Bordering On Depression
The repetitive rhythms of industry are standard fare for him; he’s worked there almost two decades and learned that as much as things changed there, during his tumultuous tenure, they had stayed the same.
People came and went; product went through the door. His co-workers on the assembly lines did repetitive jobs like robots putting washers on bolts; bolts in assemblies, tightening bolts with air gun wrenches. The people pulled things tight and loosened others; they stooped and stretched and sat and stood; they laughed and talked and yelled and fought; and most made the same pay; day in, day out, day in, day out.
Some people enjoyed working at the toy factory. They came to that place for reasons other than a paycheck, deriving a certain pleasure from the work-a-day world in the form of socialization, respect, satisfaction, empowerment, independence, experience or security in the very repetitiveness of their work. Others highly resisted change, and reacted to attempts to alter their routine as serious threats to their own self-worth.
The buildings were repetitive too. The same design characteristics were repeated from one successive expansion to the other. Built from inexpensive low-pitch corrugated steel roofing and walls supported by I-beams and posts set on concrete slabs, the ceilings were high and poorly insulated. When the warmth inside kissed the underside of the cold roof it created condensation that periodically ‘rained’ down on iron parts to promptly rust them.
In the winters snow threatened the integrity of the roof so much crews had to use sidewalk snowblowers to remove it. Many years and many expansions later, runoff from the interconnected valleys of the roofs over-flowed rain gutters and storm drains—blowing manhole covers from the floor in doors—to flood department floors and ruin parts.
Department machines, conveyors, posts, walls, and doors were painted machine gray. The only accents in this vertical sea were buoys of red fire extinguishers, towers of dirty green industrial presses that disappeared into the sooty darkness of the high ceilings. The only accents being mobile, dirty yellow forklifts rumbling by on worn uneven floors, and the varying color-dress of employees, some of whom wore white plastic aprons and white cotton gloves.
In the years that followed, the building interior brightened; walls and ceilings were painted white, guard rails yellow and assembly area fixtures blue. Multi-colored-accented floor areas with lines of color varied only when change-overs of product manufacture occurred throughout the week. Forklifts still were yellow; fire extinguishers still were red; the floors were worn and still heaved-up in places.
The managers, supervisors and leads turnover, rose and fell with the ebb and flow of ambition, and charges of sexual harassment. Few lower-shelf achievers went any higher than supervisor in the toy industry (Santa and his elves had that all wrapped up.) New regimes followed old regimes as the rich got richer and the poor—didn’t get any richer.
CEOs came to the facility in their company logo-monogrammed flannel shirts every Christmas to give their Ho-Ho-Ho speeches. They’d smile for a few local paper pictures, then leave for the metropolis via the company jet, just in time for cocktails. Local VPs and a few minor associates, in their logo sweaters and bulbous stomachs bulging over the belts of their khaki slacks, walked through the facility to inspect company-wide cleaning efforts, when almost everyone had pushed a broom, washed a florescent light fixture, cleaned a dirty fan shroud, painted over the dirt on posts and rails; and painted new lines on the floor that someone always had driven over before the paint was dry and left black tire tread tracks.
Overhead doors, side-by-side, edge a warehouse dock; some open, some shut, but all the same size. In front of them were dock plates and guard rails; behind, semi-trailers were secured by huge bumper-level hooks, Forklifts were parked in clusters, the long, shiny forks of the one behind under the counterweight of the one ahead; virtual chariots, and solid wheeled, suspension-less race cars that bang and clang speeding over the concrete floors.
People too were repetitive across the years and generations. He saw men wearing uniform green or gray workshirts, workpants, steel-toed workboots and caps carrying black round-topped metal lunch boxes and green metal-clad thermos bottles in and out of the building everyday. Women carried jackets and sweatshirts, thermoses, lunch bags, magazines, and purses with their matching accessories like cigarette packs and holders. Everybody wore safety glasses.
Within the parameters of annoying buzzers and the calliope of tonal alerts, foam rubber ear plugs that merely dulled their noises, he embeds deeply into both his ears in a feeble attempt to escape: clink/clank noises that prevail overhead as miles of huge moving chain link; the incessant noise of air being exhausted through voluminous tubular 'lungs' bellowing and deflating the breath of the building; the thunderous sound of air guns and wrenches; of parts and welding jigs opening and closing pneumatic clamps. The beep-beep of horns. The irritation of backup alarms and yellow or red revolving lights; the drop and clatter of steel against concrete; hammering steel against steel.
The incredulously loud volume of punk rock, hip-hop, pop, heavy-metal, country/western and rock ‘n roll music all over the assembly areas; grinding tools. The slap of wooden pallets against the floor; the rumble of a forklift driving into a semi-trailer and the rumble of it backing out with a load of material on its forks, its backup alarm beeping—the clang of the forks striking the incline of the steel dock-plate—and the wheezing of its load side-to-side as it drives away down the aisle growing fainter and fainter amid the din of industrial noise. His earplugs are a little better than nothing.
There was little noteworthy-wise he hadn’t observed or experienced there and he knew it. Industrial toy factory life had become boring early-on; he felt he was wasting away there amid the repetitiveness of a non-entity that neither recognized variety nor individuality for any length of time, insisting conformity was vital to its existence as a toy factory.
No wonder he drove home in silence.
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