Skip to main content

2015 Collection: Sporadic Notes from The Toy Factory #7 Reality


Have A Nice Weekend. Oh, Do You Have To Work?

"F@#$%^&*! " loudly growled the woman working behind a pallet of various sized cardboard boxes. I could feel her frustration reverberate through her corrugated makeshift jail, as she worked to make sense of it all.

She was a dayshift worker; I worked evenings 3-11 pm. I had just started work; she had another half hour to go. I was checking-in my forklift and electric 'car,' aptly called 'a tugger.' I hauled big parts using the forklift and pulled long trains of parts using the tugger; the latter job one that I said I'd never do over the years, but, toward the nearing end of my tenure at the toy factory, I decided to bite the bullet and just do the job; retirement is just a short time away.

A dayshift guy does the same job I do, but he is usually gone before I get to the department. Once in great while our paths cross, but he's just as eager to leave at 3:00 pm as I am at 11:00 pm. Depending on what he's left me to do, that he should've done, does affect his leave-off time and the chance that we'll meet in passing. Oh well, we've all heard the expression "The dead come alive at quitting time." Maybe others think I do the same thing, but I try not to give them that impression.

The woman was working at a job no one liked to do, where unused parts were returned to a central location and put back into the department I worked. Many of the parts were not in their original containers, nor were they relabeled, nor their quantities changed so the woman had to do all that; a totally thankless job at best. 

On top of that, one of the containers had broken when she picked it up; and the hundreds of small parts inside it spilled across the floor and rolled under things. She was fit to be tied, so I helped her pick them up. I know it's murder to have to deal with things like that at the end of shift when you're frustrated enough over the many other trying events of the day.

But so it is in a toy factory, a place of physical toil for the most part, and often tedious labor. I was fortunate to have some mobility as a forklift driver. I got to thinking working there wasn't so bad once I accepted it was what I had chosen to do to earn a living and still live where I do, doing the things I loved to do, far from the maddening crowd. 

There are other jobs out there; all you have to do is look, particularly in 2015. There's no reason to be unemployed in northwestern Minnesota because businesses are crying for good employable people, sometimes they accept less, hoping to find that single nugget in a sea of sand.


Comments

When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.

Tecumseh

Popular posts from this blog

Winter Returns Along Mikinaak Creek February 8-9th, 2024

  This is the first channel wide moving water I've seen since the spring of 2023 --and it's in February!       On maps, the creek (or ‘crick' depending on your dialect) is spelled ‘Mickinock’ for the Anishinaabe man who lived at the Indian camp at Ross, but had seasonal camps around Wannaska and other places. The Euro-American immigrants who homesteaded here in Roseau County called him ‘Chief,’ but he may have been just a spokesperson who knew enough English to get things done peacefully and simultaneously meet the needs of his people; the word, ‘chief' was often used in derision of any Indigenous male adult.      I spell Mikinaak the Ojibwe way, in a gesture of respect; what the Dakota, who were here before the Anishinaabeg/Chippewa, called this place, this body of moving water I don’t know; just as I don’t know who came before them exactly.  I was told that one of Mikinaak's camps were here on our place in Palmville Township. Its locat...

Friends to the End: Delmer Roseen and Curtis Johnson

  Delmer and Curtis: Friends to the End      From where he was buried on Saturday April 11th, 1992, the tin roofs of his buildings could be seen through the trees. Across the fence, at the foot of his grave, were the fields he farmed. Between them, Mikinaak Creek--so much a part of Delmer Roseen’s life and sadly, his death--still winds through willow slough, over beaver dams below the Palmville Cemetery, and past his door to the South Fork of the Roseau River, only a few yards to the southeast.         Delmer lived northeast of us in Palmville Township. If I looked just right, I could see his yard light through the woods between his place and mine. Either of us could hear the soft ‘clung’ of the rope and pulley against the flag pole in the cemetery at the corner of our two farms. Red willows, popple islands, and slough grass; green mossy fence posts; the often submerged patchwork of woven wire, and the depth of water i...

1972 An August Adventure: Stormy Lake, Snake Bay, Ontario

My 1972 Toyota Land Cruiser   A life changing event. I've had asthma all my life and it limited me somewhat until 1972, when after an event on a remote Canadian lake I was rushed to Dryden Area Hospital for emergency treatment of a pneumothorax /lung collapse. Early one morning, my dad and I left Des Moines, Iowa on 1530 mile round trip fishing expedition to Stormy Lake, Ontario; stopping in Roseau, Minnesota to join six family members: My uncle  Martin and aunt Irene Davidson of Roseau, their son Jack Davidson and his 8-yr old son, Jeffrey, of Thief River Falls, Minnesota, and Jack's older brother Dean Davidson, and his 11-yr old son, Larry, of Clive, Iowa in addition to their two two vehicles, one with a boat atop it. We were pulling a one-wheeled trailer behind my brand new 1972 Toyota Land Cruiser to handle extra gear. Leaving Roseau as the last vehicle in the three car caravan, we headed off toward the...