When you're twenty and just graduated from the Electro-Mechanical Technician program at Williamson State Community College, you think you're pretty hot stuff. You've learned about everything there is to know about building and repairing all the machines that are taking over industry, from simple test and assembly equipment to robots. You're ready to find your place in some factory and start earning a paycheck.
They teach you all about electronics from simple resistors and capacitors all the way to microprocessors and computers and programmable controllers. You also learn mechanics like bearings and gears and belt drives, and you learn hydraulics and pneumatics. You can work on about anything including a nuclear reactor. That's what my Advanced Hydraulics teacher said anyway.
You learn all that stuff and then start putting in applications at places on "Careers Day". That's when all the factories within a fifty mile radius of Williamson State set up booths in the student lounge and tell you what jobs they have available.
Maxtech Corporation was there the day I strolled around looking at the pictures of the plants and reading the charts that showed each company's slogan and goal statement along with a list of starting wages and benefits. I'd already filled out application forms for six other companies, but the woman sitting at the table looked really cute, so I stopped at the Maxtech table.
She smiled at me and asked if I was interested in learning about what a great company Maxtech was. I was looking at the soft cleavage that the open neck of her blouse was showing me at the time, but I did hear what she said and I nodded. I also heard her say her name was Sarah Myers, and that she was the Human Resources person at Maxtech who took care of all the stuff with hourly employees.
After about five minutes of her telling me all about how Maxtech was a leader in the field of automotive sensors and instrumentation and how they'd just added on to their local factory, I filled out an application. Two weeks later, Maxtech called me and said they'd like to have me come in for an interview.
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The interview started with Sarah, but all she did was tell me who I was going to talk to and what they did. An hour later, and after I'd talked to the Maintenance Manager, Tom Wilson, and the first shift Assembly Supervisor, Peggy Wright, Sarah came back into the conference room and explained the wage structure, how their insurance worked, and what the shift hours were. Then she said they hadn't yet made a decision and she'd call me when they did, one way or the other. Two days later, she called and said they were offering me the job of second shift technician in the assembly department.
I was pretty happy. I'd lived at home while going through Williamson State and I was ready to start out on my own. Living with Mom and Dad was OK, but it was starting to get a little strained. I was still getting questions when I was later than normal coming home, and when Mom found a condom in the back pocket of my jeans when she washed them, she told my dad he'd have to have a talk with me.
I needed money for an apartment if I was going to leave home, and my wages at Maxtech would give me enough money to do that. I'd have to save for a couple of months to afford the first and last month's rent, but after that, I'd be sailing on my own.
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Tom told me the first day that all I had to do to stay on the good side of the assembly workers was keep their machines running. The way the assembly operator's pay was set up, they got a bonus if they made more parts on a job than the standard rate. I figured out pretty fast that the standard rate was pretty tight. The better than average operators could beat it unless their equipment went down for some reason. They wouldn't be penalized for the down-time, but that would break their rhythm and they'd have to work like hell to get it back.
What I tried to do was fix anything that was broken and get the operator back to work as fast as possible, and it seemed to be working. None of the operators were particularly friendly, but they were all at least ten years older than I, so I figured that was the reason. My mother had constantly quoted that old rule to me - "Do unto others as you would have them do to you" - so I tried to be friendly even if they weren't.
For the first month, I stumbled quite a bit. There's a big difference between lab experiments and the real world. Lab experiments are usually done on a thing called a "breadboard" where the components are out in the open, so the failure is easier to find and fix. In the real world, everything is inside a cabinet except the fixture, and nobody does much cleaning on the equipment so you have to first wipe all the oil and dirt off everything before you can start looking. Even when I got everything so I could look at it, the failures were still hard to find.
It wouldn't have been so hard if it weren't for two things. The first was that I worked second shift -- three in the afternoon until eleven thirty at night.
It wasn't the shift hours. I liked working that shift after the first week. I never went to bed much before midnight anyway, so I could get home, watch a little TV while I ate, and still be in bed by one. I'd be up about nine and had until about two to take care of any shopping or other business. That was great, because most business hours are during the day.
The problem I had with working second shift was there were no other technicians or engineers in the plant except me after five. The regular maintenance guys were there, but they didn't know much about electronics. I had to quickly learn how to apply what I'd learned to equipment that was dirty instead of clean, sometimes had more than one component failure, and usually didn't have very good schematic diagrams.
The second problem was the workforce. All the assembly employees except the foreman were women. Even that wouldn't have been much of a problem if they'd been friendly, but they weren't.
Most were between thirty and forty, and a lot of them were divorcees working at Maxtech to support themselves. I didn't know why they weren't friendly until Gladys told me after two months. As Gladys put it, they were "trying me out" to see how I'd do and didn't want to get friendly until they knew.
All I knew for those two months is they were a bunch of women who had no patience when their assembly or test machine went down. They'd stand there and stare at me while I was up to my elbows replacing a transformer and then trying to figure out what else had blown when the transformer did, or replacing the cracked hose on an air line.
The foreman, Rick Mead, didn't help. He was the only foreman in the plant, but his main responsibility was the machining and casting areas, so I seldom even saw him. As he put it, "the girls do fine by themselves as long as their equipment runs so I don't fuck with them much. Just keep things running and you'll do fine".
Most of them were on second shift for the same reason I liked second shift. They could do their shopping and banking during the day instead of having to do it between four and five in the afternoon if they'd worked first shift.
If they'd worked third shift, they had to choose between two options. They could do their shopping and other stuff after they got off work at seven thirty when they were tired and then have to be sleeping by two. It was either that, or go home, sleep until four in the afternoon and then wear themselves out doing all that stuff before they came to work.
The other benefit to second shift was there usually weren't any management people around telling us what to do. We just figured out the best way to do things on our own, and usually we out-produced the other two shifts.
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After that first two months, I'd been into the innards of every piece of equipment in the assembly area and had figured out how they worked and what was usually wrong when they didn't. My repairs got faster and the women noticed. Gladys was the first to tell me she liked having me there.
"That Todd guy we had before didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. I sat on my butt the whole shift one night because he couldn't figure out the whatchamadingy that goes on the part was cracked."
Gladys was scratching my back at the time, and that should have told me something about Gladys but I was concentrating on watching my voltmeter while the tester went through the cycle. When the needle didn't jump at the start of the second test, I knew what was wrong. Ten minutes later, I'd replaced the bad relay, checked the calibration, and told Gladys she was all set. She looked at me and grinned.
"I was sorta hoping it would take longer."
I didn't think much about that either. I should have.
It was Thursday a week later that Gladys waved at me.
"It stopped again. Come fix me so I can get back to work. We're behind on a shipment and they'll be really pissed off if we miss it."
Gladys started scratching my back again. Her long fingernails were sending some really nice tingles through me while I started the cycle and watched the machine. It wasn't hard to find her problem. The blast of air that hit me in the face said it all. One of the air hoses had slipped off the nipple on a clamp valve. I cut off about an inch off the hose, pushed it back on the nipple, and then started the cycle again. Everything worked like it should have, so I closed up the cabinet and turned to Gladys.
"You're all set, Gladys. It was just a hose that came off the nipple on a clamp valve. You should be good to go now."
Gladys grinned.
"I didn't know my machine had nipples. What's a nipple look like, just in case it happens again?"
I opened the cabinet back up and pointed to the hose nipple on the clamp valve.
