September 17, 2004

• Productivity flees, like a child convinced there is evil lurking in the dark.

  
  

  Communication is reduced to gestures and single words, as if the English language were some sort of frustrating spell that just won't cast.

  
  

  I sit on a pile of door frames. One man looks at s piece of a door, and tells another what it is like. The second man flips through some papers, and whites a code onto a sticker. A new man puts the sticker onto the wood. I, from my perch atop the wood, then copy the code onto a piece of paper, and hand it to a 5th person (who I so aptly named: the tape guy) who proceeds to tape the single piece of paper into the part of the door we happen to be labelling.

  
  

  This, or course, is not a terrible fast process. All the other stations make sure we finish one before moving onto the next. Heaven forbid, but if we do manage to get a reasonable pace going, the man who looks up the codes will decide to rest. After all, he only got 3 hours of sleep last night, which he enjoyed reminding us all of constantly. I, rather coincidentally, had also only had 3 hours of sleep that night: though my poor tired friend didn't seem to be concerned with that. I guess that was better then after lunch though. At least I had the man to amuse me with his constant: 'Fuuuck! I'm walking dead here!' comments.

  
  

  You see, after lunch I was teamed up with 3 others (including the tape guy) to do some more inventory. Unfortunately, this time I was apparently the only English speaking person in the bunch. What this resorted to was mostly just boredom. I sat, or stood, or walked around until I heard, or noticed some grunting and gesturing. They would then point the number I ought to write down. I would write it down, and they would continue with their incoherent mummers. I think at one point they were getting in fights with one another, either that or they were having a loudness contest to see if they could freak out the unfortunate English speaking employees. Either way: by the time I could go home, (heh, me and Missina bolted an hour early) I was relived to get out of the chaos.

  
  

  Bed time though, I’m doing it all again tomorrow morning.

  • 9:58 pm
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