Not Safe for Work

The year was 1984, and one of my buddies helped me get a job at a small production factory in Miamisburg. I can’t remember the name of the place, but it was my first (and last) time working in a factory. I think everyone, especially if you live around Dayton, needs to experience factory work at some point in your life. That way, you can judge for yourself how much the job sucks.

Or, you may like that type of work. I’m not saying that working in a factory is not hard, honest work, or that the people who do those jobs are not hard-working people. For me, doing the same thing, day in and day out, didn’t leave me a lot of room for creativity. I daydreamed most of the time, which put me behind in production. So, what did the factory produce?  

Injection molded refrigerator parts and bowls for restaurant salad bars. It worked mostly like this: There was a guy who took sheets of plastic and placed it in a machine that would heat it and press it down over a mold. That would produce maybe eight to ten bowls in one sheet of plastic. That guy would then stack the molded sheets on a wooden skid for a guy on a table saw who would take the sheets and cut the bowls out individually. That guy would put them into stacks of twenty, and carry them to a guy who did the finish work on a band sander.

My job was finishing white plastic refrigerator drip trays on a band sander. What a joy that was. At the end of every day, I looked like I’d just walked through a snow storm. My station was next to the guy who cut out the salad bowls on a table saw. Remember, this is 1984, and safety standards hadn’t exactly caught on yet. You could also say the same about common sense. The workers were not given, or encouraged, to wear gloves, safety glasses, ear protection, or safety shoes. If fact, if you complained about it to the shop foreman, you were considered a trouble maker and your hours were cut. When I asked for gloves, the shop foreman told me that, “Gloves hamper production,” and since I was the slowest in the shop, he recommended I didn’t use them if I wanted to keep my job. I think I would have been safer if I’d worked for the Mafia.

Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. Common sense. One day, while I was on my 400th plastic drip tray of the day, I heard the guy on the table saw yell out. I turned in time to see him holding up his right hand with his middle finger split down the middle to the second knuckle. Pretty gruesome. I guess I should have warned you before I typed that. Anyway, the table saw did have an emergency shut off switch, which the shop foreman ran up and hit, stopping the saw. He then wrapped the guy’s hand in a dirty, oily rag, and led him out to the parking lot. It’s worth saying that the shop foreman was the most experienced factory worker in the shop. He was also missing a finger or two.

I figured I’d never see that guy again. But no, he was back the next day with his finger bandaged up, working at the same table saw station. Why? Because he had to and needed the money. That, and I heard that the owner talked him out of filing some kind of work-related injury claim. I’m pretty sure that’s illegal now. If it’s not, it should be.

Seeing that guy’s finger split in two is an image I’ll never forget. But the thing I remember most about working there was the fork lift driver. This dude was a total hippie from the 60’s. He had long hair and a beard, peace sign patches sewed on all his jackets, and every shirt he wore was either a concert tee-shirt or tie-dyed. I don’t know how I ended up talking to him, but he found out I liked Rock music and he told me about going to Woodstock in ’69. For me, the guy was an instant legend. He told stories in detail about all the drugs he did, all the women he had sex with, and seeing Jimmy Hendrix, The Who, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, the Grateful Dead, and others. He also bought booze for me at the state store down the street because I wasn’t 21 yet. Well, he didn’t buy it for me. I gave him $10 and he bought me a $5 bottle of whatever and kept the change. It wasn’t even good booze. I was too young to know what good booze was in 1984. The only thing $5 got you was a bottle of rot-gut and a killer hangover.

Don’t get the wrong idea, I wasn’t asking this guy to buy booze for me all the time. I didn’t make that much money. I think $10 was the equivalent of two-hours pay, and after taxes it was only $7.75, or something like that. I spent most of my money on gas, fast-food, and trying to impress girls. It didn’t take long for me to figure out I should have studied harder for my SATs.

Girl: “Where do you go to college?”

Me: “I don’t. I work at a plastics factory making refrigerator parts.”

Girl: “Oh.”

Me: “Hey, where are you going?”