Hi, Tawana here. It’s been a long time since you last heard from me. My good friend Ashley shared a part of my story sometime last year (“Liar, Liar, Boss on Fire”). But I’m glad to share that that part of my life is behind me now. After three months working for that damned company, I decided to quit. With no real plan in place, I just left, didn’t bother clocking in, didn’t bother going back to the boss’s office to ask for my outstanding wages. Just left! I couldn’t even muster up the courage to tell any of my colleagues that I was leaving…
I used the little savings I had left to print out my copies of my curriculum vitae and buy envelopes. I went to industrial areas all over the city. Most of the industrial areas are located outside the Central Business District, in places like Southerton, Graniteside and Workington. I walked on foot from the CBD to all these areas, so that I could spend money on lunch instead of transport. I walked up and down dropping my CV at various plastic manufacturing companies in the hope that one of them would pick it up and offer me a role, and I mean any role. That’s how desperate I was! It was such an arduous task, and yeah it felt like a wild goose chase. The unemployment issues in Zimbabwe are well documented. But you don’t realise the depth of the issue until you experience it yourself. You start questioning a lot. Was the engineering degree even worth it? Should I abandon my four-year quest for something else? It seemed like I would probably have to. But after a week of searching and almost running out of manufacturing companies to visit, I got a call from one of the leading pipe and tank manufacturing companies in the country for an interview as an assistant machine operator. It was one of the companies I had submitted my CV to. I couldn’t believe my luck. I was more than thrilled at the offer as this was my opportunity to end my unemployment mayhem.
I did very well in the interview. The questions were rather basic as the role didn’t need much expertise. But that’s when my degree came in handy as I impressed the interviewing panel with my know-how in pipe and tank manufacturing, from the manufacturing processes to the materials used in these processes. A few hours later I was called by the assistant production manager informing me that I was hired and could join the team the following morning. You know the feeling you get when you are in a new relationship? That phase when you find everything sweet and all romantic. You laugh at their terrible jokes and find all their quirks cute, and it feels like you are going to be together for eternity. That feeling! That feeling is trumped by the feeling you get as soon as you land a new job after a long period of unemployment, or in my case, a period of unpaid employment. Is the job too tough? Bring it on! Is the money too little? I will make lemonade from the lemons I am given.
But a few months into the job, reality started to sink in. Working as an assistant machine operator was really, really hard. Essentially I was doing the heavy lifting while my direct colleague, the lead operator, focused on ensuring the smooth running of the machines. To be fair, he was pretty kind to me and also allowed me to take significantly longer lunch breaks than the others, up to an hour. I was doing everything from loading raw material into the hopper and carrying out housekeeping around the machines to ensuring a clean working environment and doing quality control of the product, on top of being in charge of regrinding waste in case we produced defective products. It was a tough gig, and the night shifts were even worse, thirteen hours and not one opportunity to take a little nap… Things got worse and worse. As a degree holder, you always cling onto the hope of getting an internal promotion to a better role, but that never came to fruition. The motivation fades, replaced by frustration and disillusionment and worse, hopelessness. I struggled to summon the strength to go to work every time I was on shift, but I soldiered on every day without fail, hoping that one day I would get another opportunity elsewhere.
The opportunity then came to be a quality/lab controller role at a packaging company. I had dropped my CV at this company back when I was looking for a job, and I was surprised they were contacting me now. The role was similar to my first job at Sir Parks: they manufactured preforms, extrusion blow molded bottles, crates and closures. I wouldn’t say the role was a dream come true for a young engineer like me, but it was a start. It wasn’t as physically taxing, and I could apply concepts from my studies rather than be a glorified cleaner, as it was a more analytical role: making sense of the data collected, applying statistics to interpret the data and more fundamentally applying engineering principles studied at college to improve the quality of manufactured goods. But physical tiredness is replaced by another set of problems: the mental fatigue which comes with being responsible for the quality of the whole company. What does this mean? No praise when production is running smoothly, it’s business as usual. And the human part of it is also stressful. Communicating respectfully with colleagues twice your age on defects and nonconformities.
The toughest challenge I have faced so far is handling situations where all quality issues are laid at your doorstep. Approving the quality of machines on start up, continuously checking that quality is still meeting specifications on running lines. Online inspection is one of the most difficult things as the factory has over thirteen machines and I need to be on top of all the machines while I simultaneously run tests such as checking weights and visuals on the polariscope. The scapegoating culture in our organization breeds fear amongst workers with no one really wanting to work together for the greater good. With so many machines in the plant, it’s inevitable that online checks are not a failproof method, as I can’t be on the polariscope throughout the shift. But no one wants to acknowledge that. “Where was the lab?” is the question that is asked when defective products are rejected.
Recently I failed to pick up a defect, a cross thread on the neck of a PET bottle, and the whole shift production was put on hold. A fault in the thread finish sometimes occurs during mold manufacturing when there’s a misalignment of parts and as a consequence it has an impact on cap fitting. I had diligently done my checks but for some reason missed the defect. The following day when I was back at work I got a rollicking from our operations manager. He left no stone unturned. Threats of dismissal! My credibility was questioned! It ended in a verbal warning but yeah that was tough to stomach, I had to pull myself together to work through the shift… I was almost caught in the cross thread.
