Blog #2 DTC355

Nuts and Bolts

Working in the mans world was not new to me since working for a company rightly named "Manpower International". I have worked in many situations around men mostly because I am a women working in a man's world. I was stationed at a company called Henningson Coldstorage in Richland, and was the first female janitor. Henningson is a frozen food coldstorage warehouse that handles food from flour, vegetables and fruits to french fries. The warehouse that I was working in, is 600,000 square feet in size.
My job was to sweep the floor of any garbage that cause a hazard to the forklifts handling product for storage. There were a few men there that I had made friends with. Most were permanent workers and others were temporary workers like myself. I had been stationed there for 6 months at the time of my "incident" with the welder who would later become my "fast-friend".

My story starts with a description of the surrounding that I had to work in. It was very, very cold, below zero to be exact. Each and every person that entered the warehouse freezer section would be wearing an insulated cold-suit, blue in color. Included with the cold-suit were mittens and a beanie which was also dark blue. My job was to sweep, sweep, and sweep some more. So the next description should be what the other person of this tale; Tj. Tj was the welder and at the time I was working. Tj would repair the Racks in the warehouse. He and his co-worker would be up on a scissor-lift with welding equipment and replacement parts repairing two tier storage racks for the frozen items stored there. The conflict that his job and my job would have is that he would leave debris, very large nuts and bolts in the very places that I would have already cleared. These bolts were about 4 inches in length and about 2.5 inches in radius. The nuts were even larger.

At the time of the incident I had been in the warehouse longer than I should of been, my brain was beginning to freeze. In some of the area in the warehouse, it gets to -10 below. Very, very cold which can make your brain get very tired. In addition, if you could imagine me at 5 foot tall in this giant dark blue cold suit with brown boots pushing a broom, I looked like a squirrel in an elephant suit pushing a broom.

When finally caught up to Tj and called out to him as he was working on the bottom of the 1st tier of the rack. As I could not hand him all the nuts and bolts to him at once I held only two. And stated quite frankly that I had his cold nuts in my hand, and if he would like them back? Then I heard this ha! At the time I had no idea that the humor of this situation would not let me live it down. For today he tells his friends of this situation of the coldstorage and this squirrely girl offering nuts.

McCloud's description of how we use icons in the comedic view that is continued into adulthood, and is a referred from our childhood is very interesting. "What is dangerous about amplification through simplification?" I think that we continue to carry our imaginings with us even when we are old and grey. And even when things get too serious, we can't see the true view or views that can put us in harms way, we just turn it into humor to protect our mental stability for what is considered normal.

McCloud, Scott. The Vocabulary of Comics. Print.