Living in a Factory

Factories are things people usually see once or twice in their lifetimes. Politicians might frequent them more, maybe to greet workers, maybe for an opening of one or two. People might see one in a documentary, television show, or a movie. Or not. Which I think, makes my experience truly unique – I lived inside a factory for many years.

When I mean “inside”, I mean in a housing complex on the factory grounds that were set aside for that purpose. But for all intents and purposes, we were living in that thing; my childhood was spent going back and forth, inside and around the plant, running around machines, watching workers, seeing the whole system work.

When we were young, the plant was a big playground for us. Our fathers (and only fathers) were managers, so we could usually ask for little favors from the workers. You need a toy gun with a certain design? You go to “the carpenter” and bring a sketch with you. Within minutes, you’d have your new toy gun. Bicycle fixes, weird electrical gismos, locks, ropes, chains, plastic of all kinds? No problem. All there in the factory.

The grounds weren’t covered entirely with machines either, the land around the complex was vast, since the production had an agricultural component, there were green fields which were essentially part of the complex. It was big. And at our age, it seemed even bigger. We did not know it at the time, but being part of this gave us an intensely different experience. We learned the rhytms of production, how workers quitely came in went, punched in their cards, ate, and left. How they spoke to eachother, their moods, their frame of mind. We saw the order of it all, and back then, thought it natural.

We saw endless stream of consultants, from various countries bringing their new machines, installing them, maintaining them and interacting with our fathers. I met a Japanese person at such early age I dont even remember how old I was. My father had to travel around the world too of course, and always came back with different gizmoz. When I had my first computer -a Sinclair ZX- it had Japanese letters on it which made me think the product was Japanese. Italians, French, Germans were always around too. My father was responsible for production somewhat away from “the headquarters”, distant to much office politics, but there was enough of it around.

And here is the kicker. When computers were brought in for accounting, logistical record keeping, I was right there from day one. I asked my father to let me work, so I started helping out. I met a programmer for the first time, he used to code in COBOL. He used to smoke and shake his head to the rhytms of the printer as if it was music. He was little odd, but not by much. The next programmer I met, a woman, was almost half-mad in comparison. She used to flip the bird to offending drivers, and gave me my first book on C. I learned C. Some of my friends (children of other managers) worked in the factory in various posts during their summer breaks, even as regular workers.