When he finally finished, Beeler was not about to press the start button. He called in a representative from the U.S. distributors. With Beeler at his side, the rep took a deep breath and pushed the button.
Nothing.
Hmm, the rep said. Did you check the computer program? Sure enough, it turned out that the computer had somehow deprogrammed itself during shipping. Three workers, including Beeler, set about reentering the 2,000-page computer program. Within a few days, they had the Gildemeister whirring. Until the safety clutch gave out. And an oil pump malfunctioned. Then the fuse bank blew.
Beeler persevered. Cope was counting on him, after all. The company's future depended on every twist of his wrench. Each evening Anne would meet him at the Gildemeister, then they'd go out for dinner. Afterward he'd return to the Gildemeister. Gel had won the Ford contract, which would bring in about $1.5 million a year. With the machine running three shifts, calls would come into the Beeler household at all hours. We've got a 14 on the computer screen. Check the oil, Beeler would instruct from his pillow.
Beeler wanted to feel proud that he was helping Gel enter a new age. But he felt underappreciated, as if this trade, which he had worked so hard to perfect, suddenly didn't count for much. Did people assume that such an advanced machine would put itself together? It was frustrating. One Gel salesman always led a group of visiting executives past the Gildemeister, where Beeler was working. "Oh, my goodness," he'd proclaim to the visitors, "is this machine down again?" Beeler growled. Once, a sensor went out. "Then there's this machine," said the salesman, who happened to be passing by. "It hardly ever runs." Beeler was fuming. A couple of minutes later he caught up with the group. His sleeves rolled up past his elbows, revealing tattoos on each arm, he stared at the executives coldly and said, "If you'd like to come back, it's running now."
Whatever new realities Gel and other auto suppliers were facing, some of the old rules still applied. A man still kept his dignity. Whenever George Beeler got fed up -- as he has on occasion at Gel -- he took all his tools home, as if it would dishonor them to be left behind. More than one argument with Cope has ended with Beeler raising his voice. "Damn it, Jack," he'd shout. "I'm a working man, and I'm proud of it!" Beeler had worked hard to buy a house in the suburbs, where he spent many hours maintaining his collection of military memorabilia. Twenty uniforms from both world wars, Korea, and Vietnam. German daggers. Russian assault rifles. "If I didn't control the money," Anne Beeler says, "we would have a tank out front and no food in the house." Beeler doesn't take things for granted anymore; he watched the house across the street sit empty for more than a year. He has neighbors who have been afraid to spend money on refrigerators or cars. If the auto companies shut down tomorrow, Beeler says, "you'd wipe out this whole neighborhood for three miles in either direction."
No matter what, they could not take his dignity away. Then again, he didn't expect them to try.
Beeler might have been more receptive had he learned about the company's plans for him in a more personable way. "Communication," he says, "that's one thing that is really lacking here, especially between the top and the bottom." Instead of in a private meeting, he read it in a memo, tacked to a bulletin board. He stepped back, drew a breath, and read it again. "It was such a put-down," he says.
He might not have felt that way last June had he known the bigger picture. In the spring of 1987, when Gel had expanded into a 10,000-square-foot space next door, Dresser had set aside 1,000 square feet, laid wall-to-wall, dark-fuschia carpeting, moved in 10 long tables, hung two grease boards, and gave the room a special name. The Training Center, he dubbed it.
For the first year only about 30 Gel employees went inside. Beeler never heard about it, but all of the internal supervisors and quality-control workers had their math skills upgraded with the help of the Livonia public schools. That extra training was important, Dresser figured, because those people were going to be answering lots of questions from their subordinates soon.
Beeler wasn't sure whether to take the memo seriously. All the workers in the machining department, it said, were to show up at the Training Center on this day at such and such a time. There, they would have to take a two-hour math and reading test. What on earth was going on here? Beeler wondered. What were they really after? Rumors spread that the test results would be used to fire people.
As the big day approached, workers yelled out math problems to one another. The exam was a killer. Much of it didn't make any sense. Why were they testing him on spelling? What difference could his grammar skills possibly make? I run a screw machine, for crying out loud, Beeler thought. It was as if suddenly they didn't understand who he was, what he did, where he fit.
They were giving him some standardized test to prove he was a dummy. Well, maybe he was a dummy to have worked so hard for a company that obviously had no respect for him. Knowing that, how could he concentrate on the test? On one section he got stuck on the second question and used up all his time. Another section left him utterly confused. He plotted a revenge fantasy: put the test designers on a screw machine and see how they do. When the test was over, he says, "I felt very low. They were trying to make me look like a fool, and they succeeded." Holding onto his last thread of dignity, Beeler vowed he would never ask about his score. "I have too much pride," he says.
And too much dignity to believe the rationale for the test, when he finally heard it. Gel was going to train everybody in SPC, management said, so the company wanted to know each person's level of understanding. That didn't make much sense. Surely, they didn't need to subject everybody to a humiliating test to do that. But Beeler gives Scott Heidler, Gel's training manager, high marks for "keeping the class down to the level of the people." Classes were held during work hours, and employees received their regular pay -- which averages $8 an hour -- even for time spent studying on the job. Workers came out of the course feeling upbeat. Beeler noticed that around the shop, people began competing to see whose machine could produce the best parts.
