Log 16: Full Circle
I spent a good chunk of the week working in the air-conditioned fabric transfer room with Tom, Jeff, and the 400° rolling pin. Work in the fabric transfer room doesn’t start until 9:45 AM, because the machine takes a long time to heat up. That said, I savored every second of that A/C after spending three hours sweating in the warehouse. You might be surprised that I was invited back to the fabric transfer room, but I’ve actually gotten a lot better at cutting through the moving fabric smoothly. People are going to be blown away when they see the wrapping job on my Christmas gifts this year.
Towards the end of the day, I found myself helping Preston and Graeme prepare exhibits for shipping. I arrived in the shipping area lugging the large, black shipping cases behind me that Graeme had requested. When I set them down, I instantly recognized the graphics on the exhibit. In fact, I had heat transferred those very same graphics onto the fabric with Tom, and then cut them to size on the XY Cutter (all by myself). I remembered because the graphics said “LocktoberFest” (whatever that is), but I kept reading it as “Lobster Fest,” which in my opinion sounds much more appealing.
A few moments later, while taking the exhibit down to pack it up, I noticed that the frames holding up the fabric graphics were made from the metal bars I had riveted for Mike earlier in the week. And the fabric bags we packed the graphics into were the same ones I spent 3 hours cutting a little while ago.
I think something might have shifted for me at that moment. Suddenly I had a way to understand the purpose of all of my jobs around the office. I wasn’t mindlessly bolting rivets to pipes, I was putting them there so the graphics could hang off of them. When I cut fabric for countertops on the XY cutter, the shapes it produced weren’t funky-looking for no reason - they were made that way to create a graphic that would wrap around a table with corners.
I feel like up until now, my whole “thing” has been that I don’t really understand what I’m doing here at Featherlite. But now I do understand what each task I complete is building towards. And now, the only problem is that I’m bad at doing those tasks. (If you think that I’m being too hard on myself, just wait until you read Log 17).
Highlight: Every day, I’m finding Gary and I have more and more in common. First, archery. Then, astrology. Now, I’ve discovered that he not only listens to podcasts while he works, but we both are fans of the exact same series: Serial.
