The Plastic Factory, Part I
Text by Ron Kolm, Photograph by Danny Kolm
My name is Ron, I work in a plastics factory. The particular factory I work in is new, and it squats atop a man made mound of grass-covered rubble. In front of it is a large asphalt parking lot with an access road tying it to a major highway which, in turn, eventually bypasses a medium sized city. To one side of the factory are miles of flat sparse fields, traveling out to a low range of blue mountains in the distance. The other side drops down to a curve in the expressway.
The factory itself is modern architecture at its most functional and banal; the one-storied rectangular box. Only three appendages break this stark harmony; a loading dock on the left front, the main door on the right front (giving the design balance), and a toolshed in back. Halfway down the steep embankment, between the factory and the highway, is a small square concrete structure. We call it the ‘pillbox.’
The factory’s interior is split along its length into two equal halves by a spacious hallway. Access to this hall is controlled by the office, the first cubicle on the right side. The main entrance leads into this office. Continuing down the hall, we pass on our right the locker room, where the employees change into their white smocks, the bathrooms and the dispensary, and finally a modern, well-lit cafeteria, with its plastic chairs and Formica’s tables, and its banks of tall bright fast-food machines. If we retrace our steps back to the front of the building, and list the rooms on our left as we repeat our journey towards the rear, we’d first pass an immense space directly behind the loading dock. This is the inspection, packing and shipping room. Beyond this, protected by thick double walls of cinderblock, is the pressure cooking room, the room I work in.
My shift runs from three o’clock in the afternoon to midnight, with an hour break for lunch, which is really dinner. There is only one other person who works this shift with me, and the reason for this is the brand-newness of our plant.
Over fifty people work in this factory during the first shift, which starts at six in the morning and ends at three. (First shift sets their alarm clocks for five A.M. They awake in pitch darkness.) Second shift (my shift) is being built-up gradually. There is no third shift. (The factory is closed between twelve and six.) So far, just the two of us.
Most of the employees have what they consider to be decent jobs. They wear clean smocks. They work in a clean, safe area. They’re allowed to listen to portable radios. And they get paid fairly well, all things considered equal. But for my partner and me, and for our counterparts on the first shift, conditions are somewhat different.
You see, what the inspectors are inspecting, and the packers are packing, and the shippers shipping, what the people in the office are drawing-up bills and invoices for, what the investors are making money on, are lenses for eye-glasses, but not ordinary glass lenses, no. The lenses we manufacture are made of plastic, using a new and still secret process. This secret is guarded in many and ingenious ways; for instance the entire building, and the pillbox outside, are wired to Wells Fargo, and so on.
But let us discuss the process, itself. A mixture containing styrene (an oil-based fluid) and an exmer, is poured (or inserted) into a form, which is placed in a giant pressure-cooker, and baked (or broiled, or what have you). The temperature in our room is almost unbearable at times. The heat acts on the exmer, causing it to change chemically, and when the form is removed from the machine, some eight hours later, the liquid inside it has hardened into a tough, clear sheet of lenses. These lenses are then separated, cleaned, inspected and packed for shipping. But, let me repeat, only two people on the first shift, and my partner and I on the second, work in the bright, hot room containing the pressure-cookers.
The wall on one side of our room is thin and corrugated, and is termed a “safety-wall” by the factory's Insurance Company. This means that if one of the machines explodes, instead of spewing destruction in all directions, possibly into the separating or inspection area, the force, seeking a path of least resistance, will push this wall outward, away from the rest of the building. Only two people need disappear.
The ceiling in our room is supported by a network of bare steel girders, and festooned with fiery bright floodlights. Our room is bathed in artificial brilliance. Every object in our room, the machines, the walls, the girders, ourselves, becomes unreal in the harsh glare. These lights are special Helium Arc Lamps, and when they suddenly flicker and die, which they frequently do (because the factory’s generator is new and unreliable), our room is plunged into utter hot darkness. Our room has no emergency lighting system, because the styrene mixture we use is flammable. (Thus, portable radios, flashlights, matches and anything else that might cause a fire are prohibited in our work area.)
That is, the styrene is flammable only until it is poured (or inserted) into the machine. At which point its flammability becomes an asset instead of a liability. Once we’ve got it inside the machine, it's supposed to expand, though admittedly at a slower rate than it would like. This property of styrene, its desire to expand rapidly, makes it a difficult material to handle. You see, it especially wants to rebel at room temperature; to express itself pyrotechnically, so to speak. Because of this unfortunate tendency towards violence, it must be stored in a large refrigerator at one end of our room. We remove it from the freezer on a hand truck (styrene is shipped and stored in huge shiny steel drums), place it on the prongs of a fork-lift, and raise the cold drum high into the air. At the bottom of the drum is a petcock and rubber tube affair, which is attached to a Filling Machine (similar in size and shape to an eight cylinder automotive engine block). The styrene is thus gravity fed into the Filling Machine.
The Filling Machine, a massive piece of complications, is mounted on a large chain hoist, so it too can be raised or lowered. However, this process of loading the Filling Machine has not yet been perfected. We only know it's full when noxious streams of styrene splash to the concrete floor. The overflow can then be stemmed by shutting the pet-cock and lowering the forklift.
Now this Filling Machine, suspended on its chain hoist from two long overhead rails, is able to traverse the entire length of the room, enabling it to service all four of the pressure cookers. My partner pushes, while I pull it into position, slipping on the treacherously deceptive puddles of styrene as they play out behind us. The Filling Machine leaks constantly. Once we’ve managed to bully it into the proximity of the pressure cooker we’re about to use, half of the battle is won. The other half is occupied with coupling twelve tiny translucent tubes between the two bulky inanimate objects, whilst fierce streams of styrene spray about our persons.
Styrene is possessed of strange properties.
It eats away the rubber soles of our shoes. It gobbles at bare skin. It devours eyeballs.
The barrels of styrene are clearly labelled “Non·Life-Supportive.”
Which means an atmosphere of pure styrene would kill you quick. Each time I enter the freezer to remove a drum, I gag on the stench, my head spins, I almost black-out, but if I’m lucky, and fast enough, I know I’ll probably emerge intact, it’s happened before. I usually survive.
In some ways styrene is poetic … it has poetic qualities. Styrene is one of the ingredients in Model Airplane Cement. And Model Airplane Cement, ingested through the nostrils, can alter a person's consciousness. More than one Nirvana has been sealed by this method.
And styrene smells.
The smell gets in your clothes, your hair, everywhere. It has a very distinctive smell. People tend to avoid you. Nobody wants to make love with you. You become a pariah, an outcast, an abnormality.
But I digress. The connections are finally made, the forms inside the pressure cooker are filled, the Filling Machine is dragged away, and the switch turned on.
