Ford-et About It!

So, for my first month at Ford I will be working in their Dearborn Truck Plant where they make all the F-150's except for the King Ranch edition, which is built in Kentucky. The majority of the week was spent in orientation classes that were pretty boring. Because I'm in the factory I had to be there at 6:00 am, which meant waking up at 4:30am to get there on time. Needless to say I found myself nodding off quite a bit. Finally, on Friday I went to work on the line building trucks.

Working with the union guys was definitely different than working in an office. Every HR policy about what is appropriate behavior at the workplace went out the window real quick. As I was being shown to my work station it was like a scene from any prison movie you've ever seen. People were shouting things like, "Fresh meat!" and "You won't last a week!" 

Before going to the line I was told to be careful what I say to the union workers in order to avoid a lot of harsh treatment. I tried my best to not let them know that I'm a salary worker who actually has a desk job. However, within the first hour they had looked me over and figured out that I wasn't "one of them". At that point they kept joking about having a nark in their midst. The union actually has a pretty good relationship with Ford, so they weren't too mean. In fact there hasn't been a strike since 1976.

My job was to install pins to hold the heat shield to the bottom side of the hood (round, black circles in the picture). After doing this about 600 times in 10 hours I had a bit more respect for the hard work the union guys do!

I move to a new shift and new job this week, I'll keep you posted once I figure out what I'll be doing.  In the meantime, I need to go buy some comfy shoes!