Every other year or so it seems, my wife spends a lot of time at a production plant. Sometimes I come along, sometimes I go on vacation with the kid. Every time she goes to a plant, someone approaches her and talks to her about their daughter. This time was no exception.

There's a common thread that runs through all these people. The plants are mostly in non-urban areas where one factory employs a significant percentage of the town's population. So this guy comes up and wants to talk about his girl. She's still in high school, bright, and one of only two girls in her math class. She wants to go to college but he thinks they can't afford it. They have three kids. She doesn't think that girls can become engineers, doctors, scientists, even though there's plenty of evidence to the contrary. It seems as if somebody has been telling her ever since she was born that girls can't, and don't, do these things.

It's strange to listen to my wife talk about these encounters. When she talks about her background the men step back as if she's some freak. When she talks about her job, the men look at her she's from some kind of exclusive private club, something that can never be attained by people like them.

It's just freakin' amazing. These people are so grateful for their jobs. It's quite a different world here.

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I read your post. Frankly, I don't really understand your point. What line of work is your wife in? What causes her to go to a production plant once every two years? It sounds like she stays at the plant for a few days. What is she doing there? Your last sentence is also confusing. What do you mean by "it's quite a different world here"?

I would caution you that hourly workers in plants are dumb like foxes. They may not be educated, but they are quite savy. Many times they say what they know you want to hear. When you leave, they say what they wanted to say, but didn't because of who they are talking to. I make this statement based on many years managing in a production plant environment.

Steve

People tend to believe that girls are only good at being homemakers. As such, we went to hedge our bets on the boys. So, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I'd like to meet your wife. I never met the woman that can make me step back when talking about her background.

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I'm saying we're used to accomplished women. She works at HQ and starts up product lines in factories. When I say it's different I mean exactly what I said. People are damn grateful for their jobs which are few and far between here. They have no idea about life outside their own or what's possible. They seem to be oblivious to the types of opportunities available aside from what they can immediately see.

It's tough to break out of this spiral. Some families have been poor for decades. They didn't make the switch from agrarian to industrial to information ages very gracefully.

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Where is here? Are you still in Minnesota?

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This is certainly not anything new. I recall a very good multi-day seminar I attended years ago. The point of the seminar was to teach managers not to expect their own value system to be the same as the value system of the hourly workforce. There are many factors that cause some people to have less lofty goals than others. It is also false to assume that somebody standing at a machine all day is unhappy.

I recall taking a new position at a plant in North Carolina. I was from the west coast. I simply could not believe that people were not eager to work overtime or work the weekend.
They would refuse. Then the personel manager explained that many of the workers live a simple life, many in trailers or small houses on land that had been in the family for years. They did some farming on the side and valued their free time more than extra money in the paycheck. This was hard for me to understand. So while there may be more opportunities in the big metropolitan areas, the people in the small towns simply aren't, for the most part, interested in leaving home. I have met more than a few that had never left their county!

When an hourly worker, and that includes salaried non-exempt workers in an office, punches the clock at the end of the day, they are done thinking about work. Managers have more responsibility and often times don't get to switch off that responsibility at the end of the day.

And not to be too redundant, people from the Head Shed are not one of the gang so to speak. It's just the way the world works.

Steve

I think he's in Hannibal MO and is talking about food production factories.

I worked in factories while putting myself thru college. I think I know what you are talking about, but I'm not sure the social dynamics of the situation apply only to girls. I'm thinking in particular of one ceramic insulator factory I worked in. There were hundreds of workers in the factory, a small class of bureacratic managers with no obvious skills other than the authority to order around underlings but only one or possibly two ceramic engineers worked in the factory. So, from a strictly numbers point of view, the average worker is going to see only a minute percentage of jobs at the engineer level. What are the odds that someone could get such a job? The odds look slim from the factory floor. Your wife, who only appears as a god once in a decade at a given factory looks even more like a God, and omnipotently wonderous since most Gods have penises. Think cargo cults.
The workers have never been in a college calculus classroom filled with engineering students. They may have never been on a college campus at all. It's the limits of social class in action.

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Some people are happy just sweeping floors all day, even when they are offered opportunities. I worked in a production environment for a couple years, and I swore I would never punch a clock again after that. I couldn't stand the 'victim' mentality of the people there, and I detested being docked for being 5 minutes late when other guys spend an hour on the the toilet on company time. I did whatever it took to get away from that kind of life.

But it takes personal initiative to pull yourself out. Indeed many companies strenghten the bottom line by enforcing ignorance in their bottom tiers, so you wouldn't get any encouragement there.

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Kuan, your first post spelled that out perfectly.

and I agree

I understand where Kuan is coming from...

My wife was born and raised in a small town of 1100...a silo and a aluminum pie pan plant grace the town's commerce. The rest is family agriculture and livestock, but corporate farms have shrunk the numbers there.

The pubilc school system is good enough to spit out college hopefuls, but the small-town mentality causes most to remain there to eke out a modest lifestyle.

Most of her family remained as well...of her several sisters, only she and her eldest sister chose to venture beyond the county line.

It's pointless to tell any of them what we actually do for a living...specialized occupations don't translate well in a town that knows "cowboys" and "farmers"...and DON'T get them confused!

Folks in the town peg us as the "rich" relatives...not that we are anywhere near wealthy, but in a simple town, city folks arriving in shiny MBs cannot be construed as anything else!

As far as what they imply as a female occupation, I guess that depends on region. This is a Midwestern town, and despite the simplicity, it is accepted that women perform tasks that span all careers.

It's just there are few to none in the city limits...

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As with some of you, I've lived on both sides of this equation.

When I was a kid through young adulthood (30's) it was my greatest desire to jump across the equality sign as I could clearly see a wonderful complexity on the other side. Having been there on the very complex side for nearly 30 years I can tell you without reservation that I long to return to the other side. It wont be many more years, then it's back to the piney woods for me, an awesome garden, and few neighbors who know me well. I'll probably even go to a church regularly as that's pretty much the highlight of activity for us ol' farts.

So when you see the grizzled old men and dowdy wives out tending their veggies, living so simply they appear in near-poverty, you might consider that they have been there, done that, and sent to their grandchildren the silly-ass t-shirt, all they got for their pain.

B

An ed'cated hick aint a hick no more.

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1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

Foxes are very smart creatures...

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You can take the girl out of the honky tonk but you can't take the honky tonk out of the girl

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One of my coworkers once made the observation (about our boss) that "You can give a redneck money, but he's still a redneck."

One's socioeconmic position does not always indicate level of intelligence, common sense, or social graces.

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