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.

Where you live at, Ben?

Fuquay-Varina

No way! You know Derrick?

Don’t think so.

He lives in Fuquay. Good buddy of mine. Haven’t seen him in years. Sure you don’t know him? He drives a Camaro.

Hmmm. I don’t think I kno–

Good ole Derrick. We used to paaarrrr-taaayyy, boy! Get us some Budwisers and a couple girls and it was OOOOnnnnnn! Yeah! We’d get in the TransAm and spin ALL OVER the Food Lion parkin lot, man! That’s what I’M talkin about! Yeah!

Sounds like a lo–

Derrick had this birthmark on his butt that looked like the number 8 on Dale Earnhardt’s race car. So he went and got “Dale” tattooed underneath it. Derrick was cool that way.

He sounds cool.

Well, if you ever run into him, tell him Jeremiah said “NUMBEEERRR 8!!!” He’ll know whatcha mean.

Will do.

We changed the filter and got another open container. The entire time, Jeremiah somehow managed to remain completely clean and dry. It was like watching a ballet dancer. Once we were back to filtering glue, he said,

Yeah, I’m from Sanford. Been married three times. Four times if you count the first one. That was more of a trial run. My 4th daughter from my 2nd marriage has just got herself a new career.

Really? What does she want to do?

Oh, well, she’s been living on the welfare for a while. She was gonna marry some dude from California, but I took care of that. Now she stays with me and my girlfriend. Now let me tell you about my girlfriend… Whooohoooo!! I mean, boy, she–

–so what does your daughter do again?

Oh, she got herself a job down at Charlies.

Charlies?

You never been to Charlies? We’re goin tonight.

What is it?

Best strip bar in Sanford’s what it is!

And your daughter works there?

Yeah. Yeah. (proudly) Her first night on stage is tonight. You’re a Daddy, so you know how it is. You hope and pray your kids turn out good. And then one day their all growed up and makin ya proud. Brings a tear to the old man’s eye, for sure.

I really didn’t know what to say at this point. I had entered some kind of 4th dimension where women looked like men and daddy’s dreamed of the day when their little girls would exceed their expectations by becoming strippers at local bars. I literally had NOTHING to say. No graceful exit from the conversation. No way of bringing this moment back into familiar territory. I was completely lost. Then things got even stranger…

Jeremiah looked out over the factory floor and shouted:

HEY, FELLAS! (loud whistle through the fingers)

JESSE’S DANCIN FOR THE FIRST TIME TONIGHT AT CHARLIE’S! (cheers from the floor) YA’LL COME OUT TONIGHT AND CHECK HER OUT! DRINKS ON ME!

BRING YOUR DOLLAR BILLS, BOYS! BRING YOUR DOLLAR BILLS!

Then the unthinkable…

AND REMEMBER! LOOK BUT DON’T TOUCH! LOOK… BUT DON’T TOUCH.

As he said this, he pointed at each of the guys and winked. Everyone went back to work with a cheer. Some guys came by and gave Jeremiah a friendly pat on the back and a quick congratulations.

Now don’t get the wrong idea here. Jeremiah was not being in any way sexual about his daughter. He was genuinely proud of her. He really and truly was proud.

I worked there for a few more weeks until I finally found a job in IT working for the NC Secretary of State.

My experience at the glue factory taught me three things:

1. no one makes it through life unscathed without a sense of humor
2. work is an honorable thing, no matter how much you get paid
3. Despite the rumors, glue is NOT made from horses.

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]

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.

The next morning I woke up and checked on Kaitlyn. She was fine now, but I wasn’t. I started coughing. I won’t go into the nasty details (too much), but let’s just say that things were exiting my body that I had never seen before. Not even on Star Trek. It was actually pretty scary. I just kept hacking up stuff from my lungs for a good 20 minutes. Then I felt fine, so I headed off to work.

I arrived at the factory and headed straight for the second floor in search of Bud. I found him in the control room. He was holding a cup of coffee and carefully perching his hard hat on his head as I walked through the door. He picked up a clipboard and handed it to me. “Come with me, Ben.”

We left the control room and he said, “Fill this order and bring it to Reactor 1. If you need help ask JT.” He pointed to JT and left me.

JT appeared to be your typical Sanfordite. He walked a little bow-legged, not because he worked in a rodeo but because he wanted to look like he worked in a rodeo. He sported a giant silver belt buckle on his otherwise standard uniform. The buckle was nearly completely obstructed by his large beer belly hanging over his belt. Sprouting from the back of his hard hat was the most impressive mullet specimen I have ever laid eyes on. You could tell he was proud of it because every few seconds he would grab it up and throw it behind his back and look around to see if anyone was impressed. His left-rear pants pocket had the required faded ring where a can of SKOAL was waiting within easy reach.

I walked over to JT and said,

“Bud wants me to fill this order. What do I do?”

” ‘Spose you should fill the #$^&! order.”

Pointing to the clipboard, I asked, “Is this the order?”

“What else would it be?”

“Am I supposed to get all these chemicals together?”

“It’s an order, ain’t it?”

“Where are the chemicals?”

“Downstairs, man! DOWNSTAIRS!”

With that, JT waved wildly at the stairs and went back to what he was doing. I went and found Bud in the breakroom and asked him what to do. “Oh, didn’t I tell you? Fill the order. If you need any help, JT is up there.”

I decided to leave my new friend JT to what he was doing and work this out myself. I got some gloves, my mask and a scale and started looking through the countless barrels for the chemicals I needed. Every barrel had a scary sticker on it telling me not to touch it or my skin would melt. I kept thinking to myself that if the world of comic books and superheroes was real, this would be my best chance to get my toxic-waste-accident super powers. Maybe I could become “Glue Man” or something… oh well.

I spent the next hour pouring chemicals into containers, weighing them according to the order and loading them on a pallet. Now, please understand that I had NO IDEA WHAT I WAS DOING. I didn’t leave out some training that I thought would be too boring to include here. This really was all the training I got.

I brought the order up to Reactor 1 and called across the floor to JT, “This good?”

He walked over and looked at everything quickly and said, “Yep. Now start the reaction.”

I looked on the other side of the order and found something that looked like a recipe only instead of “pour 2 cups of flour” it said “pour 100 liters of dextromethylacitatiphydecone-13 into the reactor. DO NOT POUR TOO FAST OR THE FUMES WILL KILL YOU AND THE TOWN OF SANFORD WILL HAVE TO BE EVACUATED …and you will be fired.”

I finished the instructions, closed the hatch and twisted the instructed valves and knobs. The reactor sprung to life beneath my feet. Cool.

Seconds later an alarm sounded from the control room and JT came running out (seeing a man run with a fake bow-leg is a site to behold) yelling something incoherent. It sounded like, “the eminator’s going to release! Decrease your range reduction!”

I looked up to the sky and prayed. “God, just take me home. Really. I know I’ve said that before and didn’t really mean it. But, seriously, take me home.”

JT was suddenly there twisting knobs and steam was blowing out of pipes from all over. The noise was insane.

“There,” he said. “You just needed to adjust the DG-4 ratio to 12%.”

I slapped my forehead in the classic Homer Simpson maneuver saying, “Dang! How did I miss that! I KNEW better!”

“That’s alright, man! Everybody misses the easy stuff now and then.”

Several hours later I looked down to the main floor below and some new guy was dispensing glue from Reactor 1 to a truck outside. I have to admit, I haven’t been that proud of myself in years. I made glue. Beautiful, nasty glue that put holes in my shirt and gave Kaitlyn a rash.

It was time to clock out so I started walking out and ran into Bud.

“Nice batch today.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, what do you think of JT?”

“What do you mean?”

“I think she likes you. You married?”

“SHE?”

“Yeah, I think she likes you. She said so.”

Time stopped. My mind went into a tailspin. JT was a she.

“God, this really isn’t funny anymore.”

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]

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:

1. There are 100′s of liters of heavy glue above you and all that hydrolic pressure is culminating at that drain.
2. This glue is very thick, goopy stuff. Not to mention IT’S STICKY LIKE GLUE.
3. 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]

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.

“You know how to work one of these?”, Sally asked nodding at the tv/vcr. “It’s a tv and a vcr in one.”

“I think I can figure it out.”

“Well, I’m right down the hall if you need me.” she said reassuringly.

With that, she handed me a stack of dusty training videos and wobbled from the room. I slid 3 quarters into the “Cola” machine and pushed the “Pepsi” button. Out came some kind of no-brand citrus soda. Laughing to myself, I popped in the first video and sat down at one of the card tables to settle in for what promised to be a very entertaining introduction to the wonders of making glue.

This was a first. I have watched many training videos in my life. Never have I seen one with subtitles.

As it turns out, this is a Japanese company that felt that the United States didn’t have enough glue and so started a branch in Sanford, NC. The video began with the company logo spinning and swirling really fast on the screen while some guy yelled something in Japanese. I have no idea what he said, because there were no subtitles for it. Just some guy yelling something like, “Geee-shaaa-yyyohhhtoooohhhh!!! Shuhhh.”

Then a guy in a white hard hat and a clipboard began talking in a grave tone explaining the work ethic of the company and other policies. Apparently this guy had never been to Sanford, NC. This went on for what seemed like hours. It may have only been a few minutes, but I kept dozing off. I watched about 4 tapes of this exact same guy in a white hard hat talk in Japanese with the subtitles scrolling across the bottom. Every time there was a transition in the video, the crazy spinning logo would appear with “Geee-shaaa-yyyohhhtoooohhhh!!! Shuhhh.” screaming from the tiny tv/vcr. At least that would wake me up enough to keep from embarrassing myself.

Eventually, Sally came back in. I was in the middle of “Tape 4, Break Time is Still Company Time” when she walked over and cut it off. “That’s good enough,” she said. She sat down with a thick MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheets) notebook. She began talking a mile a minute. She was flipping pages and saying things like “this symbol means the material inside can cause fatal damage to your respiratory system” and “this symbol means that the material inside can cause you to become infertile, or with small exposure amounts, can cause your children to grow furry tails.” But she was flipping through the book so fast, I couldn’t keep track of what symbol meant what.

Finally, I stopped her and asked to see them again. She informed me that “this training time is meant to just expose you to the information. This book is available for your use any time.” Then training and orientation was over. She told be to get back on the floor that Bud was looking for me. Something about a formula miscalculation in the glue and needing it filtered.

So off I went, gas mask in hand, hard hat on my head and no steel toed boots. I was about to find out how to filter glue. “Can’t wait to put ‘Glue Filtration Technician’ on my resume.” I thought.

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]

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.

“You ever scrape one of these out?”

Fighting down an ironic chuckle, I said, “Not that I recall.”

“Well, watch closely because the next one’s yours.”

I watched as he tossed aside the safety rigging and maneuvered through the small opening, down a hanging ladder into the reactor. He began scraping the dried gunk off the walls. Somehow he managed to keep his hard hat in perfect angled position. Then while 5 of us stood over the hole watching with arms crossed, one of the guys looked at me proudly and said, “Bud’s the best at this I’ve ever seen. Watch him work, fellas. Watch him work.” So that’s exactly what we did for the next hour. We stood over a hole, arms crossed, and watched our boss scrape glue crud off a stainless steel tank.

I worked hard at resisting the urge to say sarcastically, “Hmm. Looks like he’s scraping left to right now. I haven’t seen anyone do that since the Elmer’s incident of ’93!” Or something like, “Ooo. Notice how he steps into the scrape. Truly he is one with the scraper.”

Then it was my turn, but I was saved by the HR rep coming by and taking me away for orientation.

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]

A co-worker and I were swapping stories this past week about crazy jobs we have held in the past. Both of us had experienced the joy of being laid off by a fortune 500 company, so we had a surprising amount of similarities in our employment adventures. However, I trumped him with one of mine. Thought you might enjoy it too.

After being laid off from a great IT job at Nortel Networks (along with seemingly everyone else in North Carolina), I found the pickings pretty slim for employment options. I did the unemployment thing until The Man kicked me to the curb and told me to pay my own way. So, I trudged down to the Manpower temp agency office. I completed the miles of paperwork detailing all of my qualifications. I even took a computer skills test. My agent seemed very impressed and promised quick placement. I left there excited.

Within 48 hrs my agent had called me with a job placement paying $10 an hour in Sanford, NC. I asked her what the job involved and she told me, “All I know right now is that it’s Industrial. I need you to come in and take a math skills test.” I figured anything that required a math skills test couldn’t be too bad so I took the test (I should have clued in to what was coming when they gave us a cheat sheet with the answers on it for a test that a 7th grader could have easily passed). I was given directions to the new job site and an interview time.

I put on my best business suit, shaved, brushed my hair and dug out my old briefcase from the closet. I printed my resume out on fancy card-stock paper and left early enough to absorb the possibility of getting lost a few times. Then I set out, coffee-filled travel mug in hand, ready to take on the world.

As I neared the new job site, I noticed a strange, pungent odor in the air outside. I figured it was coming from one of the many factories lining the road. Then I arrived at a large, square, warehouse-style building with several tall smokestacks coming out the top. I double-checked my information with the sign out front and sure enough I was in the right place. I thought, “I guess I’ll be working in the office.”

I stepped from my car and was confronted with a smell that I can only describe as a mixture of burning hair, fingernail polish, and paint remover. I began walking towards my fate and noticed that the closer I got to the building, the stronger the smell was. “Not good. Not good at all.” I thought.
I was met by a man wearing a hard hat in a shirt with “Bud” stenciled on the front. He sported thick glasses and his yellow hard-hart was intentionally crooked on his head. Kind of a Bob the Builder meets Dick Tracey look. “My name is Bill. Most folks call me Bud.” I introduced myself and was led into a small conference room for my interview. Bud slowly removed his hat and sat down with my resume. He looked over the resume for a few seconds and said,

“You do computers, huh? I have a computer.”

I nodded, “Really?”

“You done good on the math test. Best score I seen, anyway.”

I nodded, “Really?”

“You got any steel toe boots?”

I shook my head, “I don’t think so.”

“You’ll need some. We make glue.”

I nodded, “OK.”

The rest was a blurr, but I recall being fitted for a HAZMAT suit and gas mask and being asked a lot of questions about having any allergies to common chemicals. Then I remember hearing someone say, “You start tomorrow. Don’t wear any clothes you want to keep.”

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, Nortel, Nortel Networks, IT[/tags]