Published 10/29/2025

Shop Talk: Red Pencils, Erasers and Unexpected Promotions

A rookie engineer struggles with an angle iron drawing, fails repeatedly and unexpectedly earns a promotion — leaving colleagues silent in disbelief.

Gary Golichowski, Tom Smith Industries Inc.

My first engineering job was with a company that had an early CAD system and a lot of legacy pencil drawings. I had just completed my onboarding and as the "new kid," I was assigned a drafting board to use. Those engineers with seniority were given the few CAD stations to do new work and the rest of us did the mundane drawings of simple parts.

Being the newest hire came with its own special challenges beyond simple drawings. The worst "new kid" task I got stuck with involved a railroad tank car filled with pesticides and a 19-foot deep pit — but that's an entirely different story for another day!

A week after I started, another engineer (also just from college) joined the rest of us newbies on the drafting boards. He was assigned a drawing that was to be a piece of angle iron with six through-holes. What should have been a straightforward task turned into a week-long ordeal that became the talk of the drafting room.

Day after day, we watched this poor soul wrestle with what seemed like the simplest possible drawing. The gentleman with the angle iron assignment would submit his drawing to the "drawing checker" — a senior engineer who reviewed our work before it went to the shop to be made. Each submission came back with tons of red pencil identifying his mistakes.

One of the other new engineers, observing the mounting pile of rejected attempts, commented dryly: "I hope the checker has a gross of red pencils, as he's going to need them." Being a helpful group at heart😉, we told the new guy he was allowed to stop with the eraser when he could see the color of the drafting board through the vellum.

The supervisor finally came over to the obviously distressed junior engineer

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and asked, "What was the problem?" He replied that he could not, for the life of him, see the object in his mind to enable him to draw it. We felt bad for this person as it looked like he was in a grim situation when he was led into the V.P.'s office.

When he came out of the office, his demeanor was measurably improved. I asked the supervisor what had transpired. He answered flatly that the junior engineer had been promoted!

The reaction from the rest of our drafting room crew was immediate and unmistakable. Upon hearing that the guy got promoted, they all exhibited what I can only describe as the "trout look" — a facial expression characterized by the pendulant lower jaw and gaping mouth, generally signifying total confusion.

Almost without hesitation, I replied to the supervisor, "Well, if I'd known that was the result of having no drafting skills, I'd have told you a week ago I couldn't draw either!"

As he walked away, he replied with perfect deadpan delivery: "Chalk it up to another missed opportunity on your part!"

And that's how I learned that sometimes in engineering, the inability to see something clearly enough to draw it might just mean you're meant for bigger things — though I made sure to keep my drafting skills sharp, just in case.