MAXIMUM SPEED, MINIMUM PAY "I leave work with conflicting feelings: dread that I must return, relief that I have not been fired"
Gunter, Sally
MAXIMUM SPEED, MINIMUM PAY Hanging clothes, serving lunch Sally Gunter I leave work with aching arms, and with conflicting feelings: dread that I must return, relief that I haven't been fired....
...Currently, I earn $5.50 an hour working in the distribution center of a large department store...
...The clamps make them cumbersome and easily tangled...
...Pepper button got a root beer...
...Lunch meat and mayonnaise squirted from many loaves as I tried to speed-slice...
...I can work three days a week and I enjoy the time I have for myself and my family...
...I ruined yards of plastic as I tried to wrap quickly...
...The clothes are processed further and bagged for shipment to retail stores...
...But then there's the work...
...The heat from the grill, the fryer, and the steam tables permeated our work area...
...The phone call wasn't exactly an answer from heaven...
...I won't soon forget my boss, Rose, or my co-workers, Kathy and Karen...
...And the working conditions bother me...
...But the physical work is good exercise and a store discount of 25 percent came with employment...
...Karen bounded to the counter with a stage whisper: "Put a bun with it, Sally...
...Caught in a daydream, I took one from the grill, put it on a plate, and started to pass it to her...
...I made a combination on a loaf of French bread, then sliced it into six pieces...
...Besides being awed by my co-workers' skills, I am encouraged by their spunk, which is sometimes mixed with cynicism, sometimes with ambition, almost always with humor...
...I might not have noticed if I did not have to put pickles in a fresh crock at the end of the day...
...Next day a teacher ordered a hot dog and asked, "Does that come with a bun...
...Trolleys-metal rods roughly two-feet-long-have clamps Sally Gunter, a previous contributor, ivorked as a reporter and assistant city editor for the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch and as a reporter for the Saint Louis Review, archdiocesan newspaper...
...We often are surrounded by piles of plastic (which is recycled), boxes of trash, and, when the conveyor is down, scores of empty boxes...
...We also must toss our empty boxes on an overhead conveyor and find our own hangers...
...Apart from opening the shipping boxes and stripping the plastic, our quota includes bringing "trolleys" to our individual work tables...
...This job, however, was in a girls' high school some thirteen miles away...
...I became a "sandwich girl" and learned that maximum speed is expected for minimum pay...
...Kathy could never tell one story without bursting into laughter...
...Security officers may check our belongings for pilferage...
...That was in early September 1993...
...Word must be out," I told Karen...
...The reasons why: I want part-time work compatible with my ten-year-old daughter's school hours...
...my face burned as I retrieved them...
...I also was in charge of vending...
...But we could laugh at our work, ourselves, and one another...
...Through it all, I roasted...
...Some plastic resists the stabs of my knife, and my hands sometimes cramp...
...I think I simply lack their speed and dexterity...
...One day, a student ordered a hot dog...
...After we hang up to 48 pieces of clothing on a trolley (depending on weight), we push it down our line...
...We are given box knives which cut easily through all but the toughest cardboard and plastic...
...I was not used to mass-producing ham, turkey, roast beef, and peanut butter sandwiches...
...I just want a job where I won't get fired," one woman in my training group said...
...if someone called her by name when she was busy...
...Another added, "I just want something different than [working in] a nursing home...
...We load carts with twenty or thirty trolleys, push them to our tables, and fit them on the rail, up to six or seven at a time...
...We open boxes of clothing shipped by vendors, strip them of plastic and, often, of their original hangers, rehang them, and send them on their way...
...I don't know the last names or exact titles of my immediate superiors, nor the first names of many co-workers...
...Sometimes trolleys and hangers are in short supply and I waste precious minutes searching and tugging...
...They are piled at two or three spots on our floor...
...But the fastest hangers on my floor are proud of it, and why not...
...During the actual lunch period, my left-handed-ness was no help as I served French fries with a right-handed scoop...
...We must hang a set number of pieces an hour-160 bathing suits, for example, 150 dresses, 105 coats...
...I was offered a job with the food service company that serves my daughter's school...
...I was out of the work force for fourteen years...
...It paid $4.35 an hour, a dime over minimum...
...on each end that fit onto a rail above our workspace...
...Some of them say I'm slow because of my three-day week...
...The hangers are scattered and, if not in new boxes, incredibly tangled in large bins...
...Our trainer told us that, in general, we should hang from 1,000 to 1,200 pieces in our 7 1/2-hour shift...
...This guy came in-he must have thought he was in the convent-and he said, he said [laughter], 'I'm here to fix the dishwasher,' and I said [doubling up and pointing to Karen], "There she is!'" Karen often yelled, "She died...
...and, probably most important, I am computer illiterate...
...I can barely maneuver the larger boxes (called "coffins...
...I marvel as other women move one, two, three trolleys ahead of me on their lines...
...My husband laughed at my pleasure the first time I told him I had made my quota...
...If I am fired, I won't miss these features of my working life...
...Still, both jobs seem-are-exploitative in terms of money paid for work demanded...
...For the first time, perhaps, I cannot perform the work that I was hired to do...
...But we all know worse jobs exist...
...But I'd spent more than a year looking, in vain, for writing or editing work, and I liked the school-hour schedule...
...It sounds like, 'Massa, I picked all de cotton,'" he said...
...I still remember how my hand smarted the first time I plunged it into that large barrel of brine...
...In contrast, hanging clothes is impersonal, as many factory jobs probably are...
...Once, I misloaded the soda machine so that every student who pushed the Dr...
...I kept jamming my price machine...
...I am over fifty...
...There's not much chance to talk, though we do help one another sort trolleys and sometimes share trolley carts and hanger boxes...
...Minor burns and cuts prevailed in my first weeks...
...I also earn more than I did in my first "re-entry" job...
...A drug test is a condition of employment...
...Often, the candy and chips I had loaded would not fall...
...Coins spilled to the floor as I emptied money from the machine one afternoon...
...For two years, I have held low-paying jobs that are unrelated to some twenty years of newspaper work or to the master's degree in journalism I received thirty years ago...
Vol. 122 • September 1995 • No. 15
