Made for it

Last week I was following my boss and a coworker up on some production equipment. The narrow staircase passed under a low pipe, causing the others to duck, but let me pass unbowed. The incident made me think about how I am genetically predisposed to my current job.

1) I am small; therefore I fit in small places. Yes, we all know that I am short and otherwise reasonably dimensioned, but such things don't matter when you sit in a cubicle all day. On the other hand, when you're trying to wedge yourself into the cabinet under your simulator to rewire the control system, walk under low hanging pipes, or allow large pallets of glass pass in a narrow hall, being small carries a distinct market advantage. It more than makes up for not being able to reach certain things.

2) I am predisposed to warm environments. The factory floor is commonly 90 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature known to melt people from silly states like Rhode Island and Ohio. I, in contrast, have good southern blood in me that thrives in the environment. I could bask in the glow of the sealing fires all day without passing out. I regularly comfort myself with the fact that although winter may be cold, I will always be able to go to work and be warm.

3) I was meant for lots of fast paced work. This may not be genetic as much as conditioned, especially from Olin, but I quickly grow bored if work is not hands on, fast-paced and more than I can handle. Despite several offers from central research, production really does always have something going on, something breaking. At 42,000 light bulbs an hour, how could it not be interesting? Desk work can wait until I'm old.

4) I can pull a good southern twang with the best of them. Although I am generally very careful about how I speak when having intellectual conversations, I am generally surrounded with people who live in Kentucky and probably always have. These people speak with very Kentucky accents and may not have an education that includes finishing high school. Speaking with the good Texas drawl brings me to their level, making me speak their language, facilitating true communication. Growing up in Texas was actually good for me after all.

5) I am a female and this is an anomaly. I prefer not to use this as an advantage, but I understand that in reality it is. Manufacturing is largely male and I am female. I wear khakis like all the other engineers, but I get more help and only need to ask for things once. I may not care for the reason I get these things, but it does make my job easier.

There are other reasons I like my job, but these are the reasons my job likes me.

The true meaning of Communication

I have a Coop at work who reports to me. This seems like it should be a good thing - I can defray work to my coop, bounce ideas off of him, and maybe get some people experience, right? Well, not really, but I am gaining some experience.

The largest lesson I am learning is about communication. An Olin education emphasizes communication, but does not necessarily prepare us well for communicating. You see, Olin students are above average. Olin faculty is above average. Olin staff is above average. Most everyone you encounter at Olin is above average. Thus, in the course of an Olin education, we get a lot of experience communicating with above average individuals. This is great, since we are all brilliant and destined to continue traveling in above average circles. Unfortunately, I work in an industry that often hires from the bottom rung in life. If the hourly workers have completed their GED they have an education in the top quartile among their peers. Interns and Coops are not selected for intelligence or work ethic, but often because a parent works at the plant. This nepotistic system has left me with a coop who seems to be more of a time sink than a time saver, but I am convinced this is my fault. I am used to people who will ask questions rather than run through 200 tests that are yielding obviously wrong data. I am not used to needing to e-mail, print out, and discuss the simplest of instructions. I am used to people who will find ways to fill their time semi-productively. I am not used to people who given a task list with 3 items will complete part of one and leave early. My communication skills are insufficient to truly make my coop understand what he needs to do or the fundamentals of the tasks at hand. My communication is so completely off mark that I can't even get across the concept of coming to see me before leaving. I can't blame my coop for his weak background, so I can only blame myself and work harder. I must understand my coop before I will ever be able to really communicate with him. I must try different techniques, clearer instructions, and more frequent and personalized contact. It's not communication unless the recipient understands what I'm actually saying.

In addition to this, I am learning a good amount about expectations (you can not hold others to your own), motivation (to other people, this job is all that stands between them and their family/friends/television), and frustration (Simon is awesome). Having a coop will be a growing experience for me. It will be rougher than expected, but some scrapes are expected when you fall out of above average bliss.

Life as Helen Keller

Today as I was obviously leaving work one of the equipment development guys walked by and commented that it was pouring outside. My immediate response was that it certainly smelled like it was. Then, I thought about what I had said. It did smell like rain, but when had I catalogued that fact in my head? The last time I had seen outside, 4 hours earlier through the loading dock, it had been a sunny Kentucky summer's day. But somehow, I knew it was raining, even despite the lack of visuals.

Working in a factory has been excellent for my senses. Between the solid roar from pumping out 40,000 light bulbs an hour and the mandatory ear plugs, all time spent on the factory floor, most of my day, is spent deaf. This has improved my reliance on smell, vibration, humidity and temperature. I can smell when one of the lines is having baker problems, adding a slightly sour smell to the normal industrial oil, metal, and flame odor. Vibrations in the floor can tell me there's a fork truck around the corner, waiting to back over me. Humidity helps me monitor the weather without a window and even lets me know when it's time to go home by dropping if too many people have left the factory, carrying their humid breath with them. More than the others, though, temperature defines a day in the factory. It serves as giant warning signs of where it is o.k. to go and what it is o.k. to touch. It lets me know when a machine has sprung a compressed air leak and lets me know when I'm pushing equipment too hard. Without the input of temperature I would be long dead, burned all over and unrecognizable.

Although I am highly grateful for my heightened senses, it does make me wonder that in trying to prevent a disorder we cause a temporary version of it instead. There is no doubt that daily exposure to the factory noise would make me deaf, but by making myself deaf every day through artificial means, I can, in fact, prevent the permanent hearing loss. Also, I wish that my super senses were not invoked in such seemingly harsh ways. Sure, I have an amazing sense of vibration through the soles of my feet, but I also spend the day without hearing music or even the unique melodies found in voices. I can tell the weather without seeing the sky, but I miss out on the rainbows when I do. I can handle these deprivations for awhile, but eventually, I know I will have to leave this existence. The trade off may not be worth it.

Me habla espanol

This entire week has been productive and interesting, but today felt especially good.

We had our weekly conference calls, but without the Germans or the Quebecois who make things so much more amusing. As we were sitting down to start it, my boss looks at me and asks if I speak Spanish. I had told him as much on several occasions, but, being timid, had never spoken a word of it in front of him. Even though the Mexicans on the conference call always speak English to us, it is obviously forced only for our benefit, all side conversations amongst themselves are in rapid fire Spanish. The Mexicans were going to be in the fire for our conference call today.

Once we finally start, late, we get into discussing some of the documentation that had been sent to us earlier this morning. It quickly comes about that we need more information, but the Mexicans can't understand what we're trying to get at. My boss, deciding to test me, asks if i can explain that they need more captions and explanation, along with any quantitative data they can provide. In a matter of two sentences I've managed to ask the OMex for what we want, only needing them to repeat their answer once to understand. I report back that they'll have it for our next conference call while my boss stares at me, jaw hanging open. The man from the glass plant across the table asks when if I'm planning on working at OMex, to which my boss responds, "She is now." There are some times when that semester in Mexico was more than worth it.

After that start to the day, everything else seemed to follow suit on being wonderful. All four of my simulators are at least functional, if not completely working and forming actual product. I've spent the last month troubleshooting pneumatics, wiring (without a diagram, with a multimeter from 1984), programming, stepper motors, and vacuum systems. Although there are some code bugs a level below the one I can reach and some additional parts would be useful, the machines are all to the point where it's possible to work around the problems left. I spent the afternoon working blissfully without backfiring on how to seal and tip fluorescent light bulbs. Lunch was spent discussing CS Lewis with an engineer from Central Research who has definitely been swayed to being my advocate. I had a great meeting with my mentor about line downtime and planning. It didn't even bother me when my boss paged me at 4:30 to work on a timeline he needs to present tomorrow. We came up with an elegant way to present data from a Gantt chart in a more visually comprehensible fashion. Even though I was at work until 7 working on it, my boss had basically left assuring me that anyplace I want to end up in the company is open to me.

I'm starting to believe it, and it feels good.

Presentation of doom

Today was my first presentation at work. So, of course, I managed to go back to sleep after my first alarm this morning and still needed to iron my clothes. Running around the apartment, I managed to overcome these hurdles and still managed to have breakfast around 6:30, my usual time. I finish my cheerios, start eating the milk with a spoon while holding the bowl...and spill the milk all over my lap. Twice. Some mornings I rock. Shortly thereafter I stained my hands with shoe polish. Needless to say, instead of being early to work as desired, I didn't get in until nearly 7:15.

I still managed to make all the last minute adjustments to my presentation, prepare some test specimen, and go over the entire presentation a couple times. Around 11 my boss was at my desk going over the latest rev when he's paged by his boss's boss…who wants to see my presentation, but in a special presentation after the main presentation to the engineers and manufacturing people. Excellent. So I gave my presentation twice, which exhausted me. It took a full hour and a half to make it through my 30 slides with the first group. The second presentation, with the plant manager and head of the fluorescent division took an hour. That is a lot of time for an introvert like me to be "on". Even though the presentations went well, I just wanted to curl up and go to sleep afterwards. The right people jumped in with the correct supporting information at the right times; I had the backup documents cued for questions; the deck was impeccable, if forced due to template demands. Although it feels good to have done well, it feels better to be done.

Putting the presentation together did give me a lot of perspective over how much I have done over the last two months and how much I still have left to do. The company has a process for salaried (i think only salaried?) employees wherein at the beginning of every year, or in my case, assignment, the employee sits down with his or her superior and sets out concrete goals for the time span, e.g. increase line speed by 10%; decrease energy usage by 15%; design, spec, and install new baker. In my case, it got done a little late, but it included a largely weighted portion for designing and implementing an instrumentation system for the production lines. When putting together my final slide, future actions, my boss brought up that short term, medium term, and long term were not really sufficient for a time line. After some discussion, we agreed that the long term activities, namely the instrumentation system, were not realistic in the next six months. Oops. I wonder if I can go back and change my goals a little bit. If I can't, I think I'm about to fail at work. I don't think they'll fire me.

Today was generally pretty good. First major presentation down, 25% of Kentucky done, clear vision of what I still need to do, and visit from the Central Research contact who can make my work much, much easier. Excellent.