Work, Work, Work

“And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it; cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” (Gen. 3:17-19 KJV).

There is no call for crying over spilled milk or half-eaten forbidden fruit. Adam and Eve messed up; end of story or the beginning of the story depending on how you look at it. The consequence of Adam and Eve’s blunder was a nature to sin and the need to labor for a source of revenue or in other words, “if you don’t work, you don’t eat”. Sinning is way too easy and work can at times be way too hard.

Of the fifty-one years I have traversed on this planet, thirty-five of them have been spent in quest of living by the ‘sweat of my brow’. I joined the work force while attending my junior year in high school. Because of a work program I was able to leave school each day at 1:15 P.M. to work a part-time second shift job at Indiana Molding & Frame Company in Lexington, North Carolina. The school program encouraged students to get work experience and in turn, obtain school credit for participating. It was a win, win situation. I was able to skip out of school early, gain school credit, and make money in the process. A small number of my fellow students were employed by the molding and frame plant at the same I was hired.

Indiana Molding & Frame specialized in making picture frame stock and wooden clothes hangers. The production process began with rough-cut material and ended up in the finishing department as decorative picture frame material. The lengths of frame were then sent to another company to be made into the completed product.

I vividly remember my first day on the job. Our ragtag group of seventeen year olds were given a pair of gloves and introduced to a train boxcar load of rough-cut lumber. Our task was to unload the entire load one board at a time (by hand) and then place the lumber on neat stacks to be picked up by a forklift later. We were all young, tough, testosterone-raging men, how hard could that be?

To sweeten the pot our boss challenged us, “if you guys unload this boxcar completely by shifts end I’ll buy all of you a steak dinner.” We went to work like demons with no tomorrow. In the course of well-intended blood, sweet, and tears our efforts quickly waned; we didn’t get the steak dinner. Matter of fact, within days our work crew dissolved leaving merely two people. This was survival of the fittest (or the dumbest, who’s to say)?

The sole survivors were a guy nicknamed Radar and me. Our jobs had been reduced and specialized into a fine art. Our job title and occupation was that of Janitorial Engineers. Translated, we cleaned up the offices and swept sawdust off of the production area floors. My salary for my first taste of real public work was $2.10 an hour with no benefits.

The finishing room was the only functional department at this hour of the night leaving the remainder of the plant a ‘ghost town’, thus Radar and I soon were able to fine tune or efforts to include play time. What is the saying? “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.” If it was good enough for Jack, it’s good enough for us, right? Radar and I concocted our own version of the popular game of ice hockey. We had no ice but we had imagination. Our game consisted of a large area of cement floor, two brooms, and a partial roll of masking tape. Another game we played was a combination of “hide and seek” with a touch of war games. The rules were simple. One person was the hunter and the other was the hunted. At the onset of the game both players were allowed to fill their pockets with an assortment of small screws, bolts, or nuts. The hunted was given a minute or two head start, allowing ample time to hide in the outside lumber yard area. The hunter then stalks the other player but at any point in the game the player’s roles could reverse quickly. The goal of the game was to avoid being pelted by incoming bolts or nuts and also maintain the status of “untagged”. Our game of “Killer Hide and Seek” came to a screeching halt when hardware supplies became noticeably missing and our boss started finding miscellaneous nuts and bolts all around the lumber yard. It was fun while it lasted!

Radar soon faded from view and I befriended the second shift supervisor of the finishing room. Billie and I became good friends. She even bent the rules and let me operate some of the machines that could only be operated by an eighteen year old or older. Billie found out that I played the guitar and once insisted that I give a private “mini” concert during one of their lunch breaks. I pulled in one of my band members and together we entertained the Indiana Molding & Frame finishing room department. The attendance was small, the pay non-existent, but it was fun for all.

All things considered, my first work experience wasn’t that bad. It was the start of an ongoing quest for monetary gain and self-sufficiency (you work or starve!). Through the years my career has not always moved in a vertical direction monetarily or positional. As the national economy and employment rate changed, so did my employment. The “old school” way of living faded out quickly. In the mid-1900s the American Dream was to work, raise a family and retire after putting in thirty years of service with the same company. Now days if you have lasted ten years at the same employer you are considered an “old timer”. My longest consistent work period with any company was for nine years, followed by a lay off. I sought employment elsewhere but returned to the same company years later until a work slowdown forced me to leave again. I had a combined period of seventeen years with that company. I have not worked over three years consecutively with a company since then (around 1989)! To date, I have been laid off four times and two of those layoffs were with the same company! I was fired from one job when I was around twenty years old. I was young and easily influenced by an equally young bride that talked me into staying home when I should have been working. She wasn’t totally to blame but that’s another tale.

My employment has included: Craver Block Co., Dixie Furniture Co., Lexington Motor Co., United Face Veneer, Linwood Manufacturing Co., Proctor Wolverine Inc., Thomas Built Buses, Wackenhut Security, Kel-Way Rentals, a telemarketing firm, PPG Industries, Dirty Works (Handyman Service), DPJ Graphics, Hayward Industries, and Precision Fabrics Group. My job titles/skills include: block cube person (stacking cement blocks), clipper operator (face veneer cutter [furniture]), grease monkey (oil changes, etc), assembly technician, security guard, and telemarketer, creeler/twisting machine operator (fiberglass production), handy man, musician, graphics technician (service station renovation), sandblaster, industrial painter, water spider (assembly line supply), laboratory assistant (mushroom biology & fungal biotechnology lab) and quality control laboratory technician (specialty fabrics, physical testing). Are you familiar with the phrase “jack of all trades and master of none”? Yes, I have a sufficient amount of knowledge in enough areas to be utterly confused in everything. Sometimes it’s not what you know that’s important, but how well you can convince somebody that you know something, when in truth; you really don’t have a clue what you’re talking about! That is real talent and no book can teach you that. I have heard it said “when you can’t dazzle your friends with diamonds, baffle them with bull!”

When I graduated from high school in 1975 the job market was considerably different than it is today. In my hometown of Lexington, North Carolina textiles and furniture manufacturing was our mainstay for many years. Textiles had already “bit the dust” by my high school graduation. The furniture industry hung on for some time but most of the plants in Lexington shut down by the end of the twentieth century, leaving a wake of unemployed folks. Duracell battery had a substantial workforce but it too sank and is now an empty building just outside of town. PPG (Pittsburg Plate Glass) boasted over 1,500 employees in years past but now only employs around 500 people. Many people, including myself, have sought employment in another city. We’ll cover that later.