Blue Collar Blues (3 page)

She snatched off her engagement ring, which the doctor had thoughtfully switched to her right hand, placing it in the top drawer of her dresser along with all the expensive jewelry R.C. had given her. All of it glittered and gleamed and looked as vulgar as she felt.

The photo of R.C. and his bride flashed through her mind. She removed the heavy antique silver locket from around her neck. Inside was a picture she and R.C. had taken when they were in Las Vegas.

Khan picked up the phone and dialed his home to see if his flight from Japan had arrived. She knew he was scheduled to land at 9 A.M. His maid, Bonnie, recognized Khan’s voice the second she grumbled hello.

“Mr. Richardson isn’t here, Ms. Khan,” said Bonnie.

“When do you expect him?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

Of course Bonnie knew exactly where the bride and groom were. And of course she wouldn’t tell Khan. Things were going to get ugly and there was no way of avoiding it.

“Tell him I called.” She spoke between clenched teeth. “And Bonnie, I suggest you pull R.C.’s coattails to the side and whisper in his ear that if he doesn’t call me today, I’ll be on his doorstep tomorrow to kick his rusty black ass.”
And that half-breed he married instead of me.

Tears welled in her eyes as she hung up. “Ha. Ha. The joke’s on me.”

Her stomach grumbled and ached when she went into the bathroom to grab some tissue. Whatever pain medication they’d given her made her tongue feel thick and dry. Just then, the telephone rang.

“Hello,” Khan said hesitantly, praying that it was R.C.

It was Thyme.

“Hey, girl. I heard about your accident this morning. How’s my little friend faring?”

Khan felt her shoulders sinking. “Oh, okay I guess.” She wiped her eyes with the tissue but the tears kept falling.

“Stomp! Stomp!” the choir said louder. “Church, are you with me? Put your hands together.”

Khan punched the remote and turned off the television set. She’d had enough of feeling ridiculed. Especially by a group of folks who didn’t even know her.

“Hey,” Thyme said, “you sound funny.”

“It’s the medication,” Khan lied. She inhaled and pulled herself together. “Have you heard anything about Luella? Allister told me while I was in the medical office that she was in a car accident.”

Thyme laughed. “The pole she hit is in worse shape than she is. It took Detroit Edison nearly four hours to get the lights back on inside the plant. We were just about to send everyone home.”

“I can imagine what all those folks were doing up there in the dark.” Khan managed to laugh. “Screwing like gerbils.”

“Be nice now, girl. Everyone’s back to work. Even Luella.”

“Great. Now Allister’s probably having her do my job as well as hers. And he’ll still probably charge me four hours today,” Khan huffed. “Maybe if I bought that stinking bastard a bottle of Cool Water cologne he might get the point. Then again, he might try to fire my broke ass.”

“Loosen up, Khan. Get some rest, and I’ll be over as soon as I can. Need anything?”

“I hate to ask, but do you mind stopping at the Somerset Collection to pick me up a half-pound of Mrs. Fields oatmeal-and-raisin cookies?”

“You hate to ask? Girl, when are you going to grow up? You’re just like a little kid. Just tell me what you need—I’m your friend.”

Khan felt a tear touch her smile, and tucked her pajamaed legs beneath her. Never, she thought, I’m never going to grow up. That’s what R.C. loved about me.

__________

Thyme Tyler unlocked her desk drawer and removed the FedEx envelope. The name and address of the sender had been omitted. For at least a month she’d been waiting for this information. She could feel the perspiration itching on the tips of her fingers as she ripped open the top and removed the contents.

Inside was a list of people who worked for Champion Motors and their salaries and bonuses. Thyme’s breath stalled in her throat when she heard a knock at her closed door.

With fingers as nimble as an eel, she quickly covered the FedEx package with the monthly costs sheets from the maintenance department that she was supposed to be going over.

If she couldn’t trust this information being delivered to her own home, she certainly couldn’t risk her secretary finding out about it.

“Dr. Tyler?” her secretary, Elaine, said as she entered after the second knock. “I’m leaving now.” Elaine handed her a pink memo slip. “Your husband called while you were meeting with Mr. Lamott.” Her husband, Cy, also worked for Champion, but he worked at World Headquarters in downtown Detroit. Thyme was the plant manager at Troy Trim.

Thyme could have sworn she saw Elaine blush when she mentioned Ron Lamott’s name. She’d heard there was something romantic going on between her secretary and her friend, Ron, who also happened to be union boss at the Troy Trim plant. But lately Thyme felt as if Elaine had begun spying on her. For the past month, Thyme knew, rumors had been circulating around the plant that she was going to be replaced as plant manager by the first of the year. And her secretary’s actions of late made Thyme feel as if Elaine were somehow checking up on her. Would Elaine be stupid enough to put her own job in jeopardy? After all, Elaine was a single mother with a small son to raise. Could Ron use Elaine to gather company information that Thyme was privy to before she got canned? Didn’t they both know that Thyme was as much in the dark as the hourly workers? She made a mental note to keep a careful eye on Elaine.

Thyme and Ron were good friends and had always respected each other—despite the fact that she was the plant manager and a non-union salaried employee. It was as if he were a Democrat and she a Republican. At the plant, Thyme and Ron were on opposite sides of a clearly drawn barbed-wire fence, but in the private sector they were friends. And although she and Ron had butted heads in the past, they had weathered many union versus company storms.

“Thanks, Elaine.”

At that moment, a loud crash echoed from the company parking lot outside of Thyme’s window. From Thyme’s office they could see Ethel Adam’s red Illusion truck just backing out of her parking spot. As both Thyme and Elaine looked on, Bill Elliot hit her from the rear with his white Algeron. After twenty-three years working in the automobile industry, Thyme identified employees by the cars they drove rather than by their names.

When Thyme turned her attention away from the scene, she noticed Elaine’s eyes roving over her desk like lasers scanning, and when they met Thyme’s gaze the connection was combustible.

“Is there anything else that I can do for you?”

“Call the Troy police,” Thyme sighed. “Knowing Ethel, she’ll be cussing Bill out until they get here. She just bought that truck last month. Then feel free to go.”

Elaine smiled and left.

Thyme smelled frightened sweat—her own—and felt it slide down between her breasts as she uncovered and began to reread the material she’d so carefully hidden.

Behind her, the clock on the wall ticked like a deathwatch, reminding her of the past, the present, and all that was to come.

Just before the weekend, her boss had advised her that Allied Vespa was interested in letting Troy Trim bid on a new job, and tomorrow twenty of their bigwigs were arriving to tour Thyme’s plant.

She had made sure every crook and crevice in the 550,000-square-foot plant was meticulously stacked, packed, cleaned, and organized. The gray cement aisles had been waxed twice over the weekend, and all employees had been warned to keep their workstations spotless.

But Thyme couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something strange going on. Ordinarily, she knew about the tours at least a month or two in advance. This was too hurried; it just didn’t make sense. I smell a tamale, Thyme thought, alluding to the growing trend for Champion to syphon off Troy Trim’s work to their Mexican operations. Her instincts suggested that the two situations were somehow connected.

When she questioned Cy, he seemed vague, almost evasive. As a division manager of three Champion trim plants, Cy should know what was going on. Would he keep something from her?

Twenty questions and no answers, she thought to herself.

Thyme hated Tuesdays. At least a quarter of the hourly workers who had worked fifty to eighty hours the previous week would show up Monday but take Tuesday off. Those who did show were too tired to work overtime to make up for the missing workers.

Tuesday was also the day the weekly cost meeting with all the department managers was held. Quality Control, Engineering, Production, Material Control, Accounting, and Salary Personnel all sat around the table presenting their costs for the previous week. Each department was required to operate within an allocated budget. Quality Control would often borderline on running in the red. Production was the main player, and they were in the red. Luckily, the rest of the departments usually ran in the black.

Before Thyme’s trying Tuesday would end, she had to try to devise a plan to improve Production’s profitability as well. It was a feat that appeared more impossible as each year of her tenure passed. But there was no way she’d quit trying; she was determined to find a way to put her plant in the black.

Thyme’s job also consisted of forming product teams with at least one employee from each of the six departments. Under her supervision, those teams would work toward bringing in new jobs to Troy Trim, balancing labor costs and the cost of raw materials coming into the plant and monitoring the quality of the product going out the door. In doing so, she had to make sure that labor costs didn’t exceed twenty-five percent and production costs didn’t exceed seventy percent of her budget. Capital expenses took up the remainder.

Thyme resented the hierarchy at Champion. Despite her advanced degrees, she truly identified with the blue collar workers. Even though they made what the white collars referred to as “stupid money” by performing mindless tasks, they earned it two-fold. Still, Thyme felt that what they sacrificed in lack of sleep and time with their families, no amount of money could replace.

Satisfied that the FedEx letter had everything she needed, she picked up the cost sheets for the potential Allied Vespa job and began cutting and pasting the figures.

Just about the time she was ready to call it quits, the telephone rang. It was Frank at River Rouge Assembly Plant, and he didn’t have good news. The plant was off-line because the Delta bolts were snapping and breaking.

With the plant off-line, if the seats required for a particular vehicle were not available at the installation location for the final stage in assembling the automobile, the car had to be held in a repair area instead of moving on to Fit and Finish. Champion estimated that it cost approximately two thousand dollars per car each time this situation occurred. And Champion wasn’t in the car business to lose money.

The Delta bolts they used in the passenger-side recliner arm of their luxury cars were designed to bear a certain amount of torque. But now the bolts were breaking at twenty pounds less than the required spec, and no one knew why.

As she listened to Frank complain about the costs, Thyme searched her computer and found that it was possible the entire shipment of bolts received in Troy Trim’s system on Thursday was defective. That meant at least one thousand seats couldn’t be fitted.

“How soon can you get another supply of bolts?” Frank asked Thyme.

“I’ll have to make a call to our supplier in Georgia, then get back with you.”

When she hung up, she dialed the supervisor in Rouge Build. “Cindy, we’ve got a problem with the Delta recliner bolts. Check the lot numbers 47,555 through 48,555 and pull them out; they appear to be defective.”

Next she called Quality Control. They took forever to answer. “Hello, Sam. Problems with the Delta bolts. Send a couple people down to Rouge Build to remove the defective bolts. Cindy has the lot numbers. Then take them to rejected parts in the holding area. It’s late, so I won’t be down there until tomorrow.”

Damn! The tour tomorrow!
By then there would be dozens of luxury seats lined up in the east aisleways, blocking all who passed.

When she finally got the Georgia supplier on the line and told him that she needed a shipment tonight, he politely told her that they couldn’t possibly be flown into Metro Airport until seven in the morning.

Thyme needed the bolts by four A.M. Everybody was always in a rush. Time was money.

She called Frank back and told him when the bolts would be in.

“We’ve got seats stacked up in the warehouse that will have to be refitted,” Frank said.

Thyme could hear the frustration in his voice but there wasn’t much she could do at this point. “Frank, the best thing I can do is send two utility workers down in the morning to retrofit the seats. That’s the best I can do.” This would mean sending workers to an out-of-line location—another loss of money. The pressure was building.

Thyme was exhausted. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and said a silent prayer. After a few minutes she began gathering her papers and put them in her briefcase. She looked up at the plaques and awards that covered all four of her office walls. From associate to doctorate, every aspect of her education and employment with Champion was documented. Filling in the spaces were dozens of pictures of Thyme as she received awards for service and charity work. Only one photo showed her private life: the wedding picture of herself and her husband, Cy, that occupied the left corner of her desk.

Was it all worth it? she wondered. In a few months she would know.

She turned off her computer and put on her London Fog trench coat. With the contents of her future tucked between her breast and her armpit, Thyme left her office and headed down the hall toward the exit.

Located just adjacent to the door leading outside to the parking lot was the ten-bay truck dock where they loaded and unloaded purchase parts. The heavy scent of gasoline was a constant reminder of where she worked: in an automobile plant.

Ordinarily, plant managers were required to put in or be accessible for at least twelve hours daily. Today Thyme had worked thirteen. It was 6:01 P.M. when she backed her silver Presidio out of the spot bearing her rank and name: PLANT MANAGER—TYLER.