the help of guys like the night engineer supervisor, who stood up for me when I was blamed for something I didn’t do. Everyone knew the machines were supposed to be running when you walked on the floor and when you walked off. Once a machine goes down, it might not start up again. It’s like a wreck on the interstate—especially down the line in the pits, where tires are cured. Those presses never stop running, and the tires keep coming, so you have to take them off the conveyor belt and stack them. Before you know it, you could have three thousand tires you’ve got to work back in at some point.
In stock prep, the objective is to make sure a tuber never shuts down. The department is about as large as a town block, with trucks, skids of rubber to load, and a six-eight and a twelve-six tuber, both of which produce tire components. Heated rubber goes from the mills down into the huge tuber, which, like a sausage grinder, heats and mixes the different types of rubber before the operator puts in the die with a tread design. Then the rubber’s excreted out in the shape of tread that is weighed and cooled, sometimes traveling through water. A huge saw cuts the tread before two people offload the tread from the conveyor onto the flat leaves of a truck.
I hadn’t been in the department long when the eight-inch tuber went down two hours into my shift. A ball of rubber caught up under the machine, causing the belt to break. The shift foreman blamed me, but one of the night supervisors, whose face, after he’d been caught in a press, looked like it had been slashed with a knife, stood up for me during a meeting the next day. He explained to the group of disgruntled men that the ball of rubber had built up from a piece of loose rubber scrap over time, and I didn’t have anything to do with it.
I was grateful for his willingness to go against the gang. This was an exception to what usually went on, which was that any time the production was down, it was my fault. Ultimately I learned I had to take care of myself; I had to work harder and smarter than the rest. I started coming in two hours earlier than my shift to check the schedule, make sure stock was ready, and get any updates. That’s when Edna began saying, as she did through the rest of my Goodyear career, that she never knew anybody who took twelve hours to work an eight-hour shift.
If my experience had been all bad in the beginning, I couldn’t have made it; but I was like the lab rat that keeps coming back for more because it never knows when it pushes the lever if food will come out or not. I was constantly seeking approval, unable to predict when Goodyear would reward or punish me.
I HAD my first formal evaluation in 1981, after I’d been supervisor in final finish for a year. During the meeting in the cramped office of the department foreman, Jeff, it was made abundantly clear that I didn’t understand the unwritten expectations of me, didn’t know what a woman was supposed to deliver, so to speak. As Jeff asked me a few questions about the machinery in final finish, he chain-smoked, surprised when I gave him the right answers.
The next thing I knew, he started talking about how well
he’d
done at Goodyear, and explained in detail his wife’s personal connectionswith the top dogs at corporate headquarters in Akron. After he finally quit talking about himself, I thought we were about to get down to the business of my performance and future. Instead, he said, “Well, I rank you an eleven out of twelve. If you want a better score, you can meet me at the Ramada Inn.”
I stared at him blankly for a moment. Surely, he was just joking. I was used to crude remarks, but Jeff stared right back at me, expecting an answer—just as if he’d asked me another question about the machinery.
I glanced at the clock. We’d been in his office for over an hour.
I replied, “I’m not sure I understand.”
He exhaled cigarette smoke in my direction before he repeated
In stock prep, the objective is to make sure a tuber never shuts down. The department is about as large as a town block, with trucks, skids of rubber to load, and a six-eight and a twelve-six tuber, both of which produce tire components. Heated rubber goes from the mills down into the huge tuber, which, like a sausage grinder, heats and mixes the different types of rubber before the operator puts in the die with a tread design. Then the rubber’s excreted out in the shape of tread that is weighed and cooled, sometimes traveling through water. A huge saw cuts the tread before two people offload the tread from the conveyor onto the flat leaves of a truck.
I hadn’t been in the department long when the eight-inch tuber went down two hours into my shift. A ball of rubber caught up under the machine, causing the belt to break. The shift foreman blamed me, but one of the night supervisors, whose face, after he’d been caught in a press, looked like it had been slashed with a knife, stood up for me during a meeting the next day. He explained to the group of disgruntled men that the ball of rubber had built up from a piece of loose rubber scrap over time, and I didn’t have anything to do with it.
I was grateful for his willingness to go against the gang. This was an exception to what usually went on, which was that any time the production was down, it was my fault. Ultimately I learned I had to take care of myself; I had to work harder and smarter than the rest. I started coming in two hours earlier than my shift to check the schedule, make sure stock was ready, and get any updates. That’s when Edna began saying, as she did through the rest of my Goodyear career, that she never knew anybody who took twelve hours to work an eight-hour shift.
If my experience had been all bad in the beginning, I couldn’t have made it; but I was like the lab rat that keeps coming back for more because it never knows when it pushes the lever if food will come out or not. I was constantly seeking approval, unable to predict when Goodyear would reward or punish me.
I HAD my first formal evaluation in 1981, after I’d been supervisor in final finish for a year. During the meeting in the cramped office of the department foreman, Jeff, it was made abundantly clear that I didn’t understand the unwritten expectations of me, didn’t know what a woman was supposed to deliver, so to speak. As Jeff asked me a few questions about the machinery in final finish, he chain-smoked, surprised when I gave him the right answers.
The next thing I knew, he started talking about how well
he’d
done at Goodyear, and explained in detail his wife’s personal connectionswith the top dogs at corporate headquarters in Akron. After he finally quit talking about himself, I thought we were about to get down to the business of my performance and future. Instead, he said, “Well, I rank you an eleven out of twelve. If you want a better score, you can meet me at the Ramada Inn.”
I stared at him blankly for a moment. Surely, he was just joking. I was used to crude remarks, but Jeff stared right back at me, expecting an answer—just as if he’d asked me another question about the machinery.
I glanced at the clock. We’d been in his office for over an hour.
I replied, “I’m not sure I understand.”
He exhaled cigarette smoke in my direction before he repeated
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