You don't know my name, you don't know my number, you don't know my face at all.

Song of the Moment

I remember working at the Pot factory. I started there grinding handles for the pots. A pretty mindless job ... swipe-swipe, turn over, swipe-swipe, toss in bucket, next. It was all about #'s. An 8 hour day equaled almost 800 handles for the new people, over 1000 for people at it for a while. After a few months, I increased my production to 1200 and got promoted to hand sander.

Not much of a promotion, considering the work involved wrapping sandpaper around your fingers, and rubbing them on the inside lip of a freshly formed pot, suctioned to a spinning device. Several people lost fingers at this job. I managed to survive with only minor cuts which scarred and healed and was then promoted once more to "Pot man". Only 2 others in the factory could run the Draw Press, that weird machine that would smoosh an oiled metal disc around a die and "voila" a pot popped out, with a charming "Ding", when the metal bar rose back up.

The other 2 draw press operators had been doing this job for a while, one at it for over 10 years. They both knew the machine, inside and out, and could keep to a quota. The foreman would meet one or the other at 6 AM, when we all got there, and get a report on how many pots had been done the previous night in order to find out how many of what pot needed to be done on that day. I learned easily how to "Keep to quota" and the consequences of going under (Being yanked from the draw press for the day to punch handles - running a metal wire through a press which cut the wire to handle length. Mindless.) But this was done in order to ensure that the amount of pots needed by end of day was completed, by an experienced worker.

The secret to keeping to a quota was to make sure to divide the amount needed by the amount of time in the day ... and then get 12 more an hour. Doing this successfully for a month did not increase any "Targets" we had. We all wanted to achieve more then what was needed anyways, since we got paid a half decent wage for that time. We focused our time on finding easier ways to get the same job done and how we could improve the quality of the pot being produced. Experimenting with pressures on the metal, different gauges for measuring off the discs.

The other secret to this position was to understand that "raises" did not mean someone was "going over their target". It was about "Quality of work" and "recognizing dedication to the job". I remember Louis, the foreman, meeting with me after production was done for the day. He read over my log and asked me to stay behind a few minutes. He explained that it was going to be time for raises soon and I was due for one. He explained that it wasn't because of the amount of work being done, but because of how I A. showed up for work every day, B. tried to find new ways of doing things. Hearing this puffed out my ego. It was awesome. The amount of the raise did not matter, I enjoyed getting recognized for the small things.

I met the 3rd "Potman" on the way out the door and told him about my chat with the foreman. He said he did not get a raise that year, but that was ok. He enjoyed his job. He got what he wanted from the job, put in what needed to be put in and tackled the challenges as they came, generating praise from the foreman. Maybe next year.

I felt bad at first about telling him about my raise, since he did not get one, but then realized it did not matter. This guys raise was being given to him on a weekly basis, with the foreman recognizing when he did something great. If something went wrong, it was dealt with, and the rest of the members of the "Pot" team learned from it. No one was kept "in the dark". Performance was talked about in the open. No one was told to "Not talk about your promotion to the other workers". What could be benefited from this? We were proud of the work we did. We were proud of the people we worked with and the people charged with over-seeing our production. If someone was doing poorly, we tried to find out why, since the production of a pot did not include 1 person only, but the whole factory. If there was a break in that line, production slowed, meaning longer hours of work, less time spent at home with our families.

Long story short, my time at the Pot factory taught me one very important lesson. Doing well at your job didn't give you bragging rights. It gave you that feeling of "Ahhh", that was shared by others, not kept from them. Doing a job less then awesome wasn't always a bad experience, it was a learning experience. Something you could use to better yourself. Not something to be kept like a dirty secret.













Ciao