Emerging from Turbulence by Leon Grunberg

Author:Leon Grunberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-03-22T16:00:00+00:00

John Lorie

Because of the loss of pride in the company, because if you think, “Oh, I’m just a number here, I’m here just to get paid. I’m doing my job. I put in my eight hours.” [. . .] Sure, that attitude can certainly be there. If it dominates you, that’s another question. It hasn’t dominated me.

—Sheet metal worker, age sixty, twenty-eight years at Boeing,

interviewed in 2011

I started in Boeing in 1980. Boeing was hiring at that time to build the 767 and 757 airplanes. Finished the work there at Green River and they hired me out of the class—hired the whole class. There were sixteen of us. They put us into an experimental shop, so we were the ones to build the very first parts of both of these planes. We all initially worked together. Loved it. Loved it. Loved it. I’m one of the last of that group where Boeing was still hiring but you didn’t have to have a degree. I’m a big pusher for kids in school, the trade schools. We need trade schools bad. To push college as the only [path to] success—you know? It’s nuts.

I’ve enjoyed my job. We built many different things, and I’ve gotten to know people in different labs because sometimes we have to visit those labs to set up something for them that we’ve built. Seeing what they’re testing and stuff, we get to have that personal relationship with the lab folk. I’ve enjoyed that very much. And then just fellow mechanics, we all have different talents; we all have different skills. We have friendships that have developed over the years, mainly at work. We’ll even have a little social at work, like for a break or lunch, or we’ll have a little snack for somebody’s birthday or something. Not all groups do that, that’s for sure—we’re fairly close. Oh, we tease each other and have fun with each other. We can yell at each other or laugh at each other. We’ve got all the emotions. We’re human (laughs).

This job at Boeing sort of came to me. It was like a gift to me—that’s how I take it. I could have gone this road or this road; well, I went this road. And why that happened, fate, you know, or you have a God looking over you, or what, you know. But I want to give credit where credit is due. And I’m not always the master of my life, you know. There’s other things that are happening out there in the world . . . in the spiritual world . . . that we’re guided, and so I think that deserves a lot of credit there. And I was listening. I had enough sense to listen, you know. And so I went that route.

I think that the culture of Boeing has changed since we bought McDonnell Douglas. We bought McDonnell Douglas, but unfortunately the Boeing Company had to absorb a bunch of their management people. Because of their management people, their process was very different than the Boeing process at the time—the business process.

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