Blue-collar workers deserve any credit they get

Blue-collar workers deserve any credit they get
David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 07.31.2007
A friend of mine who works in a factory likes to tease me about the easy working conditions here at the office.
I don’t mind egging him on, talking about those days the air conditioning couldn’t keep the temperature below 80 degrees, that paper cut that stung for hours or how difficult it is to be here by 9 a.m. some days.
It’s good-natured ribbing because he and I both know the truth: Factory work makes this country what it is. It can be absolutely miserable this time of year. Anyone who clocks in and out each day to build the things we can’t live without deserves our gratitude.
Anyone who wants a white-collar job should try a blue-collar one on for size for at least one summer. It teaches you what America’s all about.
I spent my summers back in college (way back, it seems some days) working at the Whirlpool factory in Findlay. As temporary summer help, I rotated from job to job throughout the summer. Two particularly miserable jobs kept me motivated to return to college to earn my degree.
Imagine it’s 90 degrees outside on a muggy summer day. Then dream of wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. Then stand next to a furnace.
Now for the fun part: Lift one 50-pound dishwasher tub from a line coming out of the furnace, and place it on another line. Repeat … for 15 minutes at a time.
That job had its perks. Because of the heat, you got to sit and rest for 15 minutes of every hour. The rest of the time, you rotated among three jobs, which all involved lifting those dishwasher tubs.
It was still one of those jobs that reminded me it’s better to use that muscle in my head than the ones in my arms and back all day long. It ranked right up there with stacking bales of hay throughout summers in high school in terms of exhausting jobs.
The second miserable task during those summers involved the most tedious work I’ve done to this day: Cleaning spray paint nozzles on third shift.
You’d be amazed how much gunk builds up in a spray nozzle over the course of a day. So each night, after the second-shift workers went home, I was down on my knees with a wire brush, cleaning out each individual hole where paint sprayed out.
The job didn’t really take a full eight hours. If you were an ambitious college kid, you could finish in three hours. If you were a smart college kid, you could drag the work out through six or seven hours so a supervisor didn’t make you do more jobs in other areas of the factory.
Unfortunately for me, I was more ambitious than smart.
I remember talking with one of my co-workers at the time, a man in his mid-40s named Oscar. I asked him how he survived the past 20 years in the factory with another 20 on the way, knowing the job wouldn’t change.
His answer was simple: “Don’t think. It’ll make you miserable.”
I hear factories are better these days, letting the line workers make some day-to-day decisions on how to best accomplish their goals. Still, the monotony of a real factory was never for me, and I greatly prefer the word factory here.
My summers in a factory gave me a chance to see how the real America works. I know I’m not alone in my respect for the working man and woman in America. A trip around the cable TV dial shows a dozen programs highlighting how everyday people make extraordinary products.
Everyone should take the opportunity to work in a factory sometime in his or her life. It’s an eye-opening experience that makes you recognize the true value of hard work.

Playing hooky

Today I'm playing hooky from work, sort of.
It's a planned day off, since I worked Saturday night. But still, it's 8 a.m. and I'm still wearing my pajamas, so it seems like something nefarious must be going on here.
It sort of reminds me of those care-free days of summer when you're in elementary or high school. You wake up when you feel like it, and you do what you feel like.
That "what you feel like" part is what amuses me. Back in those days I'd watch TV or go visit a friend. Today's list seems more like chores...
- Move a couple more items over here from the old house
- Get the computer in the basement to work with the wireless router for Internet use
- Weed-whack the yard, since only the weeds seem to be growing lately
- File old bills in the office, with the possibility of grabbing the really old bills and putting 'em in boxes.
What an exciting life I lead...

Drawing the line

Maybe it's a distinction the rest of the world doesn't care about, but I like to draw a line between "work me" and "home me."
When I'm at home, I prefer to be thinking about home things, such as my family, our home, our pets.
Don't get me wrong. My job's important to me. I check my work e-mail from home at least once a day to make sure there's nothing vitally important there. But I rationalize that, saying I can do that on my time.
There are people in the world who don't understand that distinction, particularly people in the "real world" who feel connected because they know the home number or cell number for an editor at the newspaper. They feel like they can call whenever it strikes them and try to pitch a story idea.
I try to be polite. I try to be pleasant. But deep down, it irritates the heck out of me.
After all, I leave for work around 8 a.m. I get home around 7 p.m. I usually chow down my lunch in less than 10 minutes. They get a solid 10 hours out of me each day. So having to deal with this stuff at home too is quite frustrating, particularly from people in the public.
It gets harder and harder to draw the line between here and there. E-mail, cell phones and high-speed Internet make it too easy to be in contact. It seems as if part of your mind has to be in work mode all the time.
I suppose it's silly to whine about it. I should be happy I have a job that matters to someone, even if it doesn't matter that much to me sometimes. I should be happy I'm in demand.
But most of all, I should just learn to let things go, no matter how frustrated they make me.