Blue Collar blues...
So I'm working a 10 week gig at a place called Arlington Industries up in Scranton. Oh, it sounded like a pretty sweet deal, only having to work Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. - 3 p.m. Just like a regular job, right? No stress, always know when I have to show up for work and to put that big, fat sweet cherry on top, I'd be saving four grand to take with me to Ecuador next May. Well, there is definitely insane amounts of stress, mainly because the factory is so damn loud that we have to wear earplugs constantly. Not to mention dorky chemistry class safety glasses we have to be wearing at all times on the plant floor. Oh, and the shoes. We had to go out and buy sixty dollar special shoes from Quint's Army-Navy store in downtown Scranton because Arlington's got some kind of insurance deal there. Even though the lady who interviewed us told us we could wear any old kind of shoe besides sneakers. That day better count towards my bonus or Arlington will have hell to pay.
This job is making me a total basket case. We go and sit for eight hours, running machines so that we can produce some off the wall part that I didn't ever even know someone would even want to buy. Apparently they're for electrical fittings, but I made about two thousand parts before my boss, "Joe", told me in his broken Laotian English what the hell I was making, over and over and over...You get the point. I basically sat and pressed a button all fucking day. I'm sure I'll be losing a few IQ points this summer. But, as usual, there have been a few interesting characters to ease my suffering. For one thing, Chris and I wore Laverne and Shirley shirts the first day of work, and a few of our fellow factory workers got the joke and appreciated the humor. One guy even asked if he could be Fonzy and another asked to be Squiggy. We don't even know their real names. And then there's "Smoke Lady", who sits at lunch and in the course of twenty minutes sucks down about five cigarretes, her gnarled teeth perfectly arranged and spaced for holding multiple Misty Lite 100s without even having to use her lips to keep them perched in her mouth. Squiggy came over to me as I was sitting at my machine, my brain in auto-pilot, and told me he was getting a real kick out of "Shirley" falling asleep at her machine. I told him my machine was also really boring, and he just laughed in my face and said "Hahaha! They're ALL BORING!!!" and walked away to get a drink at the water fountain that has a sign over it that says: "Get your drink and move on. Don't disrupt other employees on your way to and from getting a drink". Woah. Apparently I was even having nightmares about Arlington, saying things like "If I were at a real job, I'd be on the clock right now, right" or "I'm just desensitized to it all" in my sleep at 2 a.m. That hasn't happened in a while, so this means it's pretty bad.
That job sucks. But, I suppose I know now how most Blue Collar folks feel, and why they're always so damn bitter and have a habit of tipping one or two or three or more back at the end of the day. It'll be pretty sweet spending that money in a year, though. That's all that keeps me going back.
This job is making me a total basket case. We go and sit for eight hours, running machines so that we can produce some off the wall part that I didn't ever even know someone would even want to buy. Apparently they're for electrical fittings, but I made about two thousand parts before my boss, "Joe", told me in his broken Laotian English what the hell I was making, over and over and over...You get the point. I basically sat and pressed a button all fucking day. I'm sure I'll be losing a few IQ points this summer. But, as usual, there have been a few interesting characters to ease my suffering. For one thing, Chris and I wore Laverne and Shirley shirts the first day of work, and a few of our fellow factory workers got the joke and appreciated the humor. One guy even asked if he could be Fonzy and another asked to be Squiggy. We don't even know their real names. And then there's "Smoke Lady", who sits at lunch and in the course of twenty minutes sucks down about five cigarretes, her gnarled teeth perfectly arranged and spaced for holding multiple Misty Lite 100s without even having to use her lips to keep them perched in her mouth. Squiggy came over to me as I was sitting at my machine, my brain in auto-pilot, and told me he was getting a real kick out of "Shirley" falling asleep at her machine. I told him my machine was also really boring, and he just laughed in my face and said "Hahaha! They're ALL BORING!!!" and walked away to get a drink at the water fountain that has a sign over it that says: "Get your drink and move on. Don't disrupt other employees on your way to and from getting a drink". Woah. Apparently I was even having nightmares about Arlington, saying things like "If I were at a real job, I'd be on the clock right now, right" or "I'm just desensitized to it all" in my sleep at 2 a.m. That hasn't happened in a while, so this means it's pretty bad.
That job sucks. But, I suppose I know now how most Blue Collar folks feel, and why they're always so damn bitter and have a habit of tipping one or two or three or more back at the end of the day. It'll be pretty sweet spending that money in a year, though. That's all that keeps me going back.