One of my very first jobs was sewing swatches of upholstery at a furniture factory. An older girl (she was 19, I was 18) named Debbie Wiley and I were hired for six weeks at the end of the summer. Our boss was named Irvin. Very nice guy. Old (40?) but nice. We had to punch in and out of work, standing in line with our grown-up co-workers, who, we were to discover, behaved more like elementary school children most of the time. Here's one example: a couple of the women were giggling one day because one of them had given a jointly disliked co-worker a piece of candy that had, unbeknownst to her, been dropped on the floor! Ha ha! What a hoot!
A couple days into the six weeks, my sewing machine broke down. Irvin called in a repair guy, and I stood around waiting for it to be fixed. You may think it's boring to sew swatches, but it's much more boring to hang around a factory floor with nothing to do except watch juvenile-acting grown-ups. Soon, the machine was fixed, and I was back busily whipping up upholstery samples to be displayed in furniture retail stores across the Northeast.
My sewing machine broke down a bunch more times, and we went through the repair process each time. Irvin was scratching his head, concerned about how much it was costing the company.
Finally, all on my own, I figured out what was wrong with my machine. It was me. It was breaking down because I was using it incorrectly. Can't tell you now whether I was threading it wrong or replacing the bobbin incorrectly, but I did figure it out, and stopped doing whatever I was doing. The machine did not break down again.
I let Irvin think the repairman had finally succeeded. I feared if he knew it was my fault, he'd dock my pay for the amount of the repairs.
This was not an isolated situation in my life. In the course of numerous jobs and execution of many tasks, I learned that if some piece of machinery malfunctioned, it was probably something I did. As my husband, Rex, would say, "Loose nut behind the wheel."
This is why I am so relieved I had nothing to do with the "State Trooper was a Heroin Addict" story in the newspaper I work at that turned out to be a lie.
A couple days into the six weeks, my sewing machine broke down. Irvin called in a repair guy, and I stood around waiting for it to be fixed. You may think it's boring to sew swatches, but it's much more boring to hang around a factory floor with nothing to do except watch juvenile-acting grown-ups. Soon, the machine was fixed, and I was back busily whipping up upholstery samples to be displayed in furniture retail stores across the Northeast.
My sewing machine broke down a bunch more times, and we went through the repair process each time. Irvin was scratching his head, concerned about how much it was costing the company.
Finally, all on my own, I figured out what was wrong with my machine. It was me. It was breaking down because I was using it incorrectly. Can't tell you now whether I was threading it wrong or replacing the bobbin incorrectly, but I did figure it out, and stopped doing whatever I was doing. The machine did not break down again.
I let Irvin think the repairman had finally succeeded. I feared if he knew it was my fault, he'd dock my pay for the amount of the repairs.
This was not an isolated situation in my life. In the course of numerous jobs and execution of many tasks, I learned that if some piece of machinery malfunctioned, it was probably something I did. As my husband, Rex, would say, "Loose nut behind the wheel."
This is why I am so relieved I had nothing to do with the "State Trooper was a Heroin Addict" story in the newspaper I work at that turned out to be a lie.
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