Stranger
by Tim—Age 25—Columbus, OH
After earning an English degree I took work at Jeter Systems Corporation in Akron. Jeter’s system was organizational: filing systems and supplies, cabinets and shelving, movable storage systems and software. I began in the plant, in metal fabrication, cleaning, assembling, packing and shipping cabinets and shelves as the machines surrounding me banged an arrhythmic cadence like a cacophony of children clanging on kitchenware. It was October.
We took two paid ten minute breaks a day—one in the morning, one in the afternoon—and an unpaid half hour lunch at 11:00. I took all of these in the break room, an aquarium for people whose water was noise near the time clocks and back door. The room’s focal point was an always-on, always-blaring 50″ TV mounted on the wall above a row of vending machines. The other workers sipped coffee and ate snacks cooked in partially hydrogenated vegetable oil while watching The Today Show, the Price is Right, or Ambush Makeover, depending on the break. I read books, looking up every so often to chuckle in agreement at the impending dementia of Bob Barker. Smokers smoked furiously outside at the mercy of the elements.
Once, in my first weeks, I looked up, and in the doorway that separated the break room from the plant stood a withered black woman wearing a long screaming purple winter coat and a pacific smile over an uncertain face. I didn’t recognize her. I was still new. She began to speak, addressing the room and its half-dozen dwellers, but the TV was so loud I couldn’t hear her, not completely. I heard, “last day,” “past 35 years,” “remember,” “thank you,” snippets of things like that. I used my liberal arts education—at last!—to surmise she was retiring, making the rounds on her last day, saying good-byes, hearing good-lucks, putting the past 35 years of her life to
rest like a baby in a bassinet, a fine ending. But the TV was too loud. I was too new. She trailed off, raised a wrinkled right hand, smiled a little wider, then voiced a clear “good-bye.” Instead of walking out through the break room, she cut back through the heart of the plant, back the way she came, out into the old winter sun of Ohio that can almost deafen you with its mocking.
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