We have all learned about factories in our high school history classes: the Industrial Revolution, Henry Ford, the production line, Unionizing, the good stuff. However, it seems that even though factories are still a huge part of our nation's economy, many people associate them mentally as a thing of the past, like farming.
However, I spent this summer working in a factory and I learned a couple things.
1. People don't know how to react when you tell them you work in a factory.
I got a lot of awkward looks, and someone even replied, "Oh...Is that good?" After they had asked what I was doing this summer. Even though everyone who asked knew me and knew that my factory job was temporary, seasonal employment, they looked down on it. Why? Were they afraid of physical labor? Afraid of the working class?
2. Upper body strength is a useful thing.
As the youngest one in my family, and a small female, no one ever really asked me to ever lift much in my life - that is, before I started working at the factory. My job was actually a "Man's Job" because it involved so much heavy lifting. Which brings me to my next point...
3. There is "Women's Work" and "Men's Work." Guess which one pays more.
Before you say "But the men's work is harder labor so it should pay more!" Consider this: the women's work involved much menial, easy work and the men's work involved a lot more heavy lifting, it's true, but who designated the gender to the work? As aforementioned, I did a "man's job," a job usually designated for a 6 foot or taller male. I am a 5'4" female, and I had no problem doing that job on my own. The fact is that the factory underestimated its female workers and undervalued their work because of that.
4. Book smarts and common sense are two VERY different things.
Having spent most of my youth holed up in my room reading, I pride myself on being pretty book smart. However, after having worked in a factory for three months, I realized how little common sense I actually had. There were so many times that I did something and one of my coworkers would come up and tell me how to do it in a much easier way, or I'd make a stupid mistake and not realize it until too late.
5. Rosie the Riveter isn't a real thing.
We all know the iconic image of Rosie the Riveter from the World War II days, when the women had to step up and do factory work while the men were off at war. Well, after the men came back, they took their jobs back with them. Women doing factory work is still a recent thing, and the number of women who worked in my factory has grown exponentially in the last few years.
6. The pay is excellent.
It was definitely hard to go back to a job that paid $8 an hour after working for $15 an hour. It was even harder to go back to college as an English major, because, as everyone liked to remind me, I was "going to end up there anyway."
7. There are some jobs everyone should have to do.
Manual labor, customer service, and food service jobs: some of the many jobs that everyone should have to do as a rite of passage. Hopefully my later career will not involve much manual labor, but I will at least have that experience behind me and I can at least say that I have done it.
