APPLEHEAD

Along the catwalk to shoot the tanks, I saw the sun rise. Out of curiousity, I shot the temperature of the sun with the infrared gun. It showed 2840 degrees farenheit, the same temperature as C tank.

 From the top story of the batch house you can see clear to old town Sacramento’s sky scrapers. The foreground of Tracy’s alfalfa and hayfields are edged upon by new development, just as East Oakland was said to have looked in the 70’s. It’s times like these, looking out for miles and miles, I know it will be a good day. What are you doing today? Is it what you would really want to be doing? If it’s not, what’s in your way?

My aunt Beth, an ICU nurse in Maryland, goes out hiking after work to feel more in peace with the world. She says her favorite places are the peaks at which she can look out into the forest in the Appalachians, where she can feel small and inconsequential again.

In Batch and Furnace, my direct co-workers and supervisors are all men. I’m the only female furnace operator at this time, and I may be going into the apprenticeship or management in the next week. The apprenticeship definite; I have the position. I will find out if I passed the management test in the next few days. I shoud have had the results a week and a half ago.  

The work is physically intense as I have never climbed so many ladders in my life. I like the work and my coworkers, so I will be sad to be moved.

We operate 3 large furnaces, producing somewhere between 100-120 wine bottles on each line per minute; 420 beer bottles on each line per minute… 4 production lines on A and B tank producing wine and other beverage containers, 3 production lines on C tank producing beer bottles.

The furnace operator controls the batch going into the furnaces and the furnaces. The MSDS on the batch and chemicals used in the plant is about a foot and a half wide. There are about 400 people working in the plant, and if the furnace operator burns a crown on a tank, it could put a dozen or more people out of work for weeks. I take my work very seriously, and enjoy it quite a bit. Each day there is something different to learn.

I was annoyed the other day when I went to the chiropractor’s office and had to deal with a sarcastic receptionist. After asking what I did for a living, I was greeted with her sarcastic supply of ‘girl power!’ When I told her what I did, I did not tell her in the spirit of ‘girl power,’ I was proud of the good hard work I put in. A little more difficult than sitting behind a desk and being pleasant. Yet, to believe sexism no longer exists in the work place is false. I found some good ways to handle these situations on my own, some of which are very funny.