Rivethead - Ben Hamper [44]
Things had improved immensely due to the efforts of our forefathers. We would always remain grateful to them. However, some things never did change. The factory was still a shithole, comparisons be damned. One large shithole and you'd better believe that that unbearable clock on the wall never moved one iota faster for us than it did them.
GM phoned me. It was bound to happen sooner or later. The big callback. Actually, the timing couldn't have been better. Since I had been laid off nearly nine months, my benefits were in danger of skidding to a halt. I only had two more visits to the MESC before my last extension was exhausted. After that, who knew? My résumé was sorta blank.
I was instructed to rendezvous back up to my old department in Cab Shop. This suited me fine. I hated surprises. As I arrived upstairs, it was as if a day had never passed. The old gang was sitting around—Bob-A-Lou, Robert, Dan-O, Tim, Bigfoot, Ronny, Larry, Armando, Ty, Jimmy. Of course, there was Same-O leanin’ on his broom. The only one missing was Dale. He had opted to quit GM and stay up in Twining with his pigs and combines.
We had a new foreman, rather, foreperson. A beautiful young black woman named Lydia. She asked that we all group around the picnic table. I wedged in next to Ronny. Lydia paused and looked down at her clipboard. Damn, she was pretty.
Lydia began. “Most of you workers are familiar with the Cab Shop. This will make the start-up procedure much easier. I will now read a list of what jobs are still open. If I mention a job you are interested in, please raise your hand.”
She began reading off the job descriptions. Looking across the line, I could see that my old job was already filled. Some older guy was busy fillin’ up the screw bins and stackin’ the pencil rods and clamps. I wanted to kill the bastard. Didn't he realize he was trespassing?
I wasn't even listening to Lydia's job auction when I suddenly felt someone jerk my arm into the air. It was Ronny.
“We'll take ‘em,” he yelled.
“We'll take WHAT?” I demanded.
“The Suburban and Blazer tailgate buildup jobs.”
“Oh.”
Ronny already knew both of the buildup jobs. Hell, he knew practically every job in the entire Jungle. Ronny also knew me well enough to know that I'd work my ass off in order to set up a scheme. He knew that if the two of us worked the tailgates as a partnership, we could fancy out a little system that would allow us plenty of free time. I thanked Ronny for volunteering me. It wasn't the marvelous setup I'd had with Dale, but it was probably the next best thing in the department. Had he not grabbed my arm, I might've wound up boltin’ down cargo beds or fittin’ doors.
We attacked our new jobs. The hitch was to bust ass and built up the tailgates faster than they were pulling them off the end of our feeder line. We each drilled our separate tailgates, leaned them aside, and once we had enough built, it was time to converge and arrange the tailgates on the conveyor line. When the bottom layer was finished, we began double-stacking. When all was completed, the conveyor line was this trudging, two-tiered mountain of gleaming silver slowly creeping toward the buttocks of the nation's finest-built recreational vehicles.
Being twenty-four jobs ahead of the line amounted roughly to forty-five minutes of free time. Not bad, not bad at all. It wasn't nearly enough time to reach last call up at Houghton Lake or hibernate in a cardboard tomb, but it was time enough to play some three-handed euchre with Gary, the door-build guy, or, more frequently, to go wandering down to the cafeteria with Ronny on one of his massive feeding frenzies.
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