The Factory
Now there is a bit you should know before you judge me as some hand moisturizing effeminate; I’m a working man, I have no problem with grunt work. At the end of the day, when your jeans are dirty, your arms are cut, and your back feels like its about to crumble into dust, this is when you realize what your worth is in this world. You sit down and look back on your day; you sit down in some seat and it just feels like the most comfortable seat in the entire world. It’s an emotional high, it’s a physical high. I’ve been the working man for 8 years, but the factory man is nothing more than a slave, a mere machine.
I get lost, the place is 2 million square feet. I have trouble finding my department whenever I park in a different lot. These fuckers know the whole plant like the back of their hand. They’ve spent the majority of their lives here and for what? What experiences do they garner, what memories? “One time Joe and that secretary were fucking in the broom closet, hahaha.” This is one of the best from the scarce quantity of precious memories which they will acquire from their god-forsaken asylum. It’s the same day in and day out; it’s all a waste if you ask me. I need adventure and enterprise; at the very least give me some form of variety, or let me dig my own grave here and now before I’m forced to look back to see nothing but an expendable life of indifference.
“How old are you?”
“21.”
“Really? You look 18?”
“How old are you?”
“25.”
“So is it better to be 21 and look 18 or to be 25 and look 35?”
Why are factories such miserable places to work? The pay is nothing, and shift work is hell. There is no freedom in it; live and die by someone else’s schedule, fuck it. I’ll push my paper in my air-conditioned office for twice the salary or work construction for an equal salary where I can take off whenever I feel like it. No more 10 hours standing on concrete slinging sheet metal onto conveyor hooks doing twice my share of the work because my partner is a lazy asshole.
“We have a meeting tomorrow at 5 so you can either come in and you will be working by yourself or you can sleep in for an extra hour and come in at 6, but it’s up to you.”
“I’ll come in and work.”
“We just don’t want you standing around doing nothing, because people would do that you know.”
“Do you want me to come in or not, because I will just sleep in if it’s going to worry you.”
“No, no, you can come in if you want. We just don’t want to pay you for standing around and doing nothing, because there won’t be anyone here to supervise you.”
“I know the $9 I would make in that hour while you’re all in your meeting would break the company if I didn’t actually do the work, so just to be clear, you want me to come in tomorrow, right?”
I worked the factory job for a week. I couldn’t take it any more, and so I quit. It’s back to construction, where at least I still get that sense of accomplishment at the end of a hard day. This never happens at the factory, you never get that sense of accomplishment or have that sense of pride in your work. It doesn’t matter how fast you work, there is always another pallet, and it is continually insipid. There is no finish, there is no end, there is nothing to look back on and there is even less to look forward to. Tomorrow? Tomorrow will be another tediously dreary day. Work hard? Why? It doesn’t make a bit of difference; there is no reward, just another pallet.