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Thursday, April 19, 2012

Woo-hoo

Tomorrow is my 20 year anniversary at work. It's true, I managed to last 20 years at the warehouse. Not bad considering I was a heavy press and lathe set-up man by trade before I got laid off and had to find another job quick.
I never cared for my job but unemployment has always been real high here in the valley and I make a decent wage and good benefits. Gotta hold on to that shit, you know?
I get another weeks' vacation for my effort and just that much closer to my retirement.

I've only had 5 jobs in my 35 years in the workforce if you include the army and don't include when I was self employed either mining or doing ranch work. My longest stint of unemployment was 3 years back in the early 80s but I managed to support myself mining and that was when gold was under $300 an ounce. Hard, HARD motherfucking work without a certain payday. Fuck, I need to change the subject, my back's starting to ache just thinking about it.

I did ranch work when the mining wasn't paying- started out fencing and then working with stock, mostly BLM horses that my boss bought at auction. He'd buy them 2 or 3 at a time and then have me green-break them. I dislike horses to this day and I still refuse to string a bobbed wire fence.

Me and the Army didn't get along to well, mostly because I don't care for motherfuckers telling me what to do. But I gave them their time on their terms and we called it even.

I enjoyed doing set-up work at the Army Ammo Plant I worked at for 10 years. Changing punches and dies, adjusting these heavy presses to within .0001" and running production. Later I went over and started running lathes and milling machines but I enjoyed the presses more. Something about standing between two presses that are banging out grenades, the downstroke so powerful that the ground shook. You could hear those presses a half mile away - I know this for a fact because I lived a half mile away and I could hear those fuckers running at night.
What I didn't like was running those fucking presses 84 hours a week. That sucked.

All this talk about work is making me tired. Fuck it, I'm hitting the shower.

6 comments:

  1. Stop talking about work! Now go grab a beer and a burger and relax. And congrats!

    ReplyDelete
  2. You worked 7 12's at the ammo plant?
    HOLEE SHEET!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey, big day!
    In construction for 40 years, I never worked for the same company more than five years, 'cept when I opened my own and that was 15 years.
    Get a rep as a good hand, move up.
    Congrats on you and Lissa.
    See if you can swing making it to GBR7 in Reno this September. You can shoot all my shit, and I supply the ammo.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jim - I worked 13 hour days (a 12 hour shift with an hour of pre-maintenence before each shift)6 days a week and a 6 hour day on Sundays. Got one weekend off a month. Did that for the last 6 years I was there.
    Yeah that sucked. Money wasn't even any good, Uncle Sam was taking most of my paycheck in taxes.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Congrats on 20 years!

    These days that's an accomplishment!

    I just passed 13 at my current employer.

    Thinking about it just now it occurred to me that half of the time I've been turning wrenches for a living has been with this company.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wirecutter, just think, if you couldawouldashoulda sucked it up and soldiered on, you coulda retired probly SFC, youn would be gettin $2500 a month before taxes,life insurance, alimony,etc. Plus you'd have a liver the size of a basketball and the life expectancy of you'd better get your affairs in order and pre-order a coffin from Wal-Mart. They will keep it for you until it's needed. Cool, huh?

    ReplyDelete

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