Live.Awake

Part VI – Huh? You mean glue isn’t made from horses?

// December 18th, 2006 // 3 Comments » // Glue Factory Series, Humor

The Exciting Conclusion!

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI
For the next few days, I made it a point to display my wedding ring in a awkwardly obvious way in front of JT. I avoided all eye contact. I talked about the kids at home and my happy family. None of it seemed to slow her down at all. My salvation came when a new employee was hired. He looked like he could have been JT’s twin. Same haircut and everything. It was love at first sight. After that, she paid me no attention whatsoever.

JT wasn’t the only colorful character that I worked with. There was also a fellow named Jeremiah. His daddy was a Baptist preacher. But when Jeremiah said “baptist preacher”, somehow it sounded like a curse word. He had a lot against baptist preachers. And English teachers. And anyone from Mexico. And people from the North. And rich people (he wasn’t too fond of poor people either). Politicians, the elderly, teenagers, lawyers, doctors, news reporters and anyone who worked behind a desk were on his bad side too. All of this he told me in the first 10 minutes of meeting him.

Jeremiah was about 5ft 2in tall. He had long curly hair down to his shoulders. He had a scar on his left cheek with a matching scar on the right. (Once he pointed to the scar and said, “This is where I got shot for the first time. Right through the mouth. I took care of him, though.) He had a lazy eye that never rested. It wandered around as he talked, as though it had it’s own will. Jeremiah is what I like to call a prepneck (preppy + redneck). He wore pressed Levi’s that were too tight, button-up shirts, and Timberland boots. He had rings on both hands and two gold chains around his neck. His shirt was always unbuttoned just enough to show them off. He always smelled like Stetson cologne and he drove a 1980′s TransAm. White/bondo with red interior. A black garter belt hung from the rear-view mirror.

Jeremiah and I were filtering glue together. (it’s a real bonding experience) Jeremiah enjoyed talking a lot. He especially enjoyed it when the person he was talking to didn’t interrupt with annoying attempts at a two-way conversation.

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Part V: Huh? You mean glue isn’t made from horses?

// December 8th, 2006 // No Comments » // Glue Factory Series, Humor

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI

When I arrived home after my sticky day; my daughter, Kaitlyn, ran to meet me. As all you Dad’s know, this is the 2nd best time of the day (the 1st being your “welcome home” smooch from your wife). Kaitlyn ran and jumped into my arms yelling “Daaaddddyyy!!!” along the way. We hugged and the day’s trouble melted away– or so I thought.

About an hour later, I noticed Kaitlyn itching her arms a little. Nothing to worry about, just itching some. A few more minutes later she complained to Heather about it. From the kitchen I hear Heather say, “Oh my! Go show Daddy.” In comes Kaitlyn.

Up and down the inside of her arms, under her chin, across her right cheek and the inside of her legs (she was wearing shorts) were beet red. Inflamed and itchy. I was baffled. It’s like it had come out of nowhere. Then I noticed on my shirt there were these tiny burn holes. It looked like small cigarette burns but with no charring. There were several of them on my shirt. I had noticed these holes earlier, but they were much smaller. Then I noticed that I too was itching but only where the holes in my shirt were located.

Great. Just great. That place has followed me home.

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Part IV: Huh? You mean glue isn’t made from horses?

// December 2nd, 2006 // No Comments » // 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.

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Part III: Huh? You mean glue isn’t made from horses?

// November 29th, 2006 // No Comments » // Glue Factory Series, Humor

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI

The HR rep introduced herself as Sally. She was a plump woman. Very round, I recall. Round face, round nose, even her hands were round. I got the feeling that if someone pushed her at the top of a hill she would just roll until something stopped her. She was also very serious and very efficient. As it turns out she was the HR rep, the Quality Control supervisor and the Safety Coordinator. Serious indeed.

I was escorted into a small break room with nicotine-stained walls and a drink machine that charged $.75 for a can of fake Pepsi. The machine had a Pepsi sign on it, but the backlight was turned off and a printed 8’1/2×11 sheet of paper was taped onto the machine saying, “NOT Pepsi. It’s ‘Cola’.” Sally saw that I was distracted and directed my attention above the “Cola” machine where I met my new orientation instructor: a 15″ Magnavox tv/vcr mounted on a tv stand.

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Part II: Huh? You mean glue isn’t made from horses?

// November 27th, 2006 // No Comments » // Glue Factory Series, Humor

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI

I walked into the front door my first day (this time I left the briefcase in the closet) and was told by the receptionist that “floor workers aren’t aloud to come in this way. Your entrance is around back.”

I went back outside the way I came and walked around back and found the “floor crew’s” entrance. I walked in and began wandering looking for my new boss, Bud. The place was huge and filled with towering, cone-shaped vats with hatches at the top and valves at the bottom. There were barrels of various chemicals everywhere. But the first thing I noticed was the floor. I was walking on half-dried glue. Not just one spot. No, the floor was literally covered in it wall to wall. There were stairs going up to a second level that gave access to the hatches at the top of these vats (I found out later they are called “reactors”). There were several people milling about up there so I went on up.

Then I saw Bud. He was crawling into a reactor through a hatch holding what looked like a long-handled paint scraper. He noticed me and waved me over.

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