Lost Voices
WORK
In 1993, Jan Smith began working as a selector in the Owens-Illinois
Factory. She put in long hours removing flawed
glassware from a seemingly endless conveyor belt. When I first went there, I
was always concentrating on what I was doing. I wondered,
Is there ever an end? I don’t care how many bottles
you would take off, they was just still coming.
Sometimes, we were standing in glass up to our knees. 
You
could stand there where you had your line of bottles
…but all these lines were coming. You had to
distinguish your line of bottles from someone
else’s, and then it was just so fast, and
you’re standing in this one positition all the
time… For eight hours standing on cement.
After working in the selection department for over 
ten
years, Jan became a crew production leader. This production crew leader
is where you oversee a crew. I would tell them their
functions. I had to keep up with the production. I had to
keep a record of all of this. I had instruments where I
gauged my ware to make sure it was certain heights,
roundness.
Jan worked a variety of shifts at the plant, which
added to the difficulty of meshing the requirements of
family life with those of her job. I work night shifts
occasionally…We’d get five weekends off and
worked 15 before we would get another weekend off.