I worked at my fourth job for only a few months. It was a third shift factory job for Woolrich Inc. My job title: Fabric Cutter. You know, cutter has a nice ring to it for a job title, but when you put the word fabric in front of it, it loses something. I was given a belt that I had to wear, kind of like tool belt. Its main purpose was to hold the pair of shears we used on the job. All they had left was a left-handed belt (it'll make sense in a moment) so the holster for the shears was on my left side. So when ever I'd take my shears out it looked like I was unsheathing a sword and when I put them away it looked like I was putting a sword back in its sheath. That's why they called me Zorro. It sounds better than Fabric Cutter. If you're curled up under one of those signature red and black Woolrich blankets, there's a slim chance that I cut the fabric for it. Just think of me whenever you use it.
I didn't quite get the respect that someone nicknamed Zorro would typically get though. The people I worked with were, well, I don't want to stereotype them by using a particular word, but if they could relate to the things that Jeff Foxworthy says, they might be one. Man, that was a roundabout way of saying redneck, oops!
I got along pretty well with my co-workers there but there was one guy who seemed to have anger management issues. There are control boxes that hang from above for the cranes we used for picking up the large rolls of fabric and this guy decided one night to swing the crane controls at my head. He missed and I asked him what that was all about and he said he was just joking around and if he really wanted to he would have hit me. I don't know though, the control box came pretty darn close to my head. I let it go, if he would have done it again I probably would have gone to my supervisor about it. It never happened again fortunately.
It was hard getting used to working third shift from 11pm to 7am. One guy had been doing it for over 30 years and he said he still wasn't used to it. I thought it would be a good shift to work because I could do something in the morning after work and then sleep in the afternoon if I wanted to or sleep in the morning and do something in the evening. But it didn't work that way. After work I would unwind by playing a video game and I would usually fall asleep while doing that and take a short power nap and then I would wake up within an hour or less and the TV screen would usually say "Game Over" or "You Died". I wouldn't be tired for the rest of the day, not until it was time to go to work anyway. So one night as I was holding the fabric down on the table my co-worker rolled it out on a table that seemed like it was half the length of a football field. As he rolled it out I decided to put my head down on the fabric until he came back, it was soft. Next thing I know, I look up and my co-worker is standing there looking at me and he said, "Uh, you ready?" I had dozed off for a moment, whoops.
Another night one of my co-workers was using a machine that helps with the fabric cutting process and he asked me to get the oil pan because the machine was going to need an oil change. He sent me to our supervisor to ask him where it was. So I asked him and he told me to ask another person, that person told me to ask another person, then I figured it out, he was playing a prank on me and everyone else knew what was going on. I didn't realize at first that the machine was electric. I felt like such an idiot, but hey it was 2 o'clock in the morning, I was too tired to notice it ran on electric.
Third shift was reeking havoc on my sleep schedule. My weekends were pretty messed up. I'd get off Friday morning at 7am and I'd try to stay up all day and go to bed at a normal time, but then I'd fall asleep around 6pm and wake up on Saturday at 3am. It sucked. What the heck do you do at 3am? Watch infomercials? Blah. Fortunately another place I applied to was hiring and they gave me a call. I'll talk about job #5 next week. ¡Adiós amigos!
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