Or, I’ve been temping.
Two weeks ago, I see an ad in the paper for a machinist’s job, so I call up the number listed in the ad, and it turns out it’s a temp agency and they’re doing the hiring for a machine shop. I go to the agency, fill out an application, and all the other necessary paperwork, then the next day I go for an interview at the machine shop (I don’t get the job, and neither does anybody else who applies for it). When I get home the lady from the temp agency calls me up and says she’s got a job for me, working for one of Nissan’s subcontractors at the Nissan plant in Smyrna. She doesn’t have any more info on the job than that and that the position is “indefinate.” Now, of course, this could mean that I’m only going to be working one night, or I could be a “perma-temp,” but I don’t care since I’m having to appeal my unemployment claim, and haven’t heard anything from the state as to when I’ll be having a hearing on that, so I really need the money. A little while later she calls me back and says that she needs to tell me that the reason the job is paying $10/hr is because they want me as a “supervisor” for some reason. The company wants two temps there, and one of them is to be the “supervisor” by luck of the draw, that’s me. She tells me I’m to meet the guy from the company at the front entrance of Nissan at 9:30 PM that night, along with the other guy who interviewed for the machinist’s job.
Now, I really don’t like temping, but I figure that if I’m actually going to be in the Nissan plant (which pays big money), then there’s a chance I can slip my resume into the hands of someone at Nissan and actually get a job working there. I catch a nap, and then head down to the Nissan plant.
When I get there, I discover that the front entrance of the building isn’t open. I park my car and walk up to the front of the building, figuring that dude is probably waiting inside with a security guard to let me in. Even if he’s not, I figure that by walking in front of the building that I’ll attract the attention of the security guards who’ll be able to provide me with more information.
I would like to point out that Nissan has approximately $150,000 worth of vehicles parked in front of their plant as displays, with no security cameras! Now, I’m not saying that an enterprising car theif could pull up with a rollback, load up with some brand new, fully loaded Nissans, and pull away with no one noticing, but it sure looked that way to me.
Eventually, the guy from XYZ company (the one that called the temp agency) shows up. He gets out of his car, and I quickly realize that he’s the unholy love-child of Samwise and Forrest Gump. He has no idea of what’s going on, where we’re supposed to go in, and what we’re supposed to be doing. He tries to give me an explaination of what I’m going to be doing, but it’s utterly rambling and incomprehensible. All I can make out of it is something dealing with HVAC. I’m not even going to try to duplicate what he said, because it was just so much jibberish.
Since SamGump doesn’t know exactly what’s going on, and since Joe Camel hasn’t shown up yet, he decides he’s going to head over to the gate where we go in. He asks me for my cell number so that he can call me and let me know what’s going on if he gets it all figured about before Joe gets there. He tells me that if Joe shows up before he gets back or calls, to send Joe over to the gate where he’s going and then follow him over.
SamGump leaves and a few minutes later, Joe Camel shows up. I relate to him everything that SamGump’s told me, and he hops back into his car to head over to the gate SamGump’s at. As I’m walking towards my car, SamGump pulls up and asks if Joe showed up. I tell him that Joe’s just left to go to the gate. SamGump freaks out, because it’s the wrong gate. SamGump tells me the right gate, and to head on over there while he goes and tries to find Joe.
I head on over to the other gate, and as I’m walking up to it, Joe comes up and starts telling me that he was originally waiting for SamGump to show up at this gate before he went over to where I was. SamGump, meanwhile, is nowhere to be found. So we wait outside of the security office at the gate for SamGump to show up. When SamGump finally makes it, we go into the security office.
Before security will let us in the plant, they need to know where we’re going and who our contact person inside the plant is. Of course, SamGump has only the vaguest of ideas where we’re going and has no idea of who our contact person in the plant might be. The security people are nice and helpful, but there’s not a whole lot they can do without knowing who we’re supposed to see in the plant. By this time, it’s 10 PM, and SamGump is obviously tired, and is having trouble figuring out what the hell he should do.
Eventually, he calls someone at XYZ company, and they tell him what he needs to know, he passes this information on to the security guard, who makes a call back to the department, and then tells us that they’ll be sending someone up to escort us back to where we’re going to be working. Joe Camel tries to get an explanation out of SamGump as to what we’re going to be doing, but fails in getting a coherent answer out of him.
Finally, a guy shows up to take us back. We walk inside the plant, and there’s an electric cart sitting just inside the doors for us. The guy explains that since there’s only two seats in the thing, he’s going to have to take us one at a time back to where we’ll be working. I hop in (since this guy seems to have a clue, and I want to get the hell away from SamGump as soon as I can before the stupid start’s rubbing off on me) and we zip off.
Now, I’ve been in a car plant once before. When I was about 12 or so, Honda opened up a plant in Marysville, OH, and since my mom was working at a Honda dealership, we got to take a tour of that plant. I don’t remember a lot about it, but it was absolutely spotless, spacious, and well laid out. Nissan’s plant has been open for about 20 years now, and while it’s a huge plant (where we ended up was a half mile from the door we came in at), it’s pretty crammed full of stuff right now, but it’s clean and well maintained. I’ve been in warehouses that were far newer that weren’t in as good a shape as the Nissan plant is.
As we’re zipping along in the cart, I’m looking around and grinning like an idiot, because it’s pretty easy for me to figure out what everything in the place is. It’s all well laid out, and at a glance, you can tell what’s going on in a particular area. This a marked contrast from some of the places I’ve worked, like Amalgamated Moron Manufacturing, where things were just randomly piled up everywhere. I’m also trying to spot where the HR offices might be, so I know where to slip a copy of my resume, but I can’t spot any.
Dude drops me off at the line where I’m to be working, and takes off to get the others. A guy who’s obviously some kind of supervisor walks up to me and asks if I’m from XYZ. I tell him I am, and he says, “Good! I’ll show you what we need you to do.” He takes me over, and quickly explains that the foam on the heater ducts they’re trying install in the dashes of Altimas is loose. I’m to adjust the foam on the ducts so that they can install the ducts correctly. A piece of cake.
SamGump and Joe Camel finally arrive, and eventually it all becomes clear as to what’s going on, and who works for whom. XYZ company makes the foam for PDQ, who makes the ducts, PDQ, in turn, supplies the ducts to DEF, who installs them in dashes for Nissans. Nissan found that the ducts with the improperly seated foam tended to rattle, so they complained to DEF, DEF called up PDQ and reported the problem to them. PDQ called XYZ and bitched them out about it and told them to get someone into the plant to fix the problem. XYZs solution was to hire temps to do it. Confused? Reread the paragraph again and you’ll get it.
So, instead of any the companies involved sending their own employees into the plant to correct the problem (thus enabling them to get a handle on the problem and correcting it in their plant before it got shipped to Nissan) they hired temps to do it for them. Once again, I have a job thanks to idiots not knowing what the hell they were doing! :smack: Og bless America!
(Well ok, I told the engineer that my plant couldn’t make the part, but our sister plant could, I was a big help!)