What are we making?

I used to work for a machine shop that made parts for industrial, electrical and mining equipment. Not the kind of crap the average person would ever run into. Here is how I tried to find out about the parts I made. I went up to the lead man.

"Hey big daddy! What does this stop block; I am making, go in?"

"That goes at the end of the switch barrel on one of the pad mounts that they make down the hill at the assembly plant."

"What kind of switch is it and what the hell is a switch barrel?"

"Shit, I don't know and I've worked here for almost 30 years."

"So what is a pad mount?"

"Some sort of electrical distribution thing that mounts to a concrete pad."

"So what does it distribute power to, or look like, good god man where do they use these mother fuckers?"

"Fuck, I don't know, the bitches are blue and shaped like a box. That I do know, if that helps you any."

"You have worked here 30 years and all you know about what we make is that it goes in a blue box that gets bolted to concrete and vaguely has something to do with distributing electricity."

"Yeah, fucking sad isn't it. Since the early 80's I've been so busy cranking the fuckers out, I never really cared to find out more about them other than the blue print."

"So you never got curious about where 16,000 of the aluminum mother fuckers go and what they do?"

"Yeah, I got curious twice."

"When?"

"1984 and 1999."

"What happened?"

"I got busy with something else."

Dirty Ert