posters at the post office, shook his head. “If you put the scrap in this machine, both the caps on each end will bust, and it will be a real hard fix,” he said.
I didn’t believe him, and told my supervisor what he’d said. “Aw, hell, that guy don’t want to work. He just wants to sit on his ass,” was his response. So I did what my supervisor instructed me to do and made the operator load up the scrap rubber. I heard a loud explosion and was sick to my stomach. Sure enough, the mill was down all night. I knew I’d been taken by my supervisor. Throughout the night, as we struggled to get the mill up and running again, Barbara’s and Andrew’s words echoed in my mind.
O NE OF the other shift foremen, Stan, a bowlegged man who talked too quickly, didn’t try to trick me. He announced his suspicions of me loudly and clearly the minute I became part of his department. He warned everyone that I was keeping information about people in a little black book because I was “a member of the ERA.” (I carried a steno pad around with me to take notes and record information to keep from making mistakes.) By then I had been moved from stock prep, where I’d been for about a year, to final finish, where the tires go after they’re cured in the pits and have traveled on overhead conveyors to cool, passing into thetrimmer where the rubber tips are cut off. Once they reach final finish, if a tire is a blackwall, it goes immediately on the hook lines for two people to inspect by spinning and feeling for defects. If the tire is a whitewall, it travels to the blue paint machines to be sprayed so that the finish is protected during shipping. All of the tires are ground down by the force grinders to balance them out before being stamped and packed onto a truck for shipping.
In final finish, Stan never bothered to give me instructions on how to operate the machinery. There were several panels with some fiddly old wiring, so it took me a while to understand the mechanics; but the union electricians who saw me sticking with it helped me. One night when we had one mechanical problem after another, I called Stan onto the floor for help. He immediately blamed my rib dressers, threatening to send them home.
“My guys aren’t the problem. My crew is running more tires than ever,” I pointed out to him.
He turned red in the face and said, “What did you just say? Are you calling me a liar, when you have no idea what you’re talking about?”
“No, sir, I was just telling you the rib dressers have done their jobs. That’s my responsibility—that I do know.”
He started yelling and waving his arms at me, and went on like this for at least thirty minutes—in front of my team. There was nowhere for me to go and nothing for me to do but stand there and take it, until he suggested that we go to the computer room and settle our differences.
There he went on and on about what I was doing wrong. I finally said, “You’re right. You’re the boss. We’ll run everything your way. Just tell me what you want.” He moved his chair so close to me that I couldn’t move and leaned forward with his beet-red face in mine. I stared at his ears, puzzled by the stray patches of hair.
“Where did you come from? You think you’re so smart. You’renot a manager and don’t know a damn thing about anything. You’re Goodyear’s mistake.”
“Look, all I want to do is my job, but I can’t do anything if you won’t let me.” I asked him to let me go back to work, but he wasn’t through with me. My nerves were shot and my stomach was in knots, but something about the intensity of his anger cautioned me to roll up inside myself and play dead like someone being attacked by a bear is supposed to do, hoping the bear becomes discouraged by the lack of response. I was finally able to leave when the engineer manager arrived.
When I talked to Andrew about the situation, he explained that Stan couldn’t be all bad. He couldn’t be a complete
I didn’t believe him, and told my supervisor what he’d said. “Aw, hell, that guy don’t want to work. He just wants to sit on his ass,” was his response. So I did what my supervisor instructed me to do and made the operator load up the scrap rubber. I heard a loud explosion and was sick to my stomach. Sure enough, the mill was down all night. I knew I’d been taken by my supervisor. Throughout the night, as we struggled to get the mill up and running again, Barbara’s and Andrew’s words echoed in my mind.
O NE OF the other shift foremen, Stan, a bowlegged man who talked too quickly, didn’t try to trick me. He announced his suspicions of me loudly and clearly the minute I became part of his department. He warned everyone that I was keeping information about people in a little black book because I was “a member of the ERA.” (I carried a steno pad around with me to take notes and record information to keep from making mistakes.) By then I had been moved from stock prep, where I’d been for about a year, to final finish, where the tires go after they’re cured in the pits and have traveled on overhead conveyors to cool, passing into thetrimmer where the rubber tips are cut off. Once they reach final finish, if a tire is a blackwall, it goes immediately on the hook lines for two people to inspect by spinning and feeling for defects. If the tire is a whitewall, it travels to the blue paint machines to be sprayed so that the finish is protected during shipping. All of the tires are ground down by the force grinders to balance them out before being stamped and packed onto a truck for shipping.
In final finish, Stan never bothered to give me instructions on how to operate the machinery. There were several panels with some fiddly old wiring, so it took me a while to understand the mechanics; but the union electricians who saw me sticking with it helped me. One night when we had one mechanical problem after another, I called Stan onto the floor for help. He immediately blamed my rib dressers, threatening to send them home.
“My guys aren’t the problem. My crew is running more tires than ever,” I pointed out to him.
He turned red in the face and said, “What did you just say? Are you calling me a liar, when you have no idea what you’re talking about?”
“No, sir, I was just telling you the rib dressers have done their jobs. That’s my responsibility—that I do know.”
He started yelling and waving his arms at me, and went on like this for at least thirty minutes—in front of my team. There was nowhere for me to go and nothing for me to do but stand there and take it, until he suggested that we go to the computer room and settle our differences.
There he went on and on about what I was doing wrong. I finally said, “You’re right. You’re the boss. We’ll run everything your way. Just tell me what you want.” He moved his chair so close to me that I couldn’t move and leaned forward with his beet-red face in mine. I stared at his ears, puzzled by the stray patches of hair.
“Where did you come from? You think you’re so smart. You’renot a manager and don’t know a damn thing about anything. You’re Goodyear’s mistake.”
“Look, all I want to do is my job, but I can’t do anything if you won’t let me.” I asked him to let me go back to work, but he wasn’t through with me. My nerves were shot and my stomach was in knots, but something about the intensity of his anger cautioned me to roll up inside myself and play dead like someone being attacked by a bear is supposed to do, hoping the bear becomes discouraged by the lack of response. I was finally able to leave when the engineer manager arrived.
When I talked to Andrew about the situation, he explained that Stan couldn’t be all bad. He couldn’t be a complete
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