My Job

I guess I'll start by saying that I'm 19 years old since that helps frame the things I say a bit. At the start of September I got a job that I could potentially stay at for the rest of my life (it would kind of suck to be there that long, but not the worst thing since it's got a good union). I work at a production plant that produces pipes! The plant runs 24/7 all year round except for 2-3 weeks at Christmas where we clean and paint while maintenance does work and installations and contractors do dangerous work in unsafe ways because if you're doing any sort of construction your life sucks. The other day a contractor got some gunk in his eyes and now he's off the job for awhile and last year another fell 20 feet through the roof onto his head and somehow lived.

So the plant produces all sorts of pipes, from "spaghetti pipe" that's 3/4" in diameter and 20 ft long that bounces around and bends infinitely to 24 ft 36" diameter pipe that can take shots from a sledgehammer. My job is to quality check whatever pipe every hour and to make minor adjustments to keep it in the specifications so that it can be shipped and sold. Of course, before it's shipped I have to move it from the production line into a bundle so that I can weigh it and take it away with a forklift. There are all sorts of little things to do like cleaning valves and filters, making wooden frames and more, but that's typically easy.

I can't tell if I like shift work more or less than Monday-Friday work. 12 hour shifts are definitely not for everyone, that's for sure. The shift work at this job is waaaaaaay better than at other jobs though. Here I work 2 weeks days and then 2 weeks nights. On the 2 weeks of days I work 5 days one week, then 2 days the next, and then the same on the nights. It works out that I only work 14 days a month, which is SUPER nice, but 12 hour shifts leave time for little on my days on. Going back to Mon-Fri work would be really nice because 8 hour shifts are NOTHING to me now, but working 5 days in a row every week would be lame for sure.

Since the job is all about seniority people like me can get screwed pretty badly when it comes to picking lines. Lines are picked at the beginning of the first shift on any cycle. Once you pick a line, you're on it for those 2 or 3 shifts, and next cycle they're all picked again. Lines are always switching types of pipe, so for a couple shifts you could be doing one line, but then it might switch to something really juicy, and it'll get taken by a guy with more seniority.

What makes a line juicy? Speed, length, and wall-thickness, baby. The slowest line in the plant producing the slowest (longest, thickest) type of pipe will produce a pipe every 45 minutes. That's a lot of downtime. Did I mention the shifts are 12 hours? That's a lot of downtime. Some lines are "dual lines," and produce 2 kinds of pipes at once. Some of these are very desirable because they are consistently produce thicker, longer pipe, but some of them are really really shit.

As the bottom of the food chain, I get dropped off on these shitty lines sometimes and it's really really hard work. Worst case scenario you have a bundle that takes 63 pipes that are 10 ft in length and 10 lbs each and they are being produced at 15 ft/min. After some simple math we realize that it only takes 42 minutes per bundle, which means we're gonna have to bundle up and move 34 bundles in our shift. THAT'S A LOT OF WORK since you also have to do all of your other stuff, make more wood because there's more bundles and do more cleanup because there will be more shavings from the pipes. In total: 21,600 lbs lifted in a day. Compare this to the guy moving a pipe every 45 minutes using a small crane, and taking out 1 bundle per shift. X___X haha

But that's worst case scenario. There have been days where I've sat in the lunch room reading and listening to music for 6 hours because my line isn't running and maintenance is doing work on it. The way our scheduling works we end up working 1 Sunday day shift per month, so my crew (1 of 4) always does a lunch or breakfast for everyone (15+ people).

There are other cool benefits too, like management works Monday-Friday and leaves at 4, so there's plenty of time where there's no management skulking around. Most of management started on the bottom where I am, so they recognize that if you're sitting around doing nothing you probably completed your work or just need a break, but it's just bothersome to have them wandering around or whatever. It could be a lot worse... I could be working a minimum wage job again where management won't leave you the fuck alone and let you work or break in peace.

You can tell that I'm young when I'm addressing benefits and mentioning how annoying management is/isn't before I mention the actual benefits. Lot's of dental, lot's of medical, RSP's (YUMYUMYUM) that my work puts into and other goodies that will be very nice to take advantage of.

I like the employees here too. 30-50 year old guys who like coffee, beer, hot women, guns and not much else. I'm not like that at all, but they're fun to talk to and always have funny stories to tell about back when the plant was a shit hole. No supervisors, people doing rails off their desks, people meeting with drug dealers on their breaks, people with anger management issues breaking shit. The plant also happens to be on a Native Reserve... fuel for the fire back then. Now it's a lot more legit and there are always supervisors and such.

Inside this giant spoiler I'll spoiler (spoilerception) a couple funny/weird instances with shitty grammar:
+ Show Spoiler +

So, I originally thought that I would work here for 2 years and then go to school for something.. I don't know what yet and I refuse to go without knowing certainly, or at least to the absolute certainty I can know. However, there's a guy who started working here 6 years ago who's 23 now, and he has a nice apartment, a nice car, he's getting a nice promotion and everything is going really well for him.

I believe it's dangerous to rush into schooling, but the attitude of, "well I can always go back to school, no rush, no rush," is dangerous too, but I just have no idea what I'd go to school for. All I know is that I'm thankful that I didn't go straight out of highschool. Holy flip... I don't understand how teenagers can make such a commitment without thinking about the consequences in depth. I know one guy who KNEW he would become an engineer, and a year later he KNEW he was going to be a doctor. I don't know what's going on with him a year later after that, but that's just so fucking stupid imo. A girl I knew went for "general studies" and when I told her I didn't know why/what I should go to school for she said, "just take general studies!" I think it was a mistake to assume I'd get a thoughtful answer out of someone going for general studies.