it's four-twenty on a saturday morning -- i say this to illustrate the sleeping/waking schedule of a steady 3rd-shift worker, which is not only opposite to a dayshifter's pattern of life, but more toiled & tenuous, especially in matters of sleep & restfulness.
thursday nights are my fridays. after work yesterday i stayed up watching "montel" past 10 a.m., then slept until ann came home early from work at 1:30. my point, i think, has been made in regards to living
a vampire's reality with daylight & midnight, so i'll skip the rigamarole of listing time i did what as much as possible -- but after 3 mere beers & a bowl cuddled around ann's side in our warm bed watching an interesting video (THE GENERAL), i'd venture to note i was snoozing by 8:30. i know i missed the end of the film.
it was a rough work-week. my supervisor is a cock & a cock-sucker.
sunday night i ran a g.e. mold job in the 100-ton #1 press. the part is named a "yoke" (so the joke is to say: the yoke's on you!): yoke-shaped, donut-shaped, gray, with a dozen holes & slots & too much excess flash
the operator must file. because mold-repair is a joke (a yoke!) one slot
is especially thick & one needs to stab & stab into the supposed slotted space -- pain shooting up right forearm. but that isn't the worst thing about the job -- the mix, a mixture of fiberglass strands & resins & filler & styrene the mixtures noxiously make, is placed in the form of a 500 pound slightly gummy gray rock in a cardboard box-top & wrapped in cellophane to retain a semblance of moisture altho the styrene
evaporates quickly. try pulling a gummy gray rock apart. the part, this
particular yoke in this particular mold, weighs 1.29 pounds which is
weighed on a digital scale in a gummy clump & then formed by hand,
rolled & stretched into 2 round gray snakes that must overlap inside the
mold. & of course this mold in the 100-ton #1 means the operator needs
to reach underneath the overhead platen & ram about 3 feet: one wld be
sliced into a waist-high trunk of a human body if the press closed while
loading the mold.
have you ever sniffed styrene fumes? mold temperature (hissing, steamy steam-lines) is about 280 degrees. tonnage cavitates about a fluttering 100 tons psi, & the hydraulic pumps roar & scream like banshees &
microphoned monkeys. i always wear these green, rubbery ear-plugs. over
20 years in amerika's dungeon factories have certainly dulled my
hearing. i always wear my safety glasses too.
the engineering set-up sheet says the cure time, the time the press is closed & the mix bakes, is 2 minutes, when the press opens & the part is removed, reloaded, & shut again by pressing a pair of old green buttons.
deflash the part, put in specified box on specified pallet in specified
manner, & make another preform in 2 minutes. fuck. the set-up sheet says
i'm to make 140 parts in a shift.
i busted my sweaty derriere for an even 100 with 9 rejects, no-fills when i cldn't fit the gooey gray snakes into the 2-inch circle of the
mold & the 1.29 pounds was pinched off too much. my supervisor,
nicknamed "gilligan" or "stupidvisor" behind his back, only wants
numbers that make him look good. he wasn't happy with my numbers.
i've had it round & round with the idiot. he'll say ANYTHING to intimidate & manipulate for higher numbers. i don't discuss the truth
with him anymore. he only wants numbers. 100% numbers. yet this
shit-head cldn't physically run shit -- an extremely small number of
readers reading this now have workingman hands & arms enough, let alone
a lazy fuck supervisor who makes $3 less an hour than me (let us applaud
union membership). i was sore & over-worked at 100 parts, but on monday
i slept from 9:30 a.m. to near 3:00 p.m., with an hour nap around 7:00.
monday night my asshole supervisor assigned me the 600-ton, another g.e. job, but the part, called a primary for testing electrical conductivity, weighs 30 pounds. a new, manipulated, cock-sucking, lobotomized hire
they're paying 5 dollars an hour less than me ran 73 primaries. the
standard is 77. oh, there is so much involved on this job, i hesitate
here with my carpal-tunneled hands on the keyboard. suffice it to point
out i produced 62 parts with one reject & a mighty sore back. 62 times
30 equals 1,860 pounds i lugged the shift. & the flash, holes,
fiberglass dust, styrene fumes, the ejector pumps howling, the cowboy
kid hotdog & his stupidity, the shit-mouthed supervisor, oil-leaks, bad
lighting, on & on. but again, i slept tuesday a good 7 hours total.
tuesday night i had to finish the 3 preforms on the table at the 600-ton 2nd-shift cowboy didn't have time to run, then run the 500-ton birdsboro press, surely one of the most ancient & maintenence-neglected press in
the shop. hands hurting, knees creaky, white fiberglass dust caking my
nostrils, a bad sleep day.
wednesday night the 500-ton birdsboro again. weak itchy sleep in bright sunshine. visions of stabbing gilligan in the face with my large round file.
thursday night: transferred to injection on the 300-ton with a 35 second cure-timer on automatic with a 6-cavity insulator mold -- standard something like 4,600 parts. suffice it to say i ran 1,788.
it's 6 in the morning now. ann will be waking soon, she works at the mall today like most saturdays. i'm going to smoke, drink more coffee, get on the internet, maybe do some e-mail i owe, i don't know. maybe
i'll end up asleep by noon. i'm thinking about calling off work sunday
night to fuck the stupidvisor. maybe i'll do a contract "no report", not
even phone in, & take a written warning. if i do it again before next
january it's 3 days off. then 5 days off after that. fourth time in a
year it's termination.
that prospect surely is tempting.
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