Workplace Cartoons, Part 12

Mattresses, Mattresses, Always With The Mattresses...

But first, let us step away from the mattress making biz for a brief moment. About six months of a moment. During my time at the mattress factory, I tried desperately to find something else, that wasn’t so soul sucking. I had (still have) a buddy who worked for an eye glass store that made their glasses in house. So, I went and worked there for those six months. I was of the lab techs who shaped the glasses to be fit into their frames. It was ok work, the people were alright, with the exception of management, but the hours were always different. I just couldn’t get into a rhythm. But, I did do a few cartoons while there. I called my strip Ocular Sinister, basically Left Eye. My first attempt at a cartoon was with one of the night crew guys that I got along with. It doesn’t seem like it here, but I did. If I remember correctly, this was based on a joke that we were having about friends, or lack therein.

Here’s some sketches, as I was trying to work out some likenesses and ideas.

And the cartoon that came from those sketches…

The lenses came in these disk shapes and you had to select the closest one to the prescription at hand. I think that D-28 was the range of most prescriptions. I imagined them coming in loaf form.

The public could see us, so we had to have a certain level of decorum. No five o’clock shadow, no unruly hair, no splotches on our black pants. The problem? I usually have a five o’clock shadow my hair is always unruly and part of the process of smoothing out the lenses required a chalky white solution that splashed. Always. One day upon arriving at work, I was given a razor blade and a comb and told to go downstairs to do whatever was necessary to be so unruly. They stopped asking me to comb my hair after I demonstrated what happens with my hair right after combing. It would go back to whatever my hair does. They just stared at me, but at least they stopped telling me to comb my hair. Corporate America.

Ok, back to mattresses! So, fast forward a few years and I’m off the cutting table and operating a large quilting machine. Lotsa heavy lifting, but once everything was loaded up for a while, I could read a book, much to the dismay of management. No one really said anything, but I know they didn’t like it one bit. They probably didn’t complain too much because I got the job done.

There was this guy who set up the guys who put the mattresses together and he was a huge KISS fan. He was an awkward kind of guy and we wondered what his home life was like.

I mentioned that I was a quilter operator? Well, I think that I was the first such operator to catch my quilter on fire. That was a fun conversation when I required assistance from maintenance. It was funny as we were arguing as to just how I could do such a thing, all the while the thing is smoldering away.

It turned out that there was a bunch of fabric and foam that was getting stuck in the cutter and each time the circular blade was spinning, it was heating up and then…

Now, some of these next few are about the games that some workers played with each other to gain some sort of power, attention, whatever. Most of it, silly and annoying.

Tough guy/gal power plays. Some of these ‘tough’ types would try to collect an army of the more passive workers to do their bidding. ‘Dumbville is harsh and I’m punching down here. I actually liked most of these victims. Just frustrated at the situation and how gullible people can be, especially adults.

As with national politics, the workplace has its own set of such things. Management’s power plays, manipulations, etc. Just as some of the workers would collect their little armies, so would management.

The two guys shown above acted tough, but were really just boys trying to be men. They acted tough because they were allowed to and were protected. That never stopped us from mocking them, though. And of course, not listening to them at all.

There were always jokes before and after sporting events, depending on who were rooting whom and for whatever reasons. Mostly, done in good humor.

Ok, that’s it for now. I’m not sure how many of these I have left, but I only had about fours years to go before I quit. As always, stay tuned for more hilarity.

CREATIVE NOTES:

READING: E Is For Edward by Gregory Hischak

2025 Sketch Book by Arthur Adams

LISTENING: Days of Ash EP by U2