Tuesday, February 24, 2009

One Piece at a Time



2 comments:

  1. Johnny actually predicted one major cause of GM's great decline. My dad worked at AC for many years and in the 1980's a coworker got caught driving out of the plant with a trunk full of car parts. This guy got fired and was out of work for a year. His union committee man went to bat for him and his job was then reinstated with a FULL YEAR'S BACK PAY.

    The final verdict was that no one could prove the worker had actually put those parts into his own trunk.

    Maybe he had watched this Cash performance and gotten the idea.

    Is Johnny Cash huge or is that guitar tot-sized?

    ReplyDelete
  2. i think anyone who grew up in flint knew someone or maybe even themselves,who profited from pilfered parts and or supplies courtesy of "Generous Motors"

    there were great stories about how people actually got caught taking semi trailer loads of parts. possibly the greatest theft was that of time and productivity.

    sales cover a multitude of sins but when the sales nosedive the sins become apparent and finally actions are taken by the company to close the loopholes which can no longer be ignored because the sales aren't there to cover them.

    my favorite "urban legend" involves a worker from a contractor who every day wheels out a wheelbarrow of sawdust. he is stopped at the gate by the same plant protection guy everyday, who examines the saw dust and finds nothing. finally on the last day of the project the guard says to the workman, everyday of this project you wheeled out a wheelbarrow of saw dust with nothing in it, i know you were taking something and i can't prove it and since this is your last day on the project please tell me just exactly what it was you took out of here everyday, i'm not going to make trouble for you, but i just have to know what it was you were taking? to which the workman replied....wheelbarrows!!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.