You Better WORK

For two summers during college I worked the assembly line at a valve factory.

Fun tip: If a party ever gets dull, this simple conversation-starter is guaranteed to provide loads of juicy details, animated returns to past horrors and revelations where even best of friends may be hearing something for the first time:

What’s the worst or most unusual job you’ve ever had?

At first, the expected responses: Horrid retail experiences. Degrading waiting-table gigs. Telemarketing or door-to-door book sales that crushed the soul. But every so often there’s the former carnie, the gal who traveled as a circus clown, the phone sex personality who put himself through college, the recruiter for that timeshare scam, or the obscure bull castrator or cigarette girl. Seriously, ask around!

It wasn’t my worst job. Now that I think of it, some of my catering gigs involving costumes could check that box. (Me working a buffet at Universal Studios in a dinosaur outfit complete with tail and horns, serving Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell food, comes to mind.) But thankfully those were only one-night affairs, therefore not perpetually painful. A walk near any industrial dishwasher and its steamy food smells can take me right back to the summer I was a busboy and dishwasher at a Big Boy Restaurant. Not fun, but not necessarily unique either. So when I whip out the Superior Valve card, it’s certainly my most unusual, or the one that surprises people the most.

In the early ‘90s my dad worked as a Controller in the front offices of Superior Valve Company in Washington, Pennsylvania. Though the manufacturing facility in the back was a union shop, they had this great program where the children of any employee – whether from the front office, the warehouse or the assembly lines – could spend summers making a great hourly wage (compared to folding sweaters at The Gap) as long as we kids were enrolled in college.

I can still smell the lubricating oil in the air, always on my hands. It was tedious, boring work in a loud, non-air conditioned environment. Thankfully they revolved us youngsters through different departments, to give us a taste – Receiving, Warehousing, Assembly, Testing & Machining – (choice areas where only pros could be and we could only assist) – and then Final, for boxing up, preparing for shipping. 

It was a not-so-subtle nudge: See kids, this is why you stay in college! But inadvertently and perhaps more importantly, it introduced us wide-eyed youths to the truth of any work environment – the cast of characters, the personalities, the sexual escapades and tensions, the politics, the betrayals and alliances, the clashes between management and the union, and the incredible gossip, even in a plant where eyes were on you everywhere you went. Perhaps that was why there was so much gossip – boredom breeds it. “Oh, he’s chatting with Amelia. Now why would they need to chat? Hmm, I’d better find out… maybe they’re strategizing against me and my job.” 

I’m not sure how it came up, but before my first day, dad casually mentioned, “The people in charge down there, the team leads, are mostly lesbians. Just so you know.” 

Okaaaaaaaaaay. Thanks, dad, let me just page through my Tips for Working with Lesbians journal that any 19-year-old Pennsylvanian male has at hand.

Perhaps I should’ve paid more attention during the movie Fried Green Tomatoes, gotten K.D. Lang on speed dial or prepared my shield and spear to match my Doc Martens, to breed solidarity. But dear old dad was right, it was crucial knowledge to have, for the drama, betrayals and alliances on the floor had to do with stolen girlfriends, stolen wives and aggressive personalities, which brings me to the head of the Assembly department: Rhonda.

Oh, how to describe the breath of fresh air that was Rhonda… Three-packs-a-day-while-at-work Rhonda. I never truly understood the word “butch” until encountering Ms. Rhonda – her image should’ve been next to the word in any dictionary. Rhonda made Anne Ramsey, the villainous mom from Goonies or Throw Mama From the Train, seem like Audrey Hepburn! And I’m not being mean – I’m talking about her personality! Yes, she was a short and powerful Italian, channeling Danny DeVito or Joe Pesci, with a face and eye bags like Vincent Schiavelli from Ghost and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but I digress. 

On day one she marched up to me with advice. “Look,” she bellowed, “you see this number here?”  

“Yeah?” I jittered.

“This number here is the Standard. This is the amount we workers are expected to produce per hour.” She pounded her fist on my work table. “Now we don’t need you young kids coming in here all ambitious with your energy and trying to impress, assembling more than the Standard. It makes us look bad and then they go and raise the Standard after you leave.” With a voice like Harvey Fierstein, she leaned in for effect. “ So… just do the standard, kid.”

Her girlfriend, I quickly learned, was another manager named Caroline, whose look and voice reminded me of actress Barbara Hale, Perry Mason’s secretary. She was Rhonda’s prize. And her possession. But the hot news on the floor was about Joanne and Tricia. Joanne, a taller Ellen DeGeneres type, was the head honcho, the main plant manager, a great leader and a woman my dad respected and admired “even though she was a lesbian.” Within days I came to learn that Tricia, the mother of one of my college-aged workmates, Anthony, had recently left her husband for Joanne and they were now living together. 

My little mind reeled. But… Anthony’s mom looked like a Southern saleswoman for Mary Kay!, my mind protested. A sweet but blonde Edie McClurg type, (you know, that secretary from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), substantial and kind, with frosted hair – the type of mom who’d serve you lemonade during a visit. And she’d turned out to want to be with a woman, with Joanne? I eyed Anthony for signs of psychological distress, embarrassed for him. Was he ashamed that we all knew? Did he sleep just down the hall from where his mother now slept with Joanne? Could a woman be married to a guy one week and a lesbian the next? How had that all gone down on the work floor?

Like I said, an education: on life, workplace shenanigans and office politics. I was sheltered and clueless, with so much to wake up to.

Daily these four sapphic personalities would butt heads, strut, practically spray on things like a feline claiming territory, gesticulate, let off steam, then go back to smoke another cig – all in a day’s shift… and at the end of the day suddenly they were like Wile E. Coyote and that sheepdog punching in and out of work on Looney Toons – “Good night, Ralph.” “See ya tomorrow, Sam.”

Now it wasn’t all lesbians working there. It’s just those four had worked hard to attain the leadership roles. There were also plenty of tough, bearded guys and a few straight moms and widows too. And an out of place glamour girl with blonde hair high enough (and makeup thick enough) to rival young Dolly Parton. My secret confidant was an early-60-something grandmother type, Annie, who encouraged me to come visit daily for five minutes during break time at her work station in Testing. Sure, she gossiped and was up to no good, telling me how my young workmates Nathalie and Brett were starting to get it on after work hours – “I saw the way they were talking in the parking lot” – but Annie was harmless, and I believe we exchanged cards a year or two after I left.

I certainly didn’t have to diet or work out, spending summers in that baking facility, working around ovens for molding parts and hot water troughs for valve testing. For two weeks my workmate Pete and I were tasked with getting up on ladders and disassembling and cleaning every fan in the plant, total of about 60, which caused a few bawdy ladies with smokers’ coughs to anoint me as “Sexy Legs” – they had an excellent view from below! – and a few old timer guys to claim, “That’s the first time those fans have been cleaned since 1980!” I inhaled enough dust and grime to prove it. 

I’d almost forgotten those times… until, someone recently asked the party game question.

I know millions around the world can top this experience with their stories, but my summers at Superior Valve probably constitute my most unusual one. That is – I’m just realizing this now – until three years later, in Cleveland, Ohio, when yours truly, a virile, prime-of-life 22-year-old male…

… prayed the Rosary aloud on the air, daily, as part of my radio job.

But I guess that’s a tale for another time.