The Factory – Introduction

a long time ago I worked in a factory, there were three shifts and the machinery ran nonstop, 7 days a week except on Christmas and Thanksgiving. I’ve worked all three shifts but preferred the 2nd shift which is 3PM to 11:30 PM. 2nd shift was awesome for being in a band, going out, being creative, but not so great for seeing shows or shopping, unless it was a late show. I met some very very interesting people in the factory. From time to time I find myself thinking, “whatever happened to so & so” and once in a great while I’ll bump into one of my old factory mates. Sometimes I’ll spot one and hide and pray they don’t see or remember me. This may sound crappy but you have to remember there were some really good people and some very bad people there. I looked very different back then and have been mere feet away from an ex-boss and had them look oddly at me but not recognize me. There were at least 30 different departments and each existed in its own world. I wanted to visit as many different worlds as possible, but you had to be careful not to get trapped. Here’s how it worked… to get a raise you needed points. Worker bees got points by being certified in specific tasks. Different certifications were worth different points. Oddly enough people with in departments wouldn’t let people outside their department how much potential points could be earned in their department. Once you earned 30 points you were eligible for a raise. One of the problems in this system was that in most departments you couldn’t earn more than 29 points because there weren’t that many jobs that you could be certified in. Yes there was such a thing as a job that was not worth certification points. These were fun jobs like filling up the AI machine with solder paste or staging & stacking 15 pound heat sinks or my favorite…unpacking materials from boxes. It was always fun to open every box (there could be 20 on a skid) like it was Christmas which included screaming with glee and thanking everyone around you. Anyway…. I wanted a raise every review period, so I was constantly looking for new things to learn, to hopefully be certified in, and by default moved around a lot in search of adventure. I worked in many different positions, met lots of different people, learned more than I ever wanted to know about manufacturing, factories, politics, and my favorite….people.