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!