Clocking into Hell

Eddie Masters

Description

A novel that does for factory life what The Choirboys did for police work
A view of the inner machinations of the day to day and year to year life at a typical American factory, this rare perspective on an increasingly bygone time of the all too familiar struggles as well as the high points of blue collar laborers, this will be an enjoyable as well as informative read for many who may be curious as to what ordinary middle class workers have to deal with and experience.

Sujets

• Controversial
• Controversia
• Faction
• Blue-collar worker
• Factory
• Novel
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 23 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669838678
• Langue: English

Extrait

CLOCKING INTO HELL


A Novel about life in a factory








EDDIE MASTERS



Copyright © 2022 by Eddie Masters.

Library of Congress Control Number:
2022913413
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-3869-2
Softcover
978-1-6698-3868-5
eBook
978-1-6698-3867-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.





Rev. date: 07/26/2022




Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
845150



Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20














“It’s called the American Dream…’cause you have to be asleep to believe it.”
George Carlin (1937-2008)



Chapter 1
Traveling to the factory on the first day of his new job found Roger Ennis with a myriad of thoughts whizzing through his brain at tachyon speed. Excited at the prospect of making much more money than his previous job, he had no idea what awaited him, nor how long he would be at this new place, nor what it entailed. Channel surfing and coming upon oldies songs playing on his car radio kept him company on the nearly twenty-minute drive to work. Leery thoughts plagued him as well, as he had no idea what he would eventually be doing nor if he would succeed making it past his ninety-day probationary period. Thinking to himself that if he showed up on time every day and took things one day at a time he would have a better chance at making it while pursuing other dreams he had on the side. Otherwise, as he was still in his early twenties, he figured if this didn’t pan out, he could still join the military as they were eager to recruit young men of his age with clean backgrounds and at the very least a high school diploma.
Reporting for duty at work and signing in on his time sheet he would join two other new hires for a day of orientation before being sent to a building that was most in need of new workers as they were going to be ramping up on work hours, which meant that overtime both during the week and on weekends was a real probability, and not just voluntary but mandatory overtime.
Learning basic safety measures such as wearing safety goggles and checking your shoes in for conductivity was a marked contrast to Roger’s previous places of employment, which included general labor and retail. This place manufactured detonators for mining and construction and some buildings even made items for the military. Having government contracts was virtual guaranteed job security Roger would later learn as they always made money even when this company’s commercial products would be slow in sales if the economy happened to be poor at a given time. Roger’s goals were to make and save money, pay off his debts and pay off his usual bills, including car payments and the obscene car insurance payments of nearly $3000 per year he had to make due to the fact he was a young man under the age of 25, despite the fact he had a clean driving record and not only wasn’t he driving a fancy car, but drove a Dodge. You just can’t win, he thought to himself.
Brought down to the building where he would eventually spend over a dozen years of his life, he was introduced to much of the first shift work staff and was given a simple basic task to do for the day, getting him familiar with the product made and how to safely handle it. As he looked around, he saw a good cross section of people; members of his own Generation X, people in their forties and fifties, a couple of African Americans and people who had been in this place since the Eisenhower Administration. That long, Roger thought to himself? Hmph! I’ll only be here a few years tops before I go off and do what I REALLY want to do with my life, even though the pay and benefits here are great, much better than most places in this area. Driving home that day Roger turned on the oldies station and the song “Five O’clock World” by The Vogues played on the air. Roger smiled to himself as he thought that was a fitting song to drive home to work from especially after his first day on this job.
The two individuals hired the same day as Roger didn’t last a week. They decided this type of job wasn’t for them and they quit. Roger did become good friends with a few others that were hired right after he was; Cliff Nixon, a portly African American man who loved singing, music, guitars and was always in a good mood and longed for the free spirited days of the peace and love 1960’s, Cherie Donnelly, a gorgeous woman a couple of years younger than Roger who looked more like she belonged walking down the aisle of a modeling runway than doing factory work, and Todd Cranmer, a goofy guy who used to address Roger in the same comedic way that Cliff did by calling him “Roger, YOU!” Cliff also had the Time-Life collection of Mysteries of the Unknown and he and Roger had many a discussion about the topics in those books, particularly the legend of Atlantis.
Getting up early every day was a bit of a challenge to Roger. His previous jobs started around 9 AM at the earliest but this job started at 7:30 AM and was a farther drive away which meant he had to get up at 6:00 AM at the latest. His month on the day shift was a learning experience to say the least and Lorna Bennett, an older lady who’d been employed there for almost twenty years taught him a few pointers. In one particular conversation with Roger, she compared the former plant manager, a man named Barton Hamilton to the current plant manager Dick Bolling. “Hamilton was okay, but that Bolling’s a no-good prick!” Lorna commented. Roger was thinking at that point and time, “Hoo boy, what did I get myself into? I guess I joined here after the good times ended!”
By the time he got used to this after a month of training at this place, he was told at a meeting of the building’s staff the Friday before Memorial Day he would be assigned to the dreaded graveyard shift, while Cliff, Cherie and Todd would be assigned to the 4-12 shift. He would find out that the graveyard shift there resembled Halloween in more ways than one.
Going to work at this hour of the night was completely new to Roger, as was some of the motley crew on that shift that he worked with. Does the midnight shift attract the weirdest, ugliest most psycho people on the planet he thought to himself? Sitting on the bench in the men’s locker room putting on his conductive shoes, he was greeted by one of its denizens, a man named Jack Rackham who proceeded to grab him and scream in his face as his unique way to say hello. Having been born and raised for part of his life in the outer boroughs of New York City, Roger was familiar with off the wall individuals and did something which caught Rackham completely off guard; he screamed and yelled right back. Rackham, surprised and amused by this at the same time patted Roger on the shoulder and sounding like he came from the Golden Age of Piracy with his gruff, gravelly voice and rapid-fire delivery told him, “You’re alright, buddy!” Also looking like he came from that era or to contemporaries looking and acting like a cross between notorious cult leader/murderer Charles Manson and former NFL star Lyle Alzado, Rackham had already gained quite a notorious reputation for himself on the plant; most of the women and about half of the men were deathly afraid of him. Tattooed before it became fashionable, other coworkers said he was a Hell’s Angel wannabe. As time went by Roger would learn how to deal with Rackham and his other coworkers on this shift, in his building and on the plant itself, which when he started employed approximately 450 people.
Roger got to know the other workers much better as time went by, both on this shift and eventually the others. They knew he struggled to stay awake after 3:00 AM as his body then started to shut down. He eventually learned that until he got used to this shift, he would have to washed down Vivarin with Mountain Dew at around that hour, which of course he did. Some of his coworkers like the two mechanics Don Dekuyper and Pete Petulski got along famously with him right away, trading stories about baseball, football, professional wrestling as well as the place they all worked at and all its idiosyncrasies. Though older than Roger by nearly 25 years Don and Roger became good friends as the years went by. Sounding like a cross between John Wayne and the cartoon character Butt-Head, Don was a navy veteran who was low key, devoted to his wife and family yet had a good sense of humor as well. He never learned how to drive a car and he always relied on co-workers for rides to work which was only a few miles from where