LOOSE CHANGE
Icebreakers better than making frames
Some jobs are better left behind.
I’m not a mingler.
Nope.
Don’t have the mingle bone. I have to be dragged body and soul to any kind of party. It’s why I bring the guitar to these things. To hide behind.
I’m the kind of guy who looks up icebreakers online, prints them off and still ends up walking around the busy room with an exaggerated smile like everything’s all right. Speechless.
Ten million things to talk about and I’m speechless.
Anyway, you don’t just walk up to somebody and say, “Tell me about your first job.”
I guess the best thing to do is confess.
“How’re yeh t’day?” Shake hands.
“Mike Finigan. World’s worst mingler.”
Confession is good for the soul. Plus, I’m sure it’s as good a start as any.
But since we’re already talking about jobs …
My first real job was in Kitchener, Ontario at … well...
Initially, my cousin and I got on at this plant where they manufactured car frames - spot welding car frames on an assembly line.
But first we got the safety talk. It was in a small room with no windows in the middle of this enormous, thundering factory. Like ants under a hovering foot.
“You’ll be working with sheet metal,” the safety guy began. “If you drop it, don’t try to catch it. You’ll slice your fingers off.”
And he showed us pictures of course to prove his point. “Just let it fall.”
“And, when you’re at your work station and you’re preparing your next frame, raise your welder’s mask only long enough to see that the frame is in place. DON’T LOOK AROUND. The guy next to you will be welding and you’ll get flash-burn in your eyes. And, trust me, you don’t need that.” Somebody raised a hand. Me. “What’s that’s flash-burn all about there, buddy?”
“Flash-burn occurs when your eyes are exposed to the incredibly bright light, five, ten times brighter than the sun, of the welding torch meeting metal. You won’t really notice anything right away, other than going blind for a few seconds. But when you get home and you’re, say, watching TV, suddenly you’ll get this excruciating pain in your eyes, that will bring you to your knees. See, what happens when you get the flash is that all the liquid in your eyes suddenly crystalizes and stays that way for like ten hours. And when it un-crystalizes, yeah, that’s when that terrific pain kicks in. So, yeah, don’t look at the guy next to you.
“Don’t look.
“And remember to take your salt pills.”
“Salt pills…,” I raise my hand. “The salt pills keep your electrolytes up as you sweat, profusely, keep you from passing out from the heat and dehydration.”
I nodded.
“Heating and sweating.” “Yeah, it gets pretty toasty in there. 35 C plus on a good day. But you’ll be wearing five or six layers of work clothes to keep from getting burnt by the flying molten metal bits that spray from the weld, so ...”
I’m mumbling keywords. “Heating and sweating and molten and dehydration and passing out…”
Then they took us on a tour of this underworld Disneyland, a vast warehouse setting with
car frames circling on overhead tracks, forklifts like bumper cars jostling everywhere. Showers of welding sparks, yellow and gold, leaping and cascading all around. Earsplitting, unintelligible voices on loudspeakers listing meaningless numbers and names. Fumes and exhaust, and the pungent stink of a thousand burning sparklers. Piecework guys fighting, money in their flash-burnt eyes, beards on fire, howling, “More frames!”
The job paid top dollar and there was unlimited overtime but when we got back to the safety room I asked where the bathroom was.
Yep. Walked right out the door.
Got a job in a tire plant the very same day. My first real, steady job.
I’d love to tell somebody about it sometime.