Rivethead - Ben Hamper [37]
Perfecting this kind of immaculate trickery called for complete reliability in one's partner. You had to be sure that the quality of the jobs remained faultless. You had to make extra certain to avoid any type of injury. You had to refrain from all drinking. With your partner not around to intervene, you couldn't risk having to piss out a load of beer.
Over the weeks and months to come, Dale and I accelerated our routine. We got the operation down so well that we could actually do both jobs and still have time to stand around. Unfortunately, this didn't escape the eye of our General Foreman, who was already having a difficult time swallowing our system. Doubling-up was one thing. But to double-up while working and still have time to browse the paper or kibitz with fellow linemates just didn't wash. We were being watched. We knew it and we should have slowed it down to make it appear more difficult than it really was. But we didn't. We'd simply become too damn cocky.
Not surprisingly, Dale and I arrived at our jobs one afternoon to find a swarm of bossmen grouped around our bench. There was our supervisor, the General Foreman, the Repair Foreman and a couple other big players milling about. They had a large box of some kind of stock piece I didn't recognize. They also had a strange, tiny air gun that they were passin’ around.
The picture was dreadfully clear. The bastards were adding work to our jobs. The Repair Foreman grabbed the tiny air gun and a piece of the foreign stock and bent way beneath the belly of the truck cab. Zzzzzzz-zing! He reached for another. Zzzzzzz-zing! Then another. Then another. Then one more. With every squeal of that runt gun, I felt a bit more nauseous.
Dale and I slouched down at the picnic table. Bob-A-Lou came to express his condolences. “They've been over there for a half hour fiddling with those new parts,” he said. “Tough luck, guys.”
“What are those goddamn things, anyway?” I groaned.
Robert shrugged. “Hey, you had to see it comin’. They've been hawkin’ you like naked pussy for the past month.”
Dale finally spoke up. “Screw ‘em. We'll get around it somehow. We'll just have to crank it up a gear.”
The bossmen motioned for Dale and me to come over. They explained how it would be. We would read the schedule taped to the front of each cab and this would inform us as to whether a certain truck called for air-conditioning clamps. There would be no set pattern that we could rely on. Sometimes the clamps would be required on three consecutive trucks. Other times they might fall on every fourth truck. This kind of suspense was just what the bossmen were hoping would break up our system.
Attaching the air-conditioning clamps was a pain in the ass. It wasn't a strenuous chore, it was more of an exasperation. You couldn't see the holes you were supposed to be screwing into. You had to feel around and, once you found them, you had to balance the air gun perfectly still so that the screw and clamp didn't vibrate off the miniature tip of the gun. If you missed your mark, everything would fly apart and you would be forced to start all over.
After a couple of days of this new arrangement, I was ready to surrender. Just when I thought I'd drilled in all five clamps securely, one of them would go clanking off and land on the ramp track. I'd start cussin’ my brains out and stompin’ around like a madman.
Thankfully, Dale was there to calm me down. Mechanical plights and misbehaving gizmos were hobbies for him. He began teaching me a new stance that would give me much better accuracy with the air gun. I practiced and practiced. Dale wouldn't allow me to give up, assuring me that we'd be right back in business within a week.
And that unconcerned, soothsayin’ pig farmer was right. Through determination, perspiration, acceleration and pure spite, we swallowed up the air-conditioning