The Order in Which We Do Things: The Poetry of Tom Wayman

Factory Time

Factory Time The day divides neatly into four parts marked off by the breaks. The first quarter is a full two hours, 7:30 to 9:30, but that’s okay in theory, because I’m supposed to be fresh, but in fact after some evenings it’s a long first two hours. Then, a ten-minute break. Which is good another way, too: the second quarter thus has ten minutes knocked off, 9:40 to 11:30 which is only 110 minutes, or to put it another way, if I look at my watch and it says 11:10 I can cheer up because if I had still been in the first quarter and had worked for 90 minutes there would be 30 minutes to go, but now there is only 20. If it had been the first quarter, I could expect the same feeling at 9 o’clock as here I have when it is already ten minutes after 11. Then it’s lunch: a stretch, and maybe a little walk around. And at 12 sharp the endless quarter begins: a full two afternoon hours. And it’s only the start of the afternoon. Nothing to hope for the whole time. Come to think of it, today is probably only Tuesday. Or worse, Monday, with the week barely begun and the day only just half over, four hours down and 36 to go this week (if the foreman doesn’t come padding by about 3 some afternoon and ask us all to work overtime). Now while I’m trying to get through this early Tuesday afternoon maybe this is a good place to say Wednesday, Thursday and Friday have their personalities too. As a matter of fact, Wednesday after lunch 12 / The Order in Which We Do Things I could be almost happy because when that 12 noon hooter blast goes the week is precisely and officially half over. All downhill from here: Thursday, as you know is the day before Friday which means a little celebrating Thursday night —perhaps a few rounds in the pub after supper— won’t do me any harm. If I don’t get much sleep Thursday night, so what? I can sleep in Saturday. And Friday right after lunch Mike the foreman appears with the long cheques dripping out of his hands and he is so polite to each of us as he passes them over just like they taught him in foreman school. After that, not too much gets done. People go away into a corner and add and subtract like crazy trying to catch the Company in a mistake or figuring out what incredible percentage the government has taken this week, or what the money will actually mean in terms of savings or payments—and me, too. But wait. It’s still Tuesday afternoon. And only the first half of that: all the minutes until 2—which comes at last and everyone drops what they are doing if they hadn’t already been drifting toward their lunchboxes, or edging between the parts-racks in the direction of the caterer’s carts which always appear a few minutes before the hooter and may be taken on good authority as incontrovertible proof that 2 o’clock is actually going to arrive. And this last ten minute break of the day is when I finally empty my lunchbox and the thermos inside and put the now lightweight container back on its shelf and dive into the day’s fourth quarter: only 110 minutes. Also, 20 to 30 minutes before the end I stop and push a broom around, or just fiddle with something The Poetry of Tom Wayman / 13 or maybe fill up various parts-trays with washers and bolts, or talk to the partsman, climb out of my coveralls, and generally slack off. Until the 4 p.m. hooter of hooters when I dash to the timeclock, a little shoving and pushing in line, and I’m done. Whew. But even when I quit the numbers of the minutes and hours from this shift stick with me: I can look at a clock some morning months afterwards, and see it is 20 minutes to 9 —that is, if I’m ever out of bed that early— and the automatic computer in my head starts to type out: 20 minutes to 9, that means 30 minutes to work after 9...