Dammit...

 

Well, it's happened again.

I drew these sketches during a Skype meeting with the...CEO? Some corporate guy...at the auto-parts shop where I work. What remained of the work force was gathered in the little cafeteria, watching the screen in dismay as our livelihoods were put on the chopping block. Basically Mr. Corporate was there to inform us that we had lost our biggest contract, and now we had 45-60 days to finish out our smaller contracts before the shop closed.

This wasn't like an asteroid strike - we didn't get blown up out of nowhere, in the middle of everything going great. We all knew this day would come eventually. The shop was teetering even before the Pandemic fucked up distribution and logistics. The shop is dirty and unkempt, with a near-constant pall of greasy haze; nearly all the machines have something wrong with them, and little money or will to fix them. We're now operating with maybe a fifth of our full-capacity workforce. Quality was a constant problem up until a few months ago - we had an entire order of 750,000+ parts come back to us last January, and to my knowledge we are still half-heartedly rechecking them. The place was badly managed, with our former plant manager getting fired; I have a suspicion his replacement is a hatchet-man, there to tie up loose ends before a shutting things down (friendly guy, though - nothing against him personally). The workers who've been there long enough remember "the good old days", when the owners were actually attached to the community and seemed to care about their workforce. I won't pretend we didn't have our share of bad or lazy workers; but when it seems like barely anyone cares, you have to lay the blame at the feet of the leadership. I could write a whole post about my thoughts on the evils of the American business model, but suffice it to say that you can usually track the trajectory of a shop when the management team only seems interested in milking the place or hiring their relatives.

So why did I work there, if it was so demoralizing? Mostly because I wasn't really affected by the goings-on at the place. I came in there with open eyes - this wasn't a job for thinking, this was a job for getting a paycheck. I kept my head down and did the work, and found that I was actually rather good at it. The fast-paced muscle-memory kind of stuff that, once you get a rhythm going, you can basically let your mind wander while your body does all the work. This probably seems like hell for some people and yes, it gets boring (you start to realize how long 30 seconds can be...) and your knees go to shit from standing on that concrete floor (even on 1-inch rubber mats) and if you get even a mild cold, it feels like someone's beating you with a 2-by-4, and you'll be waking up at 0-Dark-Thirty, and working anywhere from 40 to 84 hours a week...but for me, it was great. I didn't have to depend on anyone that much. As long as I got my parts and components, I could do the same thing for hours. Very Zen. I took a lot of pride out of doing my job well and efficiently, of knowing how to operate my machine with all its tics and wheezes, of seeing how many parts I could get in a certain time-frame. And if it all got be too much, there was always that fat paycheck at the end of two weeks to keep me going. The management left me alone, and I rarely spoke to my supervisor.

My coworkers were mostly...fine. Obviously when folks are bored, they get fidgety or talkative or play pranks, which I find annoying exhausting (Spot the Introvert). You get the odd nutjob. I witnessed at least one person actually slipping into Crazytown over the course of half a year. But I outlasted them. I don't like to admit my own smugness, but I felt a certain superiority over the Boomers who complained constantly about "How bad the shop is run" and "How it used to be" etc. - Millennials like me, we never had any jobs where we were actually appreciated or cared for as workers. We never got Christmas bonuses or profit-sharing or even paid enough to buy boats and motorcycles and campers and RVs and use our vacation days for long trips. We take it as a given that everyone from management on up the chain view us as inconvenient children, to be talked down to, lied to, and generally swept under the rug whenever possible. I hate to say it, but I'm proud of that toughness, of knowing you're pretty much on your own and have to be self-sufficient, and not base your whole life around your job, because it's going to go away in a year or two anyway.

See, this isn't the first time I've had a shop close down from under me. I took a job with a Union print shop up in Grand Ledge (that's in Michigan, for my out-of-state readers) that was almost the same scenario: an old shop under new management, with a disgruntled older work force, quality issues, old machines, and a lot of grime. I wasn't on the floor - I was actually attempting to continue my "career" as a graphic designer/print specialist - but I spent a fair amount of time helping out in assembly, or learning how the Heidelberg press operated. When the old hands complained about "How the place used to be", I just accepted that things weren't up to snuff; large-scale printing is a troubled industry in the US, with a lot of the jobs being taken by digital companies that outsource to China. From what I heard, the place wasn't well-run, and the management team kept hiring relatives. But I figured the place would limp on for at least a year or two. Instead, one Friday four months after my hiring, the owner called us onto the assembly floor, literally said, "The bank has closed us down," made a kind of dusting-off motion with his hands, and that was it. Job over. Shop over. We milled around in confusion, shaking our heads; I made a halfhearted attempt to get some reference contacts; meanwhile we could overhear the owner telling different managers and supervisors, "I got you, you're good, you're okay" - as in, they all knew beforehand what was coming up, and had already hashed out a deal to get another job. The rest of us were SOL. We were all part of the Teamsters, but I'm not sure how far that would get most of us, especially me - I had no pull, none of the networking with muckety-mucks who could place me at another job. At any rate, I was done. I looked into some other print shops in Lansing, but they weren't hiring. Thankfully my aunt worked at the shop here in Leslie, so she put in a good word for me, and I wasn't out of work for more than 2 weeks, tops.

And now, a year and a half later, I'm back in the position I started in.

There are more auto-parts shops around here than print shops, certainly; but once again I'm wondering if I want to keep chasing work in a dying industry. I have a lot of business schemes in my head, but I know I need to get a straight job. I have Blind Alley Comics, but until we can get some cash flow going I can't support myself on that. Straight art jobs, if they really exist anymore, are just too...too hard. Too hard on the soul. More and more these days, artists and designers get worked to death for less and less money, by exploitative managers who cover their insectoid twitchiness with "quirkiness" and "fun". I don't want my passion to turn into drudgery. I'd rather be patient, and get to where I can make art on my own terms, rather than for someone else.

Anyway, I'll be fine. I'm pretty well set, honestly...it's the other workers I worry about. The people who've been working there for 20+ years. The people with kids and payments. The locals who depended on that place. A shop in a small community like this, if it shuts down, the local community inevitably suffers...I'm trying not to think about it too hard. I can only do what I can, manage my money the best way I can, and hopefully be able to help a couple of people.

Like the Good Book says, "I am a sojourner in this world..." Or something to that effect. Keep Going.

Rick Out.