Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like to be poor

Re:Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like ... by wpietri on Saturday May 22, 2021 @09:50AM (#27246521)

One summer in high school I got a factory job. It was Michigan, so I was running an injection molding press making the rims for side mirrors. (Decades later I still remember that the press took 67 seconds per cycle, and that 1600 rims was the shift target.) I was on second shift, so my crew didn't see the executives much. But one day the CEO held an all-hands, so we shut all the machinery down and went to an area big enough for him to talk with us all.

I no longer remember what the meeting was about, but I think it must have been related to why the company couldn't afford a raise people were expecting. Somebody asked him a question that I couldn't hear; he looked a little flush and responded quickly, off the cuff. This guy who was wearing a nice suit, this guy who had clean hands and no burns from the presses, this guy who was easily clearing 10x what his workers made: this guy said, "I live paycheck to paycheck just like you all do!" And implied that he was just helpless in the face of his wife spending to much. Everybody in the room scoffed at him. I'm still scoffing.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like ... by detritus on Saturday May 22, 2021 @10:01AM (#27246614)

O/T - How many side mirror rims were in each cycle? If it were just one, then your shifts must have been over a day long, which doesn't make much sense.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like ... by wpietri on Saturday May 22, 2021 @10:49AM (#27247041)

Good question! It was 4. While waiting for the press I'd deflash [1] the set that were cool enough to put to the grinder and stack them for transport to the next station. Those doing the math will note that in theory 67 seconds would allow for 1716 rims per 8-hour shift. But it took time to open it, get them out, and close it again. The machine never stopped; breaks were handled by somebody coming along and taking over for a bit.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_(manufacturing)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like ... by detritus on Saturday May 22, 2021 @10:55AM (#27247095)

Crikey! Thanks. That's still a heck of a lot of work in those hours, with very little downtime.

I do a lot of 'proceduralised' jobs, but I'm 'lucky' in that I get to define and hone the procedure and then it tends only to be necessary for a few hours or a day or three, before I move onto something else entirely. I get a wee quick out of making things more efficient, then get to move on before my brain calcifies.

The thought of acting a mere part of a machine for 8 hours a day, weeks, months and years on end is ... well, it makes me appreciate my job, even at its worst!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like ... by wpietri on Monday May 24, 2021 @10:57AM (#27265103)

Totally. I only did factory work as summer jobs and loved it because it was fun to learn a new domain and try to optimize things. But yeah, I would have been deathly bored eventually.

Interestingly, Toyota's factory culture is very different. It's part of company philosophy to seek continuous improvement. They're also big on cross-training and investing in staff. Basically, they respect that hands come with brains, and that it's worth engaging both. I suspect I would have enjoyed that much more. If you're curious, the This American Life show on NUMMI gets at the contrast between the two approaches.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Rich people do have trouble understanding what it's like ... by detritus on Thursday May 27, 2021 @06:43AM (#27301324)

Kaizen culture was a big meme back in the 80s and 90s in the North of England as Japanese car manufacturers set up shop and the differences to then-declining local manufacturing culture became evident.

[ Parent | on HN ]