Thread by @katietiedrich

*staggers into the room clutching a bunch of papers* okay babies let's fix the scare floor

https://twitter.com/katietiedrich/status/1096944928167477248

first, to introduce the work conducted in the Monsters, Inc power plant: a two-person scare team consists of a scarer and an assistant. the scarer walks through a door portal to the human world, scares the child inside, and walks out.

doors are delivered to a scarer's station by a ceiling-mounted rail; the scream energy produced inside the door is collected in a big yellow tank hooked up to it via a locking frame.

the scarer's assistant is responsible for using the door control console on the left side of the frame to call down an assigned door, as well as changing out the scream tank hooked up to the right side when it's full

the assistant also seems to be responsible for completing the majority of the filing and paperwork

I've analyzed some screenshots and have attempted to recreate the basic layout of Scare Floor F, which is the production environment shown in the movie, and have identified the primary features of the room (blue text) and each team's individual scare station (black)

as you can see, the individual scare team workstation is poorly laid out. at a minimum, for each door, the assistant has to take a file from the desk (1), swipe the attached keycard at the console (2), and return to the desk for the next file and whatever paperwork is implied

if the tank needs to be changed, they also have to cross over the scarer staging area (red arrow) to access it (3). one thing that bothered me is that there only seems to be one tank present at a time at each work station, forcing the assistant to regularly move each out (4)

(occasionally you'll see assistants pushing a dolly cart full of tanks, but this is problematic for REASONS I WILL GET INTO)

anyway here are some of the problems with Scare Floor F when you consider the production environment as a whole

it's shown that everyone enters and exits the factory floor via the main entrance on the right and uses the center aisle to access their station, potentially walking in front of monsters trying to do their jobs. those huge tank carts are also transported through this aisle!!

this center aisle is also right under the door rail, which is a fall hazard for anything and anyone under it. the whole center aisle, if not the entire floor, should be a mandatory hardhat zone. assistants do wear hardhats SOMETIMES but enforcement seems pretty lax

speaking of personal protective equipment (PPE), the scarers wear NONE, EVER. not only are they constantly at risk of being crushed by a falling door, they are also knowingly entering a hazmat environment every time they go through a door to the human world!

despite extreme proximity to toxic human children, which can purportedly KILL THEM WITH ONE TOUCH, they don't even wear gloves or eye protection. if there's a monster OSHA they are ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL

so anyway the first thing I would do is designate the center aisle as an active production area and restrict traffic only to monsters that are actively scaring or switching out scare tanks. the floor can be colored to indicate this; the cyan here demarcates general traffic areas.

scarers should only access their lanes by walking up through the south side; nobody should ever just cut across someone else's lane

I thought about adding physical barriers between the station lanes, but I can see the benefit of keeping the floor open to allow for emergency transport of large safety equipment, door shredders, etc. maybe at least put up some light stanchions between them, though

also, move the door console off of the door frame and onto the assistant's desk. this way, the assistant minimizes the amount of time they spend in or near hazardous areas!

I made an assumption for this layout that the tank hookup needs to be very close to the door to work. if this is the case, I would at least move the tanks to the left side of the door and keep separate lanes for the assistant and the scarer so they aren't bumping into each other

I would also turn that big empty space behind the doors into a tank control area, demarcated as orange. both empty tanks (to be filled) and full tanks (to be transported out) could be stationed behind the door frames

you've also now got a big area to move tank carts through without worrying about navigating around other workers.

as an aside, I think it would be worth having a tank transporter as a separate role, rather than making the scarer assistants do it

this could just be someone who periodically collects full tanks and runs them out. that way you're minimizing the amount of time scarers are waiting around while their assistants are getting more tanks ready, and also the amount of time monsters cross directly under the DOOR RAIL

also, christ, lower the door rail. not only does it reduce the potential fall distance, it's super inefficient up there. it takes like thirty seconds for the frame panels to come up and grab the door and lock it into place

also, I didn't mention this before, but the doors enter and exit from the same point on the left wall, using the same rail???

this means you can't have doors coming and going to different scare stations at the same time, so either the entire floor is receiving doors at the same rate (inefficient for faster-scaring monsters) or there's some kind of queue system (DEFINITELY inefficient)

the easiest way to fix this would be to add a separate exit point for the rail and keep it one-way, but I'l give the benefit of the doubt that the left wall is the only access point to the door vault and ignore this issue for today

honestly there's a lot I would change about the door rail system goddamn

but if the scare tanks don't need to be in close proximity to the door frame and can instead be hooked up remotely by running that cabling under the floor, we can get even better!!
if you move the tanks to the south side of the room, you can run the door rail along the north wall

now the assistants never have to enter the scaring lane, you have a big safe work area far away from your potential hazards, and a much more controlled active scare area (scarea)

in conclusion, I'm not fun to watch movies with