Factory Floor Education by Ken Cutler

I talked about my first paying job, at the local public library, in Learned From Less. I discussed experiences from my second job in Not Long Remembered. My third job, as a temporary factory worker, also made a big impression on me.

During the second part of the summer after my college freshman year, I signed up with a temporary employment agency. They would call me most weekday mornings to offer work assignments at pay slightly above minimum wage. There was no penalty for turning down a job.

Many of my assignments were at an industrial flooring factory in the town next to mine. It’s still in business, so let’s give it a fictitious name: Rockstrong.

Most of my assignments were on the 3 to 11:30 p.m. backshift. On my first day there, I got a clue that it was going to be a bit different from my other jobs. A tall, muscular worker in his late 20s named Stan came up to me and asked how old I was, where I lived, and other standard questions. Then, in the same friendly tone, he asked, “Do you smoke pot?” I answered in the negative and the conversation was over. A little while later, he came over to me and said that it was okay if I didn’t toke. I was still cool, he assured me.

My job responsibilities varied depending on the needs for the shift. Some nights I worked on the assembly line. I would package several cans of epoxy, a bag of sand, and a mixing paddle into a box. I would then push the box through a taping machine. The nights went fast when I worked that position. Early on, though, I was warned by a worker named Tom not to work so hard. “You temps come in and make us union guys look bad. You’re only here for a little while, but we’re stuck here all the time.” His argument actually made sense to me. I took the hint and, in any case, I wasn’t looking for trouble at $3.45 an hour.

At 8 p.m. sharp each night, Doug, a man built like an NFL linebacker, would stop the assembly line and announce that he needed a bathroom break. I found it curious that rather than head to the bathroom, he would walk through the rollup door into the factory parking lot. I later found out he was buying quaaludes from a local drug dealer. No wonder he was always so mellow for the last few hours of the shift.

Sometimes they wouldn’t need me on the assembly line, but the temporary agency still had an assignment for me at Rockstrong, a five-hour janitorial shift. The task was to clean the bathrooms and break area, as well as vacuum the offices. At most, there were two hours of work. Even cleaning at my most leisurely pace, I still had lots of down time. Often, I would fill the time just resting in a comfortable office chair, and other times I’d chat with coworkers.

In the office area, there was an honor system snack box, apparently provided by an outside vendor. It included a generous assortment of candy and salty snacks, all nicely arranged in a cardboard display box that included a slot for payment. I was amused to see a note on it: “The last time we collected, this box was $21 short. We’re sure this was just an oversight. Please remember to put in what you owe.” The amount on the note increased as the summer went on.

I learned from other workers that Stan had been a high school state wrestling champion in his glory days. One evening I came into work and noticed that he wasn’t around. I found out Stan had been fired for smoking pot on the job. Mark, a new supervisor who worked the backshift, had apparently been the one to catch him. A couple weeks later, I clocked in and was surprised to see Stan was back. The union had gotten him reinstated. This was not good news for Mark, a short, pudgy guy in his early 30s who was studying computers. Every time Mark walked by, Stan would either give him the evil eye or make a loud comment to a coworker about how Mark had ratted him out.

My friend Dan also worked at Rockstrong sometimes. Near the end of the summer, he saw Stan confront Mark in the dark, lonely parking lot after the evening shift. “Hey man, why’d you rat me out?  That wasn’t cool. If it’s something personal, we can settle it right now.” To emphasize his last point, Stan slammed his hand on a car hood. Meanwhile, his friend Doug—the linebacker—was shadow boxing under a nearby streetlight. Mark was understandably scared out of his wits. His car keys were rattling in his shaking hands as he stammered out, “no…no…nothing personal.…” All at once Stan and Doug broke out laughing and went on their way.

A couple times I was given jobs that I absolutely loathed. The worst one consisted of standing at a wall with a hole in it, scooping sand out and putting it into small plastic bags. Eight hours of solitary, mindless work. I didn’t even have music to distract me. Another time I was paired with a Rockstrong employee at a machine that filled hundred-pound bags with some kind of powder. The regular employee’s job was to push the start button on the machine. My job, as the temp, was to load the hundred-pound bags on pallets. It took a while for my back to recover from that one. Still, it was preferable to the mental torture of sand bagging.

None of the workers at Rockstrong wanted to be there. Many of them had plans for moving on, such as training to be an HVAC technician. Few of the regular workers had been there for more than a couple of years.

Here are some life lessons I learned that summer:

Education is important. I grew up in a family where education was highly valued. Hearing firsthand about the limited options available to the Rockstrong employees complemented that message nicely.

Activity is preferrable to boredom. I liked the fast pace of the assembly line. I detested the solitary drudgery of sand bagging. Just because a job is easy doesn’t mean it’s not stressful.

Learn to play in the sandbox. I had little in common with the Rockstrong employees. They were the roughest characters I’d ever rubbed shoulders with. Although we’d never be buddies, I was able to get along fine with them. As a temp employee, I was below them in the company hierarchy, which I think helped them accept me. Had I acted superior because I was a “college boy,” things undoubtedly would have gone differently.

Find a mission. Some folks, like my Rockstrong coworkers, simply have jobs, many others have careers, and a few fortunate people approach their work as a calling. I’ve always aspired to be in that last category. Having that mindset helps to overcome the times of drudgery that inevitably arise, whatever you do for a living. It’s a good way to approach retirement, as well.

Quality can be a fragile thing. At the factory, there were lots of opportunities for product quality to be compromised, not the least by the untrained temporary workers that were hired. For example, there were wide variations in the amounts of sand contained in the bags included in the boxes I assembled. I often wondered how that would play out on the customer end.

I’m glad I enrolled in Real Life 101 at Rockstrong when I was 18. The education I received on the factory floor was like nothing I would ever learn from a textbook or college class.