As a Senior in Engineering School I was part of a design class that was contracted to use our newly learned mathematical modeling skills to solve real world problems. My team was assigned a problem in deciding the optimal geometry for a numerically controlled machine part. As a part of the assignment we had to take a tour of the factory. This was an old brick building in the manufacturing district of South Chicago.
The staff was friendly and the tour was very educational. I recognized a former classmate from the previous graduating year working at the factory. Our indoctrination included a tour of the facility. The factory consisted mostly of primitive robotic machines used to manufacture precisely defined metal machine parts.
At one station I saw a man employed it what has to be one of the worst jobs in the world. He was using a machine to cut notches in small cast steel bars, or pipes. The bars were about 3/4 of an inch in diameter and eight inches long. The bars were strapped to an apparatus that was submerged in high viscosity motor oil and the the notch cutting saw blade was applied to make the cut out. All day long this man had to reach into the oil with his bare hands to adjust the pieces between cuts. He couldn't wear gloves.
I learned a lot from that tour, but unfortunately the main thing I learned was that I did not want to work in that industry. To this day I am haunted by the image of the man who had to reach into motor oil all day long just to insure that he cut accurate notches in little metal bars.
copyright (c) 2016
William Schaeffer
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