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Americans, as a group, tend to spurn the pitiful wages, dire
living conditions and monotonous labor that allow us to buy
cheap dishwashers and handsome, yet affordable lawn furniture.
Consequently, the factory workers of America are a vanishing
breed.
PrancyHorse.com is delighted to announce a new
feature that chronicles the life of The American Factory Worker
as he tries to make it through yet another graveyard shift. By Brant Wellman
Training - Day One
• Excitement for a new job.
• Intimidation of a new place.
• Completely foreign and deafeningly loud.
Spools of aluminum six feet across spin their sheets into
huge machines - aluminum presses actually. At least I’ve figured
out what things are pretty quickly. Of course I don’t have
anything to do with these monsters. My monster is at the other
end of the line. That’s where the finished product comes out and
there are people bagging them up. That’s my job, a bagger. I get
dropped off with one of these baggers and told his name, and
that he’s going to be training me. Of course, this is told to me
by yelling in my ear, which already has an earplug in it, and
all I really catch is that he’s going to be training me. It’ll
be 3 days before I get Todd’s name right.
So, I jump right in (get tossed in is more like it) and start
pulling off these long, brown baguette bags full of ends and
quickly pull an empty bag onto the end of this tube where the
ends are forced out. Oh, did I mention I work in a factory that
manufactures aluminum cans. Actually, only the ends of the cans,
and to be more specific, only the top ends – pop top and all. I
bag them up, stack them on a pallet, and watch them get taken
away by the forklift.
Quickly is the plan, but not really the outcome. I watch Todd do
it and I’m amazed at the fluidity and coordination he shows as
he lifts the full bag off the tray with one hand and pulls an
empty bag on with the other. All of this happens in one complete
motion. Then he folds the bag closed and swings it onto a stack
of other full bags on a pallet. Then he turns and repeats the
process two more times to empty the 3 trays on the auto-bagger
(that’s what my monster is called). He gets about a 20 second
break, during which he yells something in my ear about how to
properly stack the pallet, but by then the 3 bags are again
full. I jump in again and give it another shot. Removing the
full bag is no problem, but figuring out how to get the empty
one on is. Fortunately, Todd is very cool and backs me up
(unlike some of the other training stories I’ve heard). For
every one bag I stack, Todd stacks three. I’ve got a long way to
go.
Yup, quite a job I’ve got here on the End Line, or as some of
the old timers around here say, The End of the Line.
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