Thirty years on the line and nobody ever asked me what I thought

My old man worked the same mill for thirty-one years. I told myself I'd never set foot in the place. Two weeks after my twentieth birthday I was standing in the motor room with his old lunch pail, because the money was good and my girlfriend was pregnant. That's how most of the big decisions in a man's life get made. Not with a plan. With a bill.

People think the hard part of that job is the heat or the noise or the hours. It isn't. You get used to all of that. The hard part is that nobody ever asks you anything. Thirty years, and the company never once asked what I thought about how the line ran, and I knew that line better than any engineer they sent down from the office.

So you stop offering. You do your job, you keep your crew safe, and you save what you know for the guys standing next to you. That's where the respect is. Not in the plaque they give you at the end. In the young guy who calls you at home at two in the morning because the drive went down and he knows you'll pick up.

What I'd tell my son

Don't wait for anybody to ask what you think. They won't. Say it anyway, say it once, say it clearly, and then let your work do the rest of the talking. And find the men worth standing next to. The job will chew you up either way. The difference is who's there when it does.

I retire in the spring. They'll give me a plaque. I already know where it's going. In the garage, next to my old man's lunch pail.