by Diamond
So this one particular day, I asked him if I could move to the register or do something else because I didn’t want my hair catching on fire from the fry machine.
He said when the next cashier position opened up, then I could take that position. No worries.
I kept doing my job, showing up on time, giving it all I’ve got. I was happy because the only part I didn’t like about the job would end soon.
Shortly after this, another cashier position opened up. I’m thinking, okay, good, I’ll get that position, and my time on the fryer will be over with.
Would you believe, y’all, the supervisor hired another white girl for the position?
Wow.
That was my last day working on the fry machines, though, because I went off on that manager, gave him his little apron, and I quit. That was my first time quitting a job, but I felt justified in walking out. He had told me the next cashier’s position would be mine, then he turned right around and gave it to someone else. It wasn’t even about the girl being white. It was about him lying to me, telling me one thing and doing another.
Was your supervisor a white supervisor, a black supervisor, or Hispanic?
He was a white supervisor. Remember now, this was in the late eighties. I quit because he promised me something but didn’t deliver on what he promised.
Mm-hmm.
So, after I quit, I only had my job at Shoney’s. What about you, Silk? Where did you work?
I remember working at Kolcraft. I was eighteen years old when I started there. Kolcraft makes baby furniture, and they are still a pretty big deal in Aberdeen, North Carolina, today, employing about 245 people.
My job was making the small components that connect car seat handles to the actual seats.
My trainer’s name was Martha, and she was a good trainer. In fact, she trained me so well that I became the lead on that particular line. When the line got moving along, everyone started scrambling, but that’s when I rested a bit because I had produced so much work that the line had to catch up with me.
You were a fast, strategic worker.
Exactly. I went ahead and did what I had to do, but I did it in a particular way, and the method worked. The way I saw things, there was no point in being on the line if what you were doing wasn’t working. Why bother being there?
About six months later, I got my second job, at Burlington Industries, in Raeford, North Carolina. I hated to do it, but I had to go back to Kolcraft to let them know I was quitting. I’m not going to lie, they put up quite a fuss. The supervisors wanted to know if there was anything that they could do to make me stay. They told me that if it didn’t work out at Burlington, I would always have a job there at Kolcraft.
Oh, my…
I remember that, gurl, and it meant a lot to me.
Whenever I’m traveling back and forth to the airport, I pass Kolcraft, and I often look over there and remember what those supervisors told me. That left a vivid impression on me—then I thank God that He delivered me, hahaha.
Hahaha, I know that’s right.
So I got hired at Burlington when I was nineteen. It seemed like everybody in Raeford wanted to get on at Burlington. It was a long, exhausting process, and people would park their cars at two or three o’clock in the morning just to get in line.
The reason everybody wanted to get on at Burlington was because they were a manufacturer. Back in the late eighties and nineties, people could raise families, send their children to college, and pay their bills with a good job like that.
That’s right.
So, staying in a small town such as Raeford, if you were able to bring home $30, 40, 50,000 a year, that was really good money for the average family.
That’s right.
That’s why people were lined up; they wanted those jobs.
Exactly right.
So, I got in line, and I put in my application like everybody else. However, what I did differently is almost every other day I called and spoke with someone to ask if they had received my application. I also let them know how hard a worker I was and that they would not regret hiring me. It was like I was doing my own interview over the phone, almost every day.
I talked to whoever happened to answer the phone in human resources. It got to the point where they knew my name when I called. Finally, the day came when I was receiving the call back from them. They wanted me to start on third shift that same night.
So there I was that same night, starting my new job at Burlington Industries in the winding department. I had a wonderful supervisor, Betty K.—light-skinned, beautiful lady—and Mary R. was my instructor. She taught me how to drop the bobbins to create the yarn so that they could be processed to go to the next department.
So with Silk being at Burlington Industries making all kinds of money, of course I wanted to work there too. Not long after Silk started there, they needed workers for the cloth room. I didn’t know a thing about cloth, but they were hiring for that position. So I put in an application.
Mm-hmm.
Just about a week or two later, I got a phone call for an interview. I was thrilled; this would provide the kind of money needed to make a good life, so I thought. I think I had to do a drug test, and all that kind of stuff came back good, so I was hired.
Mm-hmm.
Once I got hired, there were a few weeks of training. They were up-front about it: if we couldn’t pass the training, we wouldn’t get the job. Myrtle was our trainer, and she showed us how to thread up a needle, how to look at the cloth, how to read the cloth to determine whether there was a missed reed or a wrong draw or if we had to stitch it somewhere to fill in that missed reed. Whatever the error was, we only had so many minutes to fix it.
Mm-hmm.
Once that cloth started rolling on the roller, we had to inspect it to make sure no damaged cloth was delivered to the customers. We were the last department before the cloth shipped out, so after it went through all of the other departments, it came to the cloth room.
If there was a missed reed—when the yarn didn’t stitch all the way through—or a wrong draw or something that just didn’t look right, we would have to either fix it or mark that it was unable to be repaired.
The stress of those few weeks in training was almost overwhelming. Luckily, I was able to complete each and every task that they gave me. Not everyone made it through training because it was challenging, it really was. I remember one of the other girls, she was a Caucasian girl, she could not thread her needle up fast, and she was not fast enough sewing in the little spaces that needed to be mended.
Mm-hmm.
So they were giving her one more day to catch on, and we were all rooting for her, but she couldn’t get it right, so they had to let her go.
Oh, no…
After moving up from training, I was officially a cloth inspector on third shift. I had to inspect that cloth to make sure that no damage had been done to it and there were no missed reeds or wrong draws. We had to be on our game because after we inspected it, it went to another inspector to make sure we did our job. If we didn’t do our job accurately, they would send all that cloth back for us to inspect it again.
That’s right. Wow.
In the winding department, we had to make sure that the bobbin colors didn’t get mixed up because the shades and hues were so close. If we didn’t read all of the item lines off to make sure that we had the correct color bobbins, we could easily be working with the wrong yarn. I became especially intrigued with counting my numbers at the end of my shift to see how many bobbins I had actually dropped.
One time, I had just come back from lunch, and when I got to the two machines I worked on, all the bobbins in my tray were gone. Everything was empty; my machines were stopped; everything was lit up red.
Well, I felt like I turned into Wonder Woman.
Hahaha.
All of a sudden, gurl, here I go: I started from one end and worked my way to the next, getting those machines back up and running. I was working
at high speed; that’s just something that I excelled at. I didn’t bother anybody, and no one bothered me. I didn’t look up to see if anyone noticed me; I just kept dropping those bobbins.
I went down one row, came back up on the other side, and completed row after row in that way. When I was just about done with the last row, I noticed this distinguished-looking white gentleman standing there.
I remember that gentleman. He was a department head, and he looked like Richard Gere when he was fine.
Hahaha. Yes, that’s exactly who he looked like.
So he was standing there at the end of my machine, and he said, “I just stood here and watched you drop all of these bobbins and just get your job back up to running smoothly.” And he said, “Have you ever thought about working in the weave room?”
Now, y’all, the weave room is where you made the big bucks because you’re really making the actual cloth that’s about to be distributed to the other departments in order to make quality clothes.
Right.
So I was excited about this possibility, and I’m sure my eyes were wide and the surprise was all over my face as I responded, “I want to work in the weave room, but I’m blind in one eye.”
When I was born, my optic nerve did not develop properly, so I am legally blind in one of my eyes. I can see some light, but everything is blurry. I refused to go on disability, though, because I didn’t want my blind eye to “dis my ability” to be able to work. Does that make sense?
Yes, it sure does.
It never stopped me, and no one ever knew about it unless I told them. Since I’ve gotten older, my eye has gotten a lot lazier. I’ve received several emails from some good-hearted folks offering to correct my eye free of charge.
Wow.
Although those offers were kind and considerate, I decided not to tamper with it. I’ve been living with this eye like this for all of these years, I’ll just leave well enough alone. Some may call it a cockeye, but I call it my super eye, hahaha.
Hahaha.
My super eye has the capability to look at you and around you at the same time. I feel like the chosen one because I have something the average person doesn’t have. I turned my negative into positive. I’ve embraced and replaced my flaws with peace, and I always ask God to lead and guide me in the right direction.
That’s the right way to look at it too.
So, anyhoo, I told the supervisor that I am blind in one eye, and that’s been my deterrent. He gave me his name anyhow. Turns out he wasn’t just a supervisor; he was head honcho over the whole department.
So he told me what time to come in the next day and where to go and to tell the people up front that he referred me. I did just what he said because I wanted that job.
Mm-hmm.
As part of that application process, I had to go back through another eye exam. I was so nervous, I even told the examiner, “Ma’am, I can’t see out of this eye.”
She said, “Oh, don’t worry about it.”
I thought they were testing to see if I was going to work out okay. I found out later that this supervisor wanted me in the weave room so bad that the testing was just a formality. I already had the position. The next day, I was in training. It happened just that fast.
Wow.
So here’s the craziest thing, y’all: By the time Silk left the winding department and was in the weave room, where the big bucks were at, they were getting ready to lay off people in the cloth room. So my job was being threatened by layoffs.
That’s right.
I actually thought I was going to be laid off, but instead they moved me to the winding department. I believe they trained me on second shift, and my supervisor’s name was Charlie D. Then I was pushed to third shift, and my supervisor was also Betty K.
So, now I’m in the winding department, and Silk is in the weave department, both of us working midnight to 8:00 a.m.
Mm-hmm.
Well, on one of my shifts, at about 7:00 a.m., I had to get a crate of yarn. So I went through this whole procedure of taking the main bobbin out and making sure to match it to what was on the machine so I was sure to be running the right bobbin. I was focused on my task, not paying attention to anything else around me, really, when the department head comes through—the one who looked like Richard Gere.
Well, he saw me following the right protocol, doing something that the others weren’t doing, and while their yarn was getting mixed up, mine wasn’t.
So he came over and complimented me on following the rules, and then he asked me if I would like to be in the weave room.
I’m staring at him in shock and I said something like, “Well, my sister works back there; it sounds good to me.”
And, so, I don’t even think I had to put in another application. It was like, “Training starts on this day.” And that’s just the way it was.
Mm-hmm.
Let me add this, y’all: I know sometimes black Americans feel like all white people are racist; that’s not true. Even though I had experienced racism in the workplace, if I had let that be my story for every job I went to, I might not have accepted that this individual—a white man—was looking out for me. He wanted me to have this job, just like he wanted Silk to have the job, because he felt that we could do the job.
He couldn’t have cared less about Silk being blind in one eye.
Hahaha. That’s right.
Hell, he didn’t care if she could see at all, as long as she kept those machines in that weave room running, hahaha.
Hahaha, yes.
I didn’t fit the criteria for employment in the weave room. They wanted us to have high-functioning vision to work with the fine details of the cloth. He wanted me back there for my work ethic.
Right.
So, I’m working back there, and now my sister is back there. You’ve got your tool belt and I’ve got mine, and we’re making good money and doing our thing.
Mm-hmm.
Betty M. was the only trainer at the time, and they needed another, so the position of instructor opened up, and I decided to apply. I was ecstatic when I got the job.
The individuals whom I trained, after finishing training and getting out there on the floor, were outstanding in their positions, and they stayed there a long time. I actually began making more money than the instructor who trained me because of how effective I was.
Wow.
For me, y’all, I was back there in that weave room, trying to keep the machines going, but I just woke up one day and I felt like I wanted to be a supervisor.
Mm-hmm.
Of course, when I went to talk to the department manager about it, he looked at me like I was crazy.
Yes, he did.
He didn’t think I was ready to be a supervisor, and maybe I wasn’t ready; but, hell, at least I tried.
Yeah. Nothing beats a failure but a try.
That’s right. I never became a supervisor. So, instead, I focused all of my energy on keeping those weave machines going so that the cloth would weave because we had to produce that cloth and move it out of there.
The machines, which were called looms, were huge and dominated ten feet of space all around.
That’s right. Yes.
We had to wear our tool belts with our scissors and our weave hooks ready.
Yes. We tied weaver’s knots.
Yes. We had to tie weaver’s knots, and we had to tie them in so many seconds.
Yes.
We had to be able to inspect the cloth to make sure that we didn’t have a wrong draw. A wrong draw happened when one of the threads broke. We had to get a matching thread, tie a knot, pull the string through the heddle eye with a weaver’s hook, then take a reed hook and thread it through the reeds, and then start the machine.
Mm-hmm.
Now, the pattern had to match the other pattern. If it didn’t match, it could have been a wrong draw or a missed reed.
Mm-hmm.
You did not want your cloth going far with a wrong draw bec
ause you could get written up or even get fired, because it’s a total loss to the company.
That’s right. Imagine purchasing a coat, and you see a yellow line that’s not supposed to be there going down the back of the coat.
Absolutely. Even when I shop for clothes today, I can pretty much spot if there is a missed reed or a wrong draw in the fabric because I’ll take a look at the pattern.
Mm-hmm.
A wrong draw was easy to have happen because sometimes the pattern looked the same. They would have to take a little magnifying glass out and put it on the cloth to see if the pattern was wrong.
Right. Sometimes you were using two or three different colors that looked the same. You had to know how to look at the yarn, to twist it, to see if it was double or single yarn.
Wrong draws were not something that Diamond or I did often.
Right.
But every now and then, something could get crossed up. Dust would sometimes get into the machines and put a knot in the yarn, causing one of the threads to break. Before you knew it, things were crossed up, and it was up to you to uncross it. That’s why we had to do an inspection every hour on the hour. I even remember my inspection number, it was 212.
Right.
We’d have to go over there and unmat it; remember that?
Oh, gurl, I remember it.
So, whenever that happened, our supervisor, Mr. Williams, was there to really shield us because he loved the Hardaway girls’ work ethic.
Yes, he did. I don’t even know if Mr. Williams is still alive, but he was a really good supervisor. I really enjoyed working for him.
Yes.
We’ve really always been proactive and involved on the job.
That’s right.
If we learned that somebody was upset about a new rule, we had no problem going to the department head, department manager, or a supervisor to get it all straightened out.
That’s right.
I specifically remember a meeting that was supposed to last no more than fifteen minutes; we stayed up there for almost an hour.
Mm-hmm. I remember they wanted us to do some extra jobs. At that time, they had a crew of workers who blew the dust from under the machines. During the meeting, they told us they wanted to add that to our list of job duties.