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Authors: KM Rockwood
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out.
I pulled the plug out from the wall, attached it, and made sure it was charging.
“Thanks, man.” Bert picked up that clipboard from the floor. “Can I borrow the pencil again? He didn’t fill this out, and if there’s any grief about drivers not taking care of the paperwork on this shift, I’ll get caught up in it.”
I handed it over. “You gonna put his name down?”
“Uh-huh. Sure ain’t gonna put mine down, the way he was driving that thing. If he tore anything up, I don’t want to get blamed.”
The factory whistle signaled the shift change. I took my pencil back and stuck it in my pocket again. Then I swung up on the forklift and eased it out into the aisle.
“Thanks, man,” Bert said again and waved as I pulled off.
I waved back.
John would keep an eye on things on the shop floor. It was a light shift. He’d move what he could with a hand lift and come get me if he needed me to move anything.
But before I headed to the shipping room, I swung by the plating room. Four operators worked in a continual thunderous rhythm, removing shiny finished products from the moving hooks in front of them and replacing them with dull, unfinished shelves. The hooks then rose to a series of steaming tanks of chemicals which would clean them and electroplate a shiny finish. The operators would no sooner have loaded one set of hooks than the next set, carrying its finished parts, would be in front of them. Two pallets stood in front of each work station, one for the finished parts and one with the parts that needed to be plated.
Those pallets were too heavy for John to move with a hand lift. The platers took almost a whole shift to set up and another to tear down, so regardless of how few workers showed up for the shift, they would run the whole time.
Hank, the plating room group leader, waved me over to his office and shut the heavy door. The din from the platers still rattled the window in the door and meant we had to shout, but at least we could carry on a conversation.
“What the hell’s going on tonight?” he asked, gesturing at a messy pile of paperwork on his desk.
When I was new here, Hank had taken me under his wing and taught me how to run the platers. I owed him. He’d worked at Quality Steel for several decades, most of them in the plating room. He couldn’t read worth anything, but he had compensated over the years by developing a phenomenal memory for information given orally. Now that almost everything was in writing, though, he struggled with deciphering his instructions. Like Kelly, he worried that he’d lose his job if any supervisors realized he couldn’t read. Loyalty, hard work, and common sense meant nothing to the young suits who ran around rearranging the work.
“I know they’ve rescheduled things a bit. Some extra trucks are coming in, trying to get some product out before they shut down the bridges. If they do.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me at all if they do,” Hank said. “You seen them big chunks of ice floating in the river?”
I picked up the paperwork. “Nah. I didn’t get over that way.” I sorted through it quickly, grabbed the stapler on his desk, and stapled each multi-sheet set of specs and directions. He could read numbers all right, so I took my pencil stub and started numbering them.
“First, these wire baskets. Five thousand of them.” I circled the stock number and the quantity and put a big “1” in the corner of the paper.
He nodded and took those papers.
“Then these big shelves. You know, the ones that are almost five-foot long. Thirty-five hundred of them.” Once again, I circled the relevant numbers and wrote a big “2” on the front of the first page. “They want nine hundred forty of those bins with the hooks on the back. You know, the ones that like to get caught on the edges of the plating tanks.” I wrote a big “3” on that.
He grimaced. When something got caught, the plater would have to be shut down and the operator would
I pulled the plug out from the wall, attached it, and made sure it was charging.
“Thanks, man.” Bert picked up that clipboard from the floor. “Can I borrow the pencil again? He didn’t fill this out, and if there’s any grief about drivers not taking care of the paperwork on this shift, I’ll get caught up in it.”
I handed it over. “You gonna put his name down?”
“Uh-huh. Sure ain’t gonna put mine down, the way he was driving that thing. If he tore anything up, I don’t want to get blamed.”
The factory whistle signaled the shift change. I took my pencil back and stuck it in my pocket again. Then I swung up on the forklift and eased it out into the aisle.
“Thanks, man,” Bert said again and waved as I pulled off.
I waved back.
John would keep an eye on things on the shop floor. It was a light shift. He’d move what he could with a hand lift and come get me if he needed me to move anything.
But before I headed to the shipping room, I swung by the plating room. Four operators worked in a continual thunderous rhythm, removing shiny finished products from the moving hooks in front of them and replacing them with dull, unfinished shelves. The hooks then rose to a series of steaming tanks of chemicals which would clean them and electroplate a shiny finish. The operators would no sooner have loaded one set of hooks than the next set, carrying its finished parts, would be in front of them. Two pallets stood in front of each work station, one for the finished parts and one with the parts that needed to be plated.
Those pallets were too heavy for John to move with a hand lift. The platers took almost a whole shift to set up and another to tear down, so regardless of how few workers showed up for the shift, they would run the whole time.
Hank, the plating room group leader, waved me over to his office and shut the heavy door. The din from the platers still rattled the window in the door and meant we had to shout, but at least we could carry on a conversation.
“What the hell’s going on tonight?” he asked, gesturing at a messy pile of paperwork on his desk.
When I was new here, Hank had taken me under his wing and taught me how to run the platers. I owed him. He’d worked at Quality Steel for several decades, most of them in the plating room. He couldn’t read worth anything, but he had compensated over the years by developing a phenomenal memory for information given orally. Now that almost everything was in writing, though, he struggled with deciphering his instructions. Like Kelly, he worried that he’d lose his job if any supervisors realized he couldn’t read. Loyalty, hard work, and common sense meant nothing to the young suits who ran around rearranging the work.
“I know they’ve rescheduled things a bit. Some extra trucks are coming in, trying to get some product out before they shut down the bridges. If they do.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me at all if they do,” Hank said. “You seen them big chunks of ice floating in the river?”
I picked up the paperwork. “Nah. I didn’t get over that way.” I sorted through it quickly, grabbed the stapler on his desk, and stapled each multi-sheet set of specs and directions. He could read numbers all right, so I took my pencil stub and started numbering them.
“First, these wire baskets. Five thousand of them.” I circled the stock number and the quantity and put a big “1” in the corner of the paper.
He nodded and took those papers.
“Then these big shelves. You know, the ones that are almost five-foot long. Thirty-five hundred of them.” Once again, I circled the relevant numbers and wrote a big “2” on the front of the first page. “They want nine hundred forty of those bins with the hooks on the back. You know, the ones that like to get caught on the edges of the plating tanks.” I wrote a big “3” on that.
He grimaced. When something got caught, the plater would have to be shut down and the operator would
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