Part IV: Huh? You mean glue isn’t made from horses?
// December 2nd, 2006 // Glue Factory Series, Humor
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI
I entered the main factory floor area looking for Bud as instructed. As I mentioned earlier, this was a huge room filled with several reactors with a hatch at the top used for pouring in the various chemicals to make the glue (and for climbing in and scraping…). The bottom of the reactors ended in a funnel shape with a drain and a valve. It was at one of these drains that I found Bud, and he was not looking happy.
As it turns out, when a reaction goes wrong the glue can get small granular crystals in it. Now throwing away hundreds of liters of glue isn’t something anyone wants to think about, so they go through great pains to filter out the particles. Now I had naively assumed that there was some kind of machine that would filter the glue. Some kind of ingenious apparatus where the glue would go in one end, and out the other end would come particle-free glue. What was it that Ben Franklin said? “Desperation is the mother of invention?” Apparently he never met these folks.
Ben Cotten says, “Desparation is the mother of denial.”
Here’s the “ingenious” method they used to filter glue: cheesecloth and a piece of string. That’s right. Industrial-strength cheesecloth and twine from the hardware store. The cheesecloth was sown into the form of a bag with an opening at the top. They would slide the opening over the drain and tie it snug with the string. Then the valve was opened and the glue would exit the drain through the cheesecloth and into a large container. Now keep in mind a few things:
- There are 100′s of liters of heavy glue above you and all that hydrolic pressure is culminating at that drain.
- This glue is very thick, goopy stuff. Not to mention IT’S STICKY LIKE GLUE.
- As particles collect in the “filter”, pressure in the “filter” builds causing the bag to swell like a balloon. Only there’s no air in this balloon… only crazy glue from Hell that you still aren’t sure can’t harm you in some DNA-altering way.
So Bud looks at me and says, “ULG-1524 [aka: 'glue'] got messed up.” Five other employees stood there staring up at the reactor, arms crossed nodding. “Yep. Messed up.” Starting to get the hang of how conversations were supposed to work around here; I stopped, crossed my arms, looked up and said, “Yep.”
Bud handed me a “filter” and some string and told me to tie it onto the drain spout. Then he told me that after I had it secured to let the glue out. He instructed me that when the filter got full, to take it off, rinse it out and repeat the process until the entire reactor was filtered. Then he walked away with five guys in tow.
Now I recognize that this entire way of filtering glue would be considered ridiculous to the white collar world. But, you have to remember that this is a place where thinking out of the box is a good way to get fired. Nobody had ever had the courage to say, “Hey, this is a stupid way to do this. Let’s figure out another way.” They simply got used to it and convinced themselves that it was the only way. And there was no way I was going to be the first one to say otherwise.
I attached the filter and opened the valve. All the way. Wide open. Not halfway. Not just a little. All the way. ALL THE WAY.
Remember [tag]Gallagher[/tag]? Remember how he would smash a watermelon with giant mallet, coating everyone in the first row with melon giblets? Gallagher would have enjoyed the glue factory. Because when I opened that valve several tons of glue tried to escape through that little hole all at the same time. For about 1 second I watched in dismay as the filter bag filled and swelled under the immense pressure. The bag popped and there was an explosion of glue that seemed to turn everything around me milky-white.
I quickly closed the valve, cleaned up the mess and set out to try again. It took me several more tries to learn how to tie the string, how far to open the valve and when to stop filtering and change the bag. If you let the bag get too full, the string would give and glue would go everywhere (or the bag would explode). If you changed the bag too often, you would never get the job done.
Finally, I got it right. “Ahh, much better,” I thought. As I was feeling proud of my accomplishment, Bud came by and told me that I had to knead the bag with my hands as it filtered to help it not get too clogged. He handed me some gloves.
For the next 7 hours I stood there kneading this glue covered, bulbous mass of crud while covered in dried glue and sweat. But the most disheartening thing was something Bud said to me at about the 5 hour mark. He came by to inspect. He opened one of the containers I had already filled. He stuck his bare hand into the container and scooped some glue out. It was like watching one of those Sam Adams beer commercials where the venerable hops tester lifts the hops from the hard-wood crate and smells it lovingly and knowingly.
He smelled it. He let it run through his fingers. He nodded his approval and wiped his hands on his shirt. He walked over to me and said, “Nice work, Cotten. You’ve got a real knack for this. Come with me.”
He walked to to the middle of the floor, put his arm across my shoulders and pointed up to the second level of the factory where the chemicals were mixed and poured into the reactors.
“You see that?”
“Yeah. You mean those guys up there?”
“That’s the second floor, Ben. I’ve been watching you and I think you have what it takes. I’ve got plans for you. One day you’ll be up there. Them boys make an extra dollar an hour. They’re the best of the best.”
That’s when I knew I had found the very bottom of the employment pool. When the highest attainable position is “second floor glue mixer” and the best raise you’ll ever get is another $1 per hour you have found the underside of bottom.
I finished the filtering and as I was leaving I heard Bud yelling after me, “Alright, Sport! When you come in tomorrow, meet me on the second floor!”
“God, this isn’t funny anymore.”
Stay tuned for Part V…
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI
[tags]dirty jobs, unemployment, minimum wage, job, funny jobs, glue, factory, blue collar, HAZMAT, employment stories, employment, work, worst jobs[/tags]