Friday, November 20, 2009

Oggy is helping people live better lives

* Thermal Ablation Device
* Polypectomy Forceps
* Bipolar RF Ablation Device
* Implantable Pacing Leads
* High Flow Micro Infusion Catheter
* Esophageal Dilator Development
* Laparoscopic Anti-Adhesive Sprayer
* Laparoscopic Vesico-Urethral Anastomosis Device
* Aortic Cutter Improvement Program
* Colonoscope Guidewire


Accellent has the capacity to execute the most aggressive product cycles, the tightest deadlines and the most ambitious product transfers. From design to manufacturing to final delivery, Accellent's broad offering allows you to focus on what you do best. You innovate, we solve. You create, we execute. You invest, we generate ROI. That's the Accellent Advantage.


There are more buzzwords in that one paragraph than I have ever seen. Execute, aggressive, ambitious, focus, ROI (return on investment). Wow! How do I get a job? There is no guarantee I'll get this job. Yes, they need assemblers but they don't need any loose cannons. Is Oggy a loose cannon? Yes. When his van was built back in 1969 they still called cancer "consumption". There were no endoscopy forceps the size of a knitting needle that fixed valves in your heart. There were no robot surgeries. But Oggy drives the van of the past...not the future. And that would indicate he isn't a team player. When there are so many crappy Japanese cars to buy why would he choose to drive a 40 year old van? They don't need to answer the question since just asking it is enough to disqualify me.
I was asked, "Why do you want to work at Accellent?"
That I managed to stifle a laugh and provide an answer is proof I haven't completely lost the ability to conform. Hell, I even shaved and wore a nice shirt and shook her hand. I was a regular blue collar criminal.

The clean room was something out of Star Trek. This is where those surgical tools are assembled. Some parts are manufactured here. Some are ordered. What comes out of the plant ends up in hospitals around the world. Next time you are whining about how much it costs to get a stent in one of your arteries you should come take a look at how much technology was required to make the tools used to put it there. It's humbling.
You'd think they can pay more than $9 to someone responsible for assembling implantable pacing leads but that's the amount that you get from the temp agency. Accellent actually pays around $30/hr for your services. $10 to you and $20 to the temp agency for dealing with the paperwork. That's the indignity of the temp world. Anyone can look at my check and say I'm a step above McDonalds. But the actual job I'm doing is worth much more, but it's split in so many ways that I don't get more than a third of the money. This reality does no good in the supermarket checkout line. When it comes to the on sale day old chicken and the fresh chicken we all know which one I grab.

In other news a rancid stench has permeated my room at the Riverside halfway house. I don't know if it came from my boxes of old clothes or if I didn't notice it before. The bed is so disgusting that I would be surprised if it didn't stink. Fortunately, one of my housemates works at McDonalds and steals the air freshener cannisters for our bathroom. I used some in my room and now it smells like a McDonalds bathroom...mixed with a rat corpse. If they uncovered dead bodies in the floorboard I would only ask "How many?"
George Carlin once said that there is a phenomenon when you walk into a gross hotel room and it immediately is offensive. But if you sit down on he bed, look out the window and take your shoes off then you can't smell it anymore. You get used to it. That has worked out to be true. I'm only disgusted when I walk in the door. After that I can't smell it. Pretty soon I'm asleep.

I'm glad I'll be helping other people live better lives. That's just fucking great.
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Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.