The End

Well, here we are: the last full day of work at the plant. It was announced in an all-employee meeting (with donuts and coffee) that we would be working until today. Then tomorrow morning we will be here, though I can't really imagine what kind of work is going to get done. At 11:00 is a catered lunch (hey, thanks for copy-catting the employee's club's lunch the following day, guys!) and then we are free to go. Actually, we can go before having lunch if we want, but what will pass for retirement parties will be afterward. I hope that others' families will attend, since my entire entourage plans to be there. I have no problem with them being there, but I'll feel bad if I dragged them all there and no one else came. At least we can walk around and see the place before leaving. On Friday we are having our employees club lunch at the clubhouse. Several people who previously said they weren't coming have now said they are, but it will remain to be seen how long we will be eating leftovers. It could be quite awhile, since we bought food for 100. Right now I'm emptying the stockroom carousel, taking out the things that they didn't know were there. They think they want to look through them and decide what to do with everything, but I say dump it. If they haven't known it was there anyway, it won't hurt for it to be gone. Later I have to dump our trash for the last time, saying a final goodbye to Dusty, the dead bird that nearly scared me out of my wits when I came across him, up close and personal, on an overtime Saturday a few weeks ago. When I dumped the trash a few days after encountering him, he stuck to the container and came back to the area with me, and we haven't tried to get rid of him since. (We named him Dusty because, well, he is.) Looking over the last couple of months, I have to say that I have had more fun and laughed more than at any other time in my years here. It's been loose and silly, but we have also gotten done what needed to be done. I'm trying not to think about walking out of here tomorrow, knowing that I will lose touch with most of these people even if I try not to. Of course, with some people, it will be a blessing to never see them again. My list of those people has grown through the weeks. Dad asked me last night why we kept killing ourselves with overtime, trying to get everything done. Why did we care? I don't know. I guess I'd rather be busy than bored. Then on the news there was a film clip of Maria Shriver, speaking at a women's conference, talking about the upcoming end of her career as first lady of California. She said she had worried about what comes next, what she will do after that. Then she realized that her mother would have told her, "It's OK to not know what will come next. Right now you still have a job to do. You need to finish it properly, and then you will know what comes next." Those aren't the exact words she said but I think that's why we have done what we have done, and why we have worked so hard when others slacked off. We still had a job to do, and we needed to finish it properly. We have tried.

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Wearing Out

As much as I'm grateful for all of the overtime, I'm getting very tired. I just can't seem to get to bed early enough, or fall asleep early enough, no matter what I do. And I don't want to take an Advil PM every night. It's an ever-increasing struggle to get out of bed at 3:45 AM every day, but I keep doing it because there are (after today) a maximum of six days left - plus one final Saturday. I've also developed an allergy to what I am assuming is all of the dust I'm working in. Today, instead of being stuffy, I have a runny nose and have been sneezing frequently. It's SO annoying. My nose is itchy and red (and drippy), my eyes are red. Claritin just doesn't seem to be cutting it anymore. I suspect that in two weeks' time, after this is all over, I will feel so much better I won't believe the difference. No more foot pain/knee pain from the concrete floor, no more dust. At least, I hope that's how it is. I know I'll be sleeping more and swimming more by then. For now, I'd better get to work.

Flatline

It happened yesterday afternoon, about 1:00 p.m. I was working away in the stockroom when I suddenly became aware that it was quiet - very quiet. Having worked so many Saturdays and 5:00 a.m.s in the past, I'm accustomed to the quiet of those times, though I never stopped noticing the difference from a regular workday. Yesterday's quiet was different. It was a Thursday afternoon. There should have been the background noise of a living factory - fork trucks honking, machines running in sheetmetal, the machine shop, and the paint chain. There should have been talking, radio chatter, phones ringing. There was nothing. It was as though everyone had shut off their machines and left the building while I wasn't looking, the kind of sensation I sometimes got when there was an all-employee meeting that I had forgotten about and everyone had left the area. The quiet continues today, and it will not change. The paint chain made its last rounds yesterday, and today everything was wrapped for shipment, painted or not. The machine shop is silent. The last of the large machines in sheetmetal were loaded onto a flatbed. Everyone who has nothing to do is in one of the side rooms, or in the front office, painting the walls, erasing us from the building's memory and clearing the way for someone new. Oh, there is still some noise. I hear the nail gun firing down in the carpenter's shop, as he builds crates for the remaining equipment that is scheduled to go. The fork trucks are still around, and there is still some radio chatter, though it can go long periods of time without a sound, so much so that I sometimes turn mine off and back on just to make sure it's working. This morning I posted the notice for the lunch that the employees club is hosting on the last day. Just awhile ago, one of the supervisors went around handing out layoff notices to his people (they are all in the category that will not be retiring). The end is coming, very soon. After fifty-six years, the heartbeat of this factory has stopped.

Carrying On

We have still been working overtime almost every morning and on Saturdays. Last Saturday I only stayed a half-day because I felt terrible. Maybe I was just tired, but all of a sudden I just...couldn't...do...it...anymore. I went home and slept for three hours, but didn't really perk up much. 

Monday I had overtime, Tuesday I didn't, and Wednesday and Thursday I have had. (Please don't call the grammar police on me, I just didn't know how else to say that.) In the past couple of days we haven't had a lot to do, though there is still a lot TO do. They just aren't getting pick orders into the computer very quickly. The little break has been nice, but I know we are going to pay for it in this next week. On Friday there is a meeting at the unemployment office that we are supposed to attend if we are interested in any of the retraining benefits and such that we will have available to us. The initial problem was that they were going to make us use our own time (or paid personal time) to go! Most of us who still have time left were trying to hang on to that to get it at the end, so we were very unhappy about this arrangement. (This meeting was supposed to be taking place a week or so AFTER we were gone.) This morning, though, there is a note on the time clock saying that we will be paid for attending. It's a two-hour meeting, so we will leave 30 minutes before the meeting, attend the meeting, then have 30 paid minutes to get back. But lest some try to cheat, you will only be paid if you sign the sign-in sheet and stay for the whole meeting. I'm interested to find out about it because I'd like to take a sign language class at Heartland. I think it could be a help in my work at job #2.

So...it's 10-14-2010. We supposedly have twelve days remaining to work (counting today, not counting the two remaining Saturdays). The plant manager told me, though, that it might be less. We may not be here at all on the 29th. The way he acted about it, I'm thinking they might do something like call us to a little reception kind of thing on the 28th, then tell us to pack up and go, and not come back the next day. He said there would be some kind of closing "thing" at some point, and it makes sense that they would want to try to avoid vandalism (and maybe the media?). Anyway, we will see. The employees club is planning a lunch for everyone at the clubhouse on the 29th, which will go forward even if we are not here. Anyone who is interested can come back for it. OK, so we might be eating a lot of leftover barbecue for Sunday Night Supper that week, but that's all right. :)

On Tuesday I received my retirement plaque. It was a lovely ceremony. I marched solemnly to my front porch, picked up the cardboard folder with the gift box inside, and marched back in, puzzling over why some "Accounting Dept" would be sending me a package. (I actually thought it might be something from job #2.) So that's it, it's official - no handshake, not even a letter in the box, nothing. I guess I will still get my cake, though. OK, that's it - barbecue and retirement cake for Sunday Night Supper on Oct 31!

Sorting and Getting Sorted

Anyone who was to walk into my workplace lately might think that we are actually a living, functioning factory. There is fabrication going on, a little production, some painting. Parts and things to make parts out of still come in the receiving door and finished goods still go out the shipping door. There is frenetic activity and piles of stuff everywhere. There is also overtime a-plenty, at least for my group (shipping and receiving). But the factory is in its last weeks of existence. All of the activity is geared toward finishing the final orders and packing things up. Most of the shipping going on isn't finished goods, but parts from the stockroom and machines from the floor being sent to their new homes, or to the scrap yard. One day there will be a brand new open space on the floor, and the next it will be filled with a collection of items being assembled for the final auction of things no one else wanted (scheduled for December). A kind of factory OCD seems to have gripped the maintenance guys who put this stuff here. Groups of like-items stand in rows - shelving units, carts, plastic skids, bubble wrap dispensers, chairs, wastebaskets, wire-carrying-rack-things that I don't know the real name of. There is still a production meeting every morning, though I don't really know why. I don't fill parts bins anymore because all of the areas that I supplied are shut down now, and gone. The most memorable one was last week. In the morning I filled their bins, and they worked the line until lunch. By the end of the afternoon, the floor was clear - every table and piece of equipment was in shipping waiting to be crated. And the next day everything was gone. My main job now is to empty the stockroom of "scrap", which is everything that doesn't belong to a line that is moving. It has to be sorted into precious metal (things like copper, brass, and aluminum), regular metal (going to a local scrap metal dealer), and everything else (being bought by a company that pays some kind of salvage price for it all). As I dump each tray of finished metal parts into the scrap bin I have to try not to think too much about it. I see parts that I used to use to build things, and things that I have moved around the plant during their production stages, and I can't help but remember how much time and effort they paid for to create this item that I am now just throwing away. Sometimes I see something that triggers a memory of a job I had here years ago that I hadn't thought of in a long time, hardly even remember doing at all. And it just makes me sad to think, once again, that it's all about to be gone forever. I've been taking surreptitious pictures when I can, both of things that have changed (empty rooms, the OCD areas) and things that I want to remember. My favorite row of the stockroom shelving - dark, quiet(er), soothing to drive down. What it looks like to sit in the shipping dock door early in the morning, enjoying the breeze and the quiet. The train tracks that come right into the receiving area, from some long-ago time when this place had its own railroad siding, when so much came in to be processed that they needed to bring it in by the train carload. I wasn't here during the peak of employment and work, but it must have been a very different place than I know. It's back to being horribly hot, and even when they have the a/c on I am constantly sweaty. And every day this week I have been dirty by fifteen minutes into my day. There have only been rare occasions when I have truly gotten dirty at work here, even though it's a factory. Now, though, I'm constantly surrounded by dust falling off of parts that haven't been touched in years. And in case you hadn't figured it out yet, sweat plus dust equals mud. More than once I have seen myself in the restroom mirror with a smear of mud across my cheek where I have wiped sweat from my face with the back of my glove. I have sneezed more in the last week than I have in the last year, probably (no, I don't actually keep track). And I haven't had time to swim much, so I'm just thiiiiiiis close to homicidal by the end of my 10-hour days. Yesterday I was handed my packet of retirement papers, only eight days after they were requested (that might be an efficiency record for our "HR" person). I haven't yet really looked at them, but I'll have them signed and returned on Monday. There aren't a lot of actual decisions to be made if you're single, except for assigning beneficiaries for various things. I just have to sign up for everything, then wait for November 1 to see if I actually get my first check on time. We'll see.

Feeling Cheated

This morning on the radio they were interviewing a local semi-celebrity who is retiring this week after 23 years or something at his job. It got me thinking about retirement today, and kind of feeling sorry for myself.

Usually, when people retire it's because they planned it. They know they have the money to do it, they have other plans, it's time. And it's a joyous, though scary, occasion. I know there are a fair number of people who find that it isn't really what they thought it would be, or what they wanted, once they have made the leap (that's the scary part). And some find they really DON'T have the money to do it (even scarier). At the time, though, there are lot of congratulations passed around, and people are envious of the retiree's coming freedom from working. It's a different deal at my work now.

In past years, like when my mom retired, there was a "party" at break time, where the honoree's family was invited, and there were little gifts, collections taken up, a cake and a plaque, a guestbook that everyone signed, pictures taken. I'll never have that. My retirement, while just as final and scary, is missing the joy and the envy. We are all leaving, whether it's for retirement or the unemployment line. Is it petty of me to feel cheated by not getting to be congratulated, not getting even the stupid little party that they had before? I never meant to retire at 54, maybe not even at 55. In some ways I feel like I don't deserve to not have to work, you know? But I would have liked a chance to look forward to that day instead of being sad. But hey, I hear that we still get our cakes.

Stress Relief

Some time back (April, actually) I rejoined Gold's Gym with the intention of swimming again. Through the plant-closing process and its associated stresses, swimming has come to be my main stress reliever. It also makes my knees feel better, and I sleep better, though I have yet to lose any discernible weight. I tell myself that I weigh the same because I have gained muscle weight and lost fat, but it's not true. It's still fat. (OK, I actually use swimming as a way of allowing myself to still eat the bad stuff.) But I can go a lot longer and faster without gasping for breath like I did at first. And my swimming has been officially endorsed by both my orthopedic surgeon (who is a swimmer) and my gynecologist (not because "that" has anything to do with swimming, but because he is a swimmer, too).

Once the plant closing is over I plan to do what I do in Florida. When I'm there, the first thing I do every day is put on my swimsuit and go to the beach. I swim, or whatever, for as long as I want, then I go home, clean up, and go on with my day. I plan to do the same with going to the gym here - get up, swim, shower, then go on with the day. For now, though, I have to squeeze swimming in between work and whatever else is going on in the evening, which means that many days I don't get there at all. And when I do get there, I might have limited time, so I can't get much distance in.

I last swam on Sunday morning, which is my favorite time. The pool is usually empty and quiet, and there is sun coming in the window... it's very soothing and peaceful. Monday I couldn't go. Today at work I just knew that I HAD to get to the pool tonight, no matter what. Work has been incredibly stressful this week (as of today, we have 41 working days left). The final push is coming, and in my group, we have been promised lots of overtime as we pull the remaining stock out of the stockrooms and get it sorted to be scrapped or sent away. Particular people have been even bigger idiots than they usually are, and no one seems to know what anyone else is doing. Machines leave every day, strangers are all around pulling equipment and doing the environmental cleaning, and we are both busy and looking for something to do all the time. My knees have been horrible lately (since I've spent less time on the forklift and more on my feet). In short, I knew if I didn't swim today, there was a good chance that I might kill someone tomorrow. (It could still happen, but it's less likely now.)

I've discovered a pattern to my workouts. For the first few laps I just stretch, check in with all parts of my body to assess what hurts or what my limits are, and get settled in the water. Then at some unknown time, sometimes 10 laps in, sometimes 30 laps in, it feels like I could just go on swimming forever. At the risk of sounding like a total dork, I feel like I live in the water, like there is absolutely no effort in going from one end to the other. And at times, I even wish the pool was longer, when I really get a good rhythm going and I don't want to stop and turn. If there are other people around I completely tune them out at this point. They just don't exist. That's when I really love it - when it feels like the water is where I belong.

Since I got the Zoomer fins and the paddles, I have been able to mix up my workout a lot, which has been great. It makes it more fun, and I get a better workout from it. I can really feel the difference in the morning. When the amount of time I have decided on is up, I quit, check my number of laps (I never look until I'm done so I don't know how many I've done along the way), sit in the hot tub and stretch for several minutes, then get back in the pool to stretch further and to cool down. Tonight was really great, but I wish I had had an additional 30 minutes. No one will die at work tomorrow, at least not by my hand. Unless it's an accident - or I can make it look like one. :)