The White Collar Man's Guide to Joining a Factory

A guest post

The following is a guest post from anon CryptoPlainview. He brings some interesting commentary about factory life from years of employment in manufacturing.

You can find them here on the website formerly known as Twitter.

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Will we be sending people “back to the mines” so to speak? After decades of laptop work are we on the verge of the great re-allocation of American human capital into industrial output?

I’m not sure, but there are forces at work that seem to want to push things that way.

The shift from white-collar training to the factory work environment can be a bit jarring. It is a switch that I myself experienced first-hand. After graduating with a degree in engineering I spent 5 years after university working at a mid-sized manufacturing firm spending 100% of the time on the factory floor. Months spent training with operators, getting hands dirty, experiencing a mild acid burn, and generally deprogramming from the sterile white-collar world into the more crass organized chaos of blue collar manufacturing.

Very insightful experience, and if this is indeed the fate awaiting many laptop class folks, it’s not an all-around terrible one. Every factory isn’t a bleak, dehumanizing, dangerous assembly line like the tariff alarmists would like you to believe. They’re just different places to earn a living. For some, it actually may be an environment where they are better suited to thrive in.

A few tips for those that could be dragged kicking and screaming in to making the plunge…

Tribal Knowledge

One of the first things you’ll encounter moving from the world of the abstract to the physical is how much the map truly differs from the territory. The machines rarely function exactly how you think they will. There’s little quirks and tricks that only get picked up via hands-on knowledge. Your textbook understanding is more or less useless in the face of the operator’s lived experience.

The great challenge for a newbie at a factory can be trying to pry out information from old-time mechanics who have a vested interest in protecting their “trade secrets”. They’ll give you the main beats, but always keep something in their back-pocket as means of retaining usefulness and job security.

A Regimented Day

The factory makeup tends to be (through either inculcation, or pre-selection) comprised of a pretty regimented group of people. The whole objective of the enterprise is predictable output and that trickles down to the staff. An old boss once joked to me “we don’t want operators taking creative license”.

There is a uniformity to many of the movements throughout the workday. The stampede of bodies emerging from their cars to clock in at the same time. The herd galloping to freedom at shift’s end. The days aren’t totally monotonous (there’s always unexpected events that pop up in manufacturing) but they have a certain common rhythm to them.

You shouldn’t try to rock the boat against established currents. If a man always takes his break at 10:00AM, you best have a very pressing reason for getting in the way of that.

Cultural Enrichment

You’ll likely be working shoulder to shoulder with many immigrants. You may have thought this was a grand nativist reindustrialization movement, but as I mentioned, in practice things are never quite as they seem. It will take time to reverse hiring trends, if it happens at all.

Have you always wanted to learn another language? Now is a great chance. You can brush up on that Spanish you took in high school with your co-workers.

Things will of course vary from facility to facility, but where I was working the employee cafeteria comically resembled something out of a prison movie. The Muslims dined with the Muslims, the Hispanics dined with the Hispanics, the Polish dined with the Polish, the Blacks ate with the Blacks. The ethnic cliques just naturally arise even if everyone otherwise gets along with each other.

The Infinite Adaptability of Man

When first stepping onto the manufacturing floor you’re typically met with a chorus of machines whirring, buzzers, hums, chirps, and other sounds of industrial output. You may think to yourself “how can I tolerate this noise everyday?” Surprisingly enough, in short order it really does become just white noise. Your brain adapts, you become accustomed to the environment.

In fact, you’ll become so attuned to the normal sounds of the floor that if your ears suddenly recognize some “new notes” it’s probably a good indicator that something is going wrong with the process that needs to be checked up on.

Overtime

There is a very different mindset between the salaried employee and those working on an hourly wage. A typical white collar salaryman is not looking forward to long hours. He gets no gain from the extra toil, it’s merely a necessary evil that must be done out of duty.

In the factory though, overtime (within limits) is often met with great enthusiasm. An operator clocks in 10-15 extra hours a week and he gets paid for them. Time and half, if you’re at a real stellar shop maybe double-time. Once I reached a level where I was responsible for doling out OT, people would be coming up to me pleading to get more hours.

Part of the reason factory jobs have long been considered solid paths for low-skilled labor is because of this factor. There are good earning opportunities out there for guys who will put in the time. For the man who enjoys getting paid for an honest day’s work the word “overtime” is music to his ears.

One of the subtle negative things to happen to salaried employment from a mental aspect has been direct deposit. It detaches you from the reason for your toil. Sure it was probably a nuisance going to the bank every week, but you were touching the money that you made. You saw it and felt it, a reminder of the reward of the job.

Nowadays, Salaryman rarely checks his pay stub, it’s generally always the same. For the OT employee though there is some fun variance in compensation. After working long hours he gets a little dopamine kick on payday when he sees the larger than usual paycheck.

Delightful Creatures of the Night

Among the many characters you have the pleasure to meet in a factory, the people who work the overnight shift are really a different breed. The work hours are rather socially isolating so it usually attracts either: a) people desperate for money working multiple jobs b) eccentric nocturnal animals. The latter group I really enjoyed talking with during morning shift changeovers.

They always had bizarre stories to tell you, either from work or their personal life. You learned rather quickly to take things they said with a grain of salt. They tend to have a few screws loose and are often unreliable narrators. But otherwise, just great, friendly, salt of the earth guys. The sort of delightfully strange Americans you might see in a David Lynch movie.