The Galoshes Factory

By Spencer Shore 

 

Each Morning, Buford awoke at dawn to unlock the Galoshes factory. His alarm rang, and he turned it off without getting out of bed. He slowly sat up, then slid his feet onto the cold wood floor. He grabbed the crisp white shirt with a red tie already in a loose knot around the starched collar, and the navy trousers he had set out the night before. After getting dressed, Buford walked into the kitchen and examined the note left on the fridge. The note read, Do the dishes, that pile is making me anxious! Buford grabbed a pen and set it against the paper. After a moment, he threw the note away instead of writing anything and quickly did the dishes. Buford raced down the steps of his apartment building and headed to work. He walked down the street, passing laundromats, bars, and bakeries–all dark inside. Buford watched the baker unlock the doors of his shop and bumped into someone on the street.

“Watch it!” The man said without stopping, throwing his arms up in frustration.

“Sorry!” Buford said before turning and continuing his commute. Approaching the bridge, he began to walk a little faster. On the other side of the bridge, he saw the large brick factory, with its single smokestack standing tall and bright in the pale morning glow.

Buford walked through the factory gate. Poking his head through the window of a small gray guard booth, a security guard cheerfully announced, “Hey, Buford, congrats on getting that floor manager position.”

“Thanks, we’ll see how it goes today, won’t we?” Buford said while shrugging.

“You’ll do just fine, Buford,” said the Guard as he fumbled to turn down the walkie talkie mumbling at his hip.

“We’ll see. I’ve never really thought of myself as management material, you know? I was a lot more comfortable removing lasts from inside Galoshes.”

“Oh please, in all my time working here, you’re the only person who I’ve seen hold a key before becoming a manager, and one of the few I’ve seen avoid trouble.”

“Well, hopefully that’s enough on the floor, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up.” Buford waved goodbye to the security guard and walked through a small group of factory workers standing around the factory door. He unlocked the front door, flicked the light switch, and watched as the industrial pendant lights flickered on one by one, illuminating long conveyor belts, huge metal furnaces, and seemingly endless rows of workbenches with galoshes and lasts of various sizes on metal racks above workbenches. Workers poured through into the factory and the nauseating stench of hot rubber lingered in the air. Buford stuffed his coat in his locker, and grabbed his clipboard and stopwatch when he noticed someone punch their timecard, and then punch another timecard in. The man was dressed in dirty black boots, and the factory’s short sleeve navy coveralls, a white T-shirt visible underneath. Buford stared and watched from in front of his locker. He quickly tapped his index finger against the locker door and hastily looked back to the inside of his locker as the man walked by. Buford let out a heavy sigh, slammed his locker shut, and went to turn on the furnaces.

The factory floor was alive with the loud drones and thuds of machinery and shoe detailing. People worked at breakneck speed at their stations, cutting sheets into rubber, molding the rubber to the lasts, trimming the excess rubber and detailing the flimsy shoes. Buford timed each station, thirty seconds, thirty-eight seconds, forty-five seconds. Management gave him strict standards for performance. Each station, except for those who detailed the Galoshes, must complete multiple units of their task in under a minute. Some employees were so adept at their task it took only a few swift motions to complete a task. Buford walked past the furnaces to his old station; moving a little slow, he watched each worker more carefully when penciling notes on his clipboard.

He saw that one spot on the line was empty and heard panting grow louder as a man ran up to fill the spot. He had his hands on his knees and head down, his scalp visible through a thin head of tight dark curls, stiff from too much hair gel. “Sorry, Boss,” said the man between breaths. “I had to use the phone. Family emergency.”

It was the same man who had buddy punched. He had two white handprints on the knees of his coveralls from the Talcum powder used to lubricate the lasts. The man wiped beads of sweat from his wide forehead, leaving a little Talcum on his face and a sweat on his hand.

“If you need to use the phone, it has to be during your lunch break. You can’t just leave the line,” Buford said, not looking up from his clipboard.

“Sorry, it was a one-time thing, okay? You wouldn’t pull me off the line for that, would you?”

Others had paused from their work and were looking at Buford. He stared at the worker for a moment, standing tall and stiff, and said, “Ok, we’ll call it a warning.”

The man continued to work, pulling rubber off the heel of the last.

After a pause, Buford said into his clipboard, “Did I see you buddy punch for someone earlier? I mean, I don’t think you would do that, but I just want to be sure because you know that’s against our absentee policy, right?”

“What?” the man said, holding a single black Galosh on both ends. “I was just helping a friend who was running late. He has been struggling to make it in on time with his wife being sick. It’s hard to find work, and it’s too easy to lose your job due to management’s code or injuries.”

“Ok, well I understand, but if I catch you doing that again, I’ll have no choice but to pull you from the line,” Buford said.

The man did not seem to notice that Buford had spoken to him and instead kept on working. Buford watched as the man flexed his forearms, struggling to get his thick, white, dusty fingers in between the Galosh and the last. Buford wiped a sweaty palm on his pant leg and walked away with his ears feeling hot. Looking down at his clipboard, he erased the one minute and five second time for his old station and wrote forty-two seconds in its place. Buford looked toward the wall where the administrative offices stood, a row of windows with blinds down and shutters closed. Buford hurried past while biting his fingernail and turned in his times for the day.

Buford showed up to work the next morning and walked through the crowd that was chuckling and smoking cigarettes to unlock the Galoshes factory. He noticed there were fewer workers huddled around the door, and when Buford turned on the lights, some flicked their cigarette butts towards the street and began to trickle in. Buford, waiting patiently, holding the door open for everyone, noticed a few men lingering outside, laughing, blue smoke dancing off their cigarettes.

“Aren’t you coming in?” Buford asked. His voice didn’t seem to cut through the chatter, so this time, he repeated himself louder.

“Huh? yeah, we’ll be inside in a second,” said someone from inside the circle. Buford went inside letting the door shut behind him.

The rhythm of the factory seemed to be off. Buford stood at his locker and saw workers punching in one after another in orderly fashion. He hung around to see if the man who had buddy punched yesterday would do it again. He quickly got tired of waiting as he needed to get to work.  He slammed the blue locker door and went to turn on the furnace. The furnace began warming up, and Buford caught the group of workers that had lingered outside just walking in and saw each buddy punch for someone else. Buford stood with his mouth open and eyes raised; he penciled the incident on his clipboard, pressing on it so hard the pencil tip broke. He furrowed his brow and watched as the men casually strolled to their stations. Buford decided to time them first and made his way over to their station. He pushed his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose and, standing right at the heels of one of the line workers, peered over his shoulders, timing him and breathing aggressively through his nostrils. One minute and ten seconds. “Is there a problem, boss?” said the employee, turning to face Buford.

Buford’s face turned red. “Yes, you see this?” His voice trembled as he turned his stopwatch towards the line worker. “This time is too slow, and with your past violations, I’m going to have to pull you from the line.”

The worker turned to face Buford and crossed his strong forearms, standing so close. Buford took a half-step back, then said, “I need you to step off the line. I’m sorry.”

Everyone else was watching. The man pushed Buford, not hard enough to knock him down, but enough to give the man some space. He returned to work.  Everyone laughed. Buford picked up a Galosh, held it high, and then threw it on the ground as hard as he could. As the Galosh flopped in an odd direction, Buford heard his name called from behind. He turned and saw that a man in a navy suit gestured for him to come into his office. Buford dragged his hands down his face and, after a moment, peeked between his fingers to see the man in the navy suit handing another employee a clipboard and stopwatch.

 

 

Spencer’s Bio: 

Spencer Shore is a History major at Rutgers. He is from Columbus, Ohio, and likes to spend his free time reading, writing, and playing classical music on the guitar.