat with me and talk to me about what I was learning and give me advice if I needed it.
I was really grateful for all the help that she gave me and tried to take her advice as much as possible.
During my second week on the shop floor, Alejandro decided that it was time for me to start learning how to make our resistors myself so that he could see if what he had been teaching me was sticking or not.
To make a resistor, you had to wind wire around a ceramic core until it reached a specific resistance value.
The wire had to be wound very tightly in order to get the right value, and you had to make sure that you didn’t wind too much wire around the core or else you would get a different value than what you were supposed to.
It was a lot harder than it looked, and it took me a long time before I finally got the hang of it.
At first, it was really hard for me because I wasn’t used to doing things that required a lot of strength or precision and accuracy at the same time.
I had always been better at working with numbers than working with my hands, so learning how to make resistors was a challenge for me and pushed me outside my comfort zone.
But I was determined to do it and prove Alejandro right about me, so I worked really hard at getting used to all the different parts of making a resistor and learning how to do them correctly and efficiently.
After I had been making resistors for a while, Alejandro decided that he wanted me to take some time off and go study some technical manuals and documents in his office for a while before I went back down on the shop floor.
I didn’t know why he wanted me to do this, but I did what he said anyway and started reading up on all sorts of different things related to resistors and how they were used in all kinds of different applications.
It was really interesting and I learned a lot of things that I never would have thought about before, like how important resistors were in all sorts of different electronics applications and how many different kinds of resistors there were out there.
I spent a lot of time in Alejandro’s office reading up on resistors and learning as much as I could about them before I went back down on the shop floor, where I started working with some of our more experienced employees and learning how to do all sorts of different things related to making resistors and working in production.
I thought that working in production would be a lot easier than it was, but I was really wrong about that.
As well as being really hard work and taking a lot of physical effort, it was also really hard for me to learn how to do everything right and keep up with everyone else around me.
But even though it was hard for me, I was still determined to do it and prove Alejandro right about me, so I worked really hard at doing all the different things I needed to do in order to be able to do my job properly and efficiently.
As well as working on the production line, I also spent a lot of time working with Alejandro in his office during my first couple of weeks at Rodriguez Electric Resistor Company.
Working with Alejandro was really nice because his office was quiet and he was very patient and kind with me as we went through all sorts of different technical documents and specifications for our resistors together in detail.
So it was a good way for me to be able to learn more about resistors and how they were made and what their specifications and performance characteristics were like without getting too overwhelmed by the noise and the heat and the stress of working on the shop floor.
Alejandro would sit across from me and ask me questions about what we were reading and what it meant, and he would quiz me on different resistor specifications and performance characteristics and push me to think critically about them and apply what I knew in order to come up with an answer that made sense.
It was really hard for me to do at first, but I found that the more time that I spent with him doing this, the easier it became for me to figure out what he wanted me to say and how to say it in a way that made sense.
As well as working with Alejandro in his office, I also spent a lot of time working with Maria in the break room and eating all of the snacks that she brought for me every day.
Fabricación
Maria brought snacks for everyone at the break room, but she always made sure to bring extra snacks for me because they all knew how hard I was working and how much I needed them in order to keep going.
Maria had a very bubbly personality, and she was always happy and smiling and willing to help out with whatever anyone needed her to do, so she worked really hard at making sure that there were always plenty of snacks for everyone to eat every day.
She also tried to keep track of all the different snack foods that everyone liked or didn’t like so that she could make sure that there would always be something available for them to eat when they got hungry and needed a snack break.
After our snack breaks were over, Maria would help me get my safety equipment back on again and take me back out onto the shop floor where I would spend the rest of the day learning how to make resistors from Alejandro.
Alejandro took his time teaching me how to do everything right, which was very nice because he never got impatient with me or frustrated with me when it took me a long time to get something done.
I really appreciated that about him because I knew that I wouldn’t have been able to do everything that he wanted me to do if he hadn’t been so patient with me and willing to take his time teaching me how to do things right without getting frustrated with me or mad at me for not being able to keep up with everyone else around me.
Alejandro taught me how to make all of our different types of resistors while I was working on the shop floor, including wirewound resistors and metal oxide resistors and all sorts of specialized resistors that were used in all sorts of different applications for all sorts of different purposes.
He also taught me how to choose which type of resistor we should make based on what kind of specifications and requirements they had for their resistance values and power ratings and other characteristics that might be important in determining which type of resistor we should use in order to build them right.
Alejandro also took his time teaching me how we could improve the way that we made our resistors so that they would be more efficient and more reliable than they were before by choosing better quality materials and components and using better quality techniques and procedures when we were building them so that they would last longer and work better than they did before.
He showed me what our manufacturing processes were like in detail and explained to me what I needed to do in order to make sure that I didn’t make any mistakes and do everything right so that our products would always meet or exceed all of our customers’ requirements and performance expectations.
Resistance values are very important in determining how well a resistor will function and how long it will last over time.
They are typically measured in ohms and are based on the amount of electrical resistance that a resistor has to the flow of electrical current that is passing through it.
Resistors will always have a tolerance value for their resistance values that will be specified by their manufacturers and expressed as a percentage to show how much their resistance values can vary from the nominal values that are specified by their manufacturers.
For example, if you have a resistor with a 5% tolerance value, then its resistance value can vary by up to 5% from its nominal value in either direction and still be considered within its tolerance limits, whereas if you have a resistor with a 1% tolerance value, then its resistance value can vary by up to 1% from its nominal value in either direction and still be considered within its tolerance limits.
There are many different ways to specify resistor values and many different ways to represent them, including color codes and numerical values, which can be expressed in a variety of units of measurement depending on what type of resistor you have and what kind of application you are using it for.
Resistance values for wirewound resistors are typically measured in ohms per square or ohms per centimeter squared, while resistance values for metal oxide resistors are typically measured in ohms per square or ohms per centimeter squared with a specific temperature coefficient that is specified by their manufacturers to show how much their resistance values will change over time as they heat up or cool down due to changes in the ambient temperature.
Resistance values for other types of resistors can be measured in other units of measurement depending on what type of resistor you have and what kind of application you are using it for.
They can also be expressed in terms of percentage values or numerical values with units of measurement that are commonly used for measuring electrical properties like power and voltage and current.
Resistance values are very important in determining how well a resistor will function and how long it will last over time, so it is very important for us to be able to measure and specify them correctly so that our products will always meet or exceed all of our customers’ requirements and performance expectations.
Alejandro also taught me how to read and interpret color codes for resistors as part of my training because they are very important in determining what their resistance values are and how they can be used in all sorts of different applications for all sorts of different purposes.
Color codes will typically have four or five or six color bands that are arranged in specific patterns and sequences to represent specific numerical values and multipliers and tolerances that can be used to determine what their resistance values are and how much they can vary from their nominal values in either direction based on their color codes.