Hello Surf Reporters! Today has been lazy as a mofo, which means I’m sitting here beating myself up. My weekend starts when I climb off the platform on Thursday morning, and ends on Sunday at 2 p.m., when I leave for work. And I feel like it’s my duty to maximize the hours in between.
Today I’ve screwed around on the internet, drank a pot of coffee, talked to my brother on the phone, and listened to all three albums by the Kooks. Yes, I’m a regular ball o’ fire.
To make matters worse, I read an article this morning in which the author reveals why he believes many people aren’t successful: poor communication skills, and a shitty work ethic. So, I decided I’d better take my laptop to the library (I do better away from home, for some reason) and get down to business. The dude was shaming me.
So, here we are.
On Monday I was about to post the Suburban Oddball update, when the power went out. There was no advance warning: no flickering or dimming, or anything of the sort. Everything just suddenly shit the credenza.
I got ready for work, and kept flipping on non-responsive light switches out of habit. I was hoping it would only be a minor setback, but after 90 minutes… still nothing. Screw this, I thought, I’ll just go somewhere, have lunch, and head to the office.
So, I drove to Moe’s, where they have a really good $5.55 Monday special. But all the employees were sitting outside, and the front doors were propped open. What the?
“No power!” they screamed at me, as I approached. Dammit! All my pleasure centers were calibrated for burrito.
I headed on down the road, and noticed that every fast food place was dark and closed. Weird. I hoped the terrorists weren’t hitting us where it hurts the most… Finally, I drove far enough that I could see lights again, and whipped the steering wheel toward a Subway.
“No credit card machine! No credit card machine!!” the over-excited Indian man (anesthesiology, not feather) yelled at me. Nobody carries cash anymore… At least I don’t, and assume everyone lives their life like I do. Right? So, I stormed out in a huff.
I drove all the way to Wilkes-Barre, where the power outage couldn’t hurt me anymore, and ate at a battered and threadbare Wendy’s. There was a guy in there holding court, and talking loudly about local railroad history. He seemed both knowledgeable and pleased with himself. It irritated me that I was halfway interested in what he was saying.
The entire situation was annoying, but it allowed me the opportunity to spend some extra time with the Monday update. I posted it on Tuesday, and think it was better than most. If you agree, I’d appreciate a little Twitter love. I’ve even gone to the trouble of typing out the message for ya. All you have to do is go here, and hit TWEET. Thanks in advance!
A few days ago I was listening to a business podcast, and the guy was talking about factory tours. He said the Heinz Ketchup company was the first to offer daily tours, back during the late 1800s. And it was a game-changing, revolutionary concept. Prior to that, factories were mysterious places, which only workers and investors were allowed to enter.
The guy was making a point about the value of transparency, but it got me to thinking about such tours, and the ones I’ve taken in my life.
I’ve been on several brewery tours, including Yuengling (multiple times, because it’s so kick-ass), Anheuser-Busch in Florida somewhere, and Ommegang in Cooperstown, NY. There might be others, too.
I also remember touring a giant industrial bakery in Charleston, WV, when I was a kid. The smell was overwhelming, and some of the kids loved it, and others were on the brink of vomiting. I was in the latter group… the shit was thick. They gave us an oatmeal cookie at the end, I recall.
One of the coolest factory tours I’ve experienced was at my old place of employment: a mind-bogglingly huge CD/DVD/LP manufacturing plant. It was as big as a city, and had its own zip code (no joke). Thousands of people worked there when I started, and they gave me the full-blown golf cart tour on my first day.
They still made vinyl albums, at the time, and a roomful of old ladies in gloves were sitting there placing them into sleeves. They got paid by the piece, and had been there for decades. The guy told me they’d purchased a machine years ago, to automate the process, but the old ladies were actually faster. I stood there watching them, and it was just a blur. Crazy.
The DVDs and CDs were made in clean rooms, and the workers were in full-blown Hazmat suits. It was like a massive medical lab. They showed me a high definition DVD, years before they were available in stores, and I couldn’t believe it. My brain was having trouble processing the picture; I’d never seen anything like it.
It was great fun, and I worked there for seven years… and never again revisited many of those sections of the plant. It was gargantuan, and like something out of a James Bond movie. I think 250 people work there today, and 80% of the place is powered-down. It’s sad.
And now I’d like to know about the coolest factory tours you’ve experienced. I didn’t think it was possible, but I believe this is a Question we’ve never 
pondered before. Please use the comments link below.
And I’ll see you guys again on Monday.
Have a great weekend!
Now playing in the bunker
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My class toured the Louisville Slugger factory when I was in like 4th grade or so. At the time, it was located across the river in Jeffersonville, Indiana, which seemed weird to me. I don’t remember much about it, except that it was cool to be so far away from home for the day (about 2 hours), and that they gave each of us a little miniature replica bat as a souvenir.
True story. Not an interesting story, but true, nonetheless.
Corning Glass as a kid, and as an adult the Sam Adams ‘plant’ off some beaten-up road a good distance from Actual Boston. Very much worth it.
I toured the Nummi plant in Fremont, Ca. It was an old GM plant that at one time cranked out huge GM cars, but was a joint venture with Toyota when I toured. They made the Corolla, Tacoma pick-up and a few Geo models, Very cool tour. Now it is the home of Tesla, the Electric Car manufacturer.
Both my Tacoma and my wife’s Corolla were made there. And still the idiots with made-in-Mexico “American” pickups told me I should have “bought American”.
I thought they made that into a mall several years ago.
I’ve been in auto plants, steel plants, machine shops, Amway, container ports, train yards, farms, universities, semiconductor plants, you name it.
My favorite is a soda pop company called Faygo. If you’re not in the Midwest you’re probably not familiar with them.
Anyway, I loved going there because the place had this really great sweet, sugary, spicy smell that was just pleasant and comforting all the time. I still miss it sometimes.
I used to drink Faygo and vodka while waiting for the Bessemer Fourth of July parade – so yeah, I know Faygo.
And my favorite tour as a kid was the Hostess plant that ended with everyone getting Twinkies. Later it became a Leinenkugel brewery, thus remaining a sacred place.
I KNEW there was a reason I LOVED Leinenkugel…
When I lived in upstate NY, there was Faygo Redpop available. I drank it sometimes. Weird but pleasant; I still don’t know what flavor it was.
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Back in the early 90s I worked in our company’s “data centre.” I refused to call it that, going with “computer room” instead. Every once in a while we would have to give tours to new hires or visiting big wigs. We would show them the mainframes, the disk drives, tape drives, tape library, etc. The 3 mainframes and the huge disk drives (each bigger than a refrigerator and there were dozens and dozens of them) gave off a lot of heat. The floor was raised, with room underneath for cables and air circulation. Large A/C units pulled warm air from ceiling level, cooled it, then blew it out underneath the floor. Every third or fourth floor tile was perforated to allow the cool air to flow up into the room. One of my coworkers always tried to stop and talk somewhere in the room so that any women on the tour would have to stand on top of one of these perforated tiles, with air blowing up their skirt, and see if it would turn on her high beams.
Brings back memories. I’ve sold mainframe software for over a decade and the rooms for the most part are still exact as you describe them. Been in hundreds of computer rooms across the country. Also helped a friend start a computer room cleaning business here in the midwest (yes those rooms may look clean behind the glass, but they are NOT) and he continues to do very well at it.
Never did a factory tour, but used to drive by the Cracker Jack factory in Chicago when I was a kid – heavenly aroma emanating from that plant…
We used to have the Stella D’Oro cookie and breadstick plant in the Bronx before they moved to the midwest. My Dad would open all the windows when we drove by so we could all get a good whiff.
There’s a place in your day for Stella d’Oro.
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I’ve toured two Budweiser factories – St. Louis, MO (twice) and Jacksonville, FL.
The main one in St. Louis is pretty amazing. The one on Jacksonville, like the rest of that shit hole city, sucked.
I did the one in Tampa years ago. A lot of standing in glass hallways way above the action. Yawn.
I toured a Spring Factory in Pittsburgh everyday for 3 summers (it was a daily self guided tour called work).
But my wife is a big fan of Fiesta Ware and she toured the factory in Newell West Virginia just this year. She spoke highly of it and enjoyed it.
I toured a General Electric factory when I was a kid. My two friends and I were pretending I was blind and they were leading me around. Later on we remembered I was wearing glasses. um…fail.
When I was in maybe 4th grade, we had a class tour of a meat packing plant somewhere in NYC. We watched cows getting skinned and taken apart, and there wasn’t even a burger at the end.
Later my brother and I worked at Sheffield Plastics, making fluorescent light covers and Lexan bank teller windows. Summer of 1977.
After I moved to Virginia, I discovered the brewery tour at the late, lamented Dominion Brewing. Whenever a friend or relative would visit from out of town I would drag them out there for the tour. This was back when Jerry ran the place and conducted the tours. One time, they had finished building – but not yet opened – the brewpub. Jerry concluded that tour by saying “we don’t have our license yet, so I can’t sell you a beer. But I can give you one – what’ll you have?” Good guy. I wonder what became of him.
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I only went there after the BrewPub was opened, and never took the tour. The place had glass or plexiglass walls for part of it so you could see parts of the factory while you drank (and/or – eventually – ATE) your evening meal.
A cursory search of the InterWebs does not reveal where Jerry Bailey went after he sold the place.
ODBC was pretty convenient to my work, and we’d sometimes go there for a cuppa-two-tree after work. I may have seen you there and not known it. One of my co-workers looked like Jean-Luc Picard and talked like a hillbilly, if that’s any help. The absolute best was Hop Pocket on the hand pump. Man, oh Manischewitz.
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Toured Proctor & Gamble as part of a ‘career day’ in high school, and took home all these Ivory Soap & Crest toothpaste samples.
I think we toured a Frisch’s commissary when I was in Boy Scouts. Don’t ask me why.
Been to the AV8-B assembly area, the Hubble Space Telescope control room, the inside of a B-52 bomber.
Clean Room– Old Forge PA –IV Solutions —you will never think it– but it is there.
In late august 2008 I ended up driving from Yardley PA to Lorain, OH for work. The reason we drove is a post of it own so I’ll cut to the chase.
My boss at the time is a HUGE Baseball fan, grew up in Boston, won us a trivia contest with the YAZ in Iowa. So as we are seeing signs for a bat factory tour and he says we have to go.
So we follow the signs and end up at a small building that says BWP Bats and we go in and say we’d like to take the tour.
Let me add that despite this being a business trip we knew we had 9 hard hours of driving to get to Yardley so we were dressed like slovenly hobos. Tee shirts, cargo shorts, flip flops.
We start the “tour” it’s just the two of us and we are in the factory. There are no cat walks or hard hats. We get to see each set of bat making even the lasering and the painting. It is awesome.
You can buy customized bats.
And while it isn’t quiet a factory during my ex husband’s employment at the Philadelphia Naval Ship Yard I got to tour a couple of aircraft carriers below decks. That was pretty awesome too
In elementary school we toured a Wonder Bread factory. I just remember the overwhelming smell of warm bread. I dreamt about smothering.
I was out sick for the day when my high school took my class to a nuclear power plant. Call me crazy, but unleashing teenagers in a nuclear power plant seems a little misguided.
What could possibly go wrong?
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Jeff’s tales of his childhood shenanigans spring to mind.
Given the dimwits in the Air Force who have their finger on the nuclear trigger when they’re not fingering a subordinate or just generally sexually harassing every woman airman they see, I can’t say I’d feel any less safe with Gretchen in charge of our strategic nuclear systems. Go ahead. Give her shit. Damn, there goes Pyongyang.
jtb
You are absolutely correct, sir.
I went into a glass factory (beer bottles and such) called Owens Illinois and it was awesome. Crazy loud though.
Eleven miles north, the Fenton Art Glass factory gave tours while they produced glass, a big draw, sort of a destination place for those who were interested in Fenton Art Glass. You could watch glass being shoved into 1200 degree furnaces, then “blown” into molds by actual craftsmen, and crafted into individual pieces. Unfortunately, the plant closed, due to the economy. There’s still a limited tour, but not much going on there, now.
Greg, THAT is or was a great tour! Also, the museum on the second flor is so beautiful. My business partner and I sold them the two “Hanging Heart” vases on display.
Every year I go back I have to return with glass pieces for so many people. My daughters went back with me once and they still refer to Fenton’s as “the glass animal factory.” Yes, glass animals for the kids and their friends, a glass bell for Mom in Law, and always a cool, semi expensive vase for me!
Any whisky distillery!
And this place, arguably the best beer in The Netherlands;
http://www.brouwerijhetij.nl/splash-page-nl/
Jack Daniels is one of the best!! Worth making the trek.
Ethel M’s candy, marshmallows and the cranberry factory outside Las Vegas. Marshmallows were cool.
The Mint, dollars in DC and coins in Philadelphia and Denver.
A number of brewerys.
Oh yeah, those little glass bluebirds of happiness? They are made up the road here in NorthWest Arkansas. You can buy the rejects and they are hilarious!!!
My grandfather worked for Mars, the candy company. When school was out I’d go to work with him fairly often. The factory, while not quite Wonka-esque was still pretty fucking awesome, and I was allowed to eat warm candy bars off the line as I wanted. They had vending machines that served hot chocolate drinks, made from the actual hot chocolate being piped around.
When I was 8 or 9 I took two school friends with me one day. With hindsight my grandfather set this up – but as we were leaving the site security stopped us and made us roll down the rear windows of the car, and the security guards started grilling three boys about all the chocolate they’d eaten/stolen. “Wait right here”, they said. Then returned and dumped 2 garbage cans full of candy bars through the open windows into the back of the car 🙂 IIRC all 3 boys were very very sick later that day.
The building where they made menthol sore throat lozenges made your eyes feel like they would burst if you inhaled a lung full of the air in there up your nose.
We also regularly got and reviewed prototype candy bars, which was pretty cool.
All the give you at the Hershey’s “factory” is a little crappy sample at the end.
And you damn well better only take one.
I’ve always wanted to pipe the chocolate from the enrobing curtain directly into my face holes.
At the Mars factory I saw foot long slugs of solid chocolate, they looked looked like artillery shells, that were blown out of blocked pipes with compressed air. They looked delicious but they were considered ‘contaminated’ and went into the “for animal feed” garbage 🙁 Lucky pigs.
Chocolate bars taken fresh from the enrobing curtain are kind of sickly, I learned I preferred ‘old’ ones. Less messy too.
We had the bread factory tour, too. Sunbeam Bread, to be exact. We each got a fresh, hot loaf* of bread after the tour. Mine didn’t make it home–DELICIOUS!
I realize that “fresh, hot loaf” in close proximity to each other in a sentence does not usually conjure up positive memories, but this one’s an exception!
We toured the Captain Lawrence Brewery which consisted of one large room. But they were very generous with the samples and the beer was ass kkicking strong.
In 7th grade we toured the US Mint in Philadelphia. WOW that was cool. We saw a block of metal about the size of a bread box go on and when you got to the end they were stamping out nickels.
I’ve toured the St. Louis Bud breweryprobably qa dozen times. The normal tour was free, and there was free beer at the end, so every time we went to St. Louis we went by. I love the smell of breweries. I also went on the “Brew master” tour there. It costs $45. You get a hat and a bunch of swag. You get to pet the horses, rather than look at them. You get to stand aaround in the fridge section drinking beer straight from giant 50 bajillion gallon tanks before it ever gets pumped into bottlees and cans. Pretty cool.
When I was in elementary school we toured the back of an Albertson’s grocery store. That’s not really a factory, but it’s the next closest thing I can come up with. It was the closest business that had a “backside” to the town I grew up in. I remember that at the end of the terrible, terrible tour the store manager let everybody take one item that was less than $5 for free. Everybody took candy or a drink. I tried to take a piece of raw meat. My teacher wouldn’t let me, but th manager didn’t seem to care.
The Tabasco tour in New Iberia, LA is a good one.
What is it with taking kids to bakeries? We went in 3rd grade to Mrs. Baird’s (may be regional southwest.)
I’ve also been to the factory where they make plastic Coke bottles.
Went to Bethlehem Steel as a kid. 40-some years later, I still remember the pouring of the steel, the bazillion ton press making the ground shake and the heat of the I-beams whizzing by.
I remember touring a police station once in grade school. Still not sure what that was about. Maybe they wanted to prepare us for a worst case scenario that might arise later in life.
Oh, I forgot. about a hundred years ago when I worked in McDonalds some dimwit thought it would be a good community gesture to offer tours to kids who – how shall I say this delicately? – rode the short bus. The droolers and rockers. I don’t know who thought that shit up, but “exciteable” kids around 360 degree fry vats and open grills was one of the worst experiences in my young grease pit career.
About 4 years ago, a group of us rode to the Harley Davidson factory in York, PA…..I know….shocking.
We toured the Crayola Factory in Easton, Pennsylvania. That was cool since it reminded me of the smell when we would melt crayons on the giant radiators at school!
GE Transportation not really a tour since they don’t offer them but GE is one of my customers.. Got to see where they make the locomotive Engines. Pretty cool!
Jameson Distillery in Ireland and the Guiness Brewery were also cool tours.
I worked for Stewart Warner at their factory in Chicago. this place was massive, and used these monstrous presses that dated to pre-WWII. some of them were probably 20 feet tall and literally shook the ground when they operated. Plus the boilers in that place were like gargantuan dragons (created stteam which ran most of the presses and equipment). I always got scared when I walked thru the lower levels near the boilers and massive compressors just from the sheer size and noise they made.
the st. Louis brewery is fascinating – ‘coolest’ part is this 8 story building containing huge tanks where beer is cooled. It’s kept at something like 45 degrees 24/7/365. Talk about an electric bill!
45 is about right for primary fermentation of a lager. If they do actual lagering (i.e. secondary fermentation) it would be colder, maybe 35. But modern breweries use glycol cooling jackets on the tanks, rather than keep the whole building at that temperature. You get better control and lower operating costs that way.
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Toured the G. Heileman brewery in La Crosse Wi. multiple times, since I grew up in the immediate vicinity. And a pop factory in La Crosse thats been closed now for decades. Also spent some time in government facilities like the Ballistic Missile Command Center, the Pentagon, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. The Dia was the most interesting of the bunch, if only because of the doors that slammed shut along the hallways when they knew that the “visitor” only held a top secret security clearance.
Not exactly a tour, but I did spend a year or so in and around the Federal Glass factory, culminating in the helping to shut the place down. Started out sweeping broken red hot glass into holes in the floor, then moved on the the tank department rebuilding furnaces and glass melting ovens for a while before I got sent to the maintenance department as an apprentice electrician. That position being why I spent a couple months more there than most of the other employees who were told on a Friday afternoon that the plant was closing on Monday and they would thereafter be unemployed. This was all prior to my big move to California, where I’ve been now since around 1979.
Red badge!!!
And flashing blue light in the ceiling!
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Most interesting was the Ford St Thomas assembly plant (where they made the Crown Vic/Grand Marquis and at the bitter end the Town Car as well).
Toured it a number of times as its just a few minutes from home. Unlike the modern detroit ford plant where you tour down glass hallways, these tours where on the floor within arms reach of the cars and parts moving along. One section required you to time your walk between the body shells queing up for the paint room (all while avoiding the moving chains in the floor).
Oddly enough, I have never toured the local Labatts Beer plant. Gonna have to do something about that.
I picked up a hitchiking british nuclear sub crewman on guam. he invited me back to the sub for cocktails and draft beer in the wardroom.quite the tour!
When I was still I Nevada I took Environmental Restoration Technology and Environmental Law. On a field trip I had the chance to go to ground zero at the Nevada Test Site. Lots of paper work and security clearance involved to even be allowed on the bus to go. Then getting past the guards at the gate who boarded the bus to question us while their dogs sniffed, was the last hurdle that stood between me and being able to glow in the dark for the remaining days of my life. Went past the wooden benches on the slope you’ve seen picture of with guys sitting there with goggles on watching the blast. Continued on down to the floor seeing high radiation warning signs and not to leave the roadway. Went past twisted metal of what once was a large bridge that was built just to see the results of the blast. Buildings, houses and bunkers, all placed at a marked distance from ground zero to show the extent of damage at “X” amount of distance, twisted and in rubble. The sand of the desert floor glistened having been turned to glass from the heat of the blast. I remember thinking….a lot of good hiding under my desk would have done in 1962.
I also had the good fortune of being in a chicken factory. Fayetteville, Arkansas. Amazing operation from hatching to grow-out… to a fowl demise. Chickens hanging headless come down a roller-coaster line and enter a large deep trough of a mega-gazillion degrees of boiling water. In that trough is thousands of rubber fingers going all willy nilly rubbing-plucking the feathers off. The line continues with chopping off of this and that of whatever is left of the poor bastard at this point. When we got to the end of the disassembly line a little woman sat there wearing a white coat and white hat outfit, worthy of a Mayo Clinic operating room, grabbing the chickens as they came by. She applied her razor sharp knife with surgical precision and tossed the chicken onto the next conveyor and repeated process. I asked her what she was doing. She said…”I cut the assholes out of chickens”.
Maybe I could hire her to cut some assholes out of my life.
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That’s exactly what I was thinking.
I’d like to tour an opium den. You know…kinda like a wine tasting tour of a vineyard but with opium. I’d also like to go to one of those places where they teach all the different styles of pole dancing. And a helium factory tour would be a hoot I’d bet. They probably have one hell-of-a break room.
When I was in 6th grade my class went on a tour of the dairy research department at Clemson University, where we were told they had a live cow with a glass stomach. Before seeing it, I was a little horrified, yet somewhat intrigued, to see what such a thing looked like.
When we got there, the overwhelmingly nauseating smell hit us long before we got up close to the cow. It seemed contented enough, but the “glass stomach” turned out to be a porthole in its side, so covered in shit so that you couldn’t see through it at all. The horrible smell was due to the fact that runny shit was leaking from the imperfect seal at the edge of the porthole.
I had just decided against ever ingesting milk or any other cow-related product ever again, when they passed out cups of chocolate milk to all of us. The thought of drinking the stuff, especially with that smell still in the air, was revolting. Somebody tried it, though, and said it was pretty good, so the rest of us hesitantly drank.
It was the the best chocolate milk I’ve ever tasted – rich, intensely chocolatey, and perfectly chilled. I guess they knew they had to do something remarkable to make sure we remained good dairy consumers.
The cargo ship Maine was in Portland and open for tours, so we took our daughter to see it. We were following the herd and clearly could see the ship berthed down the street when my ex suddenly decided we needed to stop and ask directions. A gentleman in uniform pointed to the right, clearly not in the direction of the Maine, so we turned right and ended up touring the USS Carney, an Arleigh-Burke class Guided Missile Destroyer instead. Way cooler than looking at empty cargo holds. The fire control room was like Star Wars!
Second best tour: Ben and Jerry’s in Waterbury Vermont. Cool because the the capper jammed while we were watching the production line. Not only were the pints of chocolate Fudge Chunk ice cream heading for the packaging room with no tops, but every other pint was being flipped over. Watching the crew on the floor attack the line with broom sticks to clear off the cover-less pints was great fun!
The Blue Bell Ice Cream Factory in Brenham, TX.
Hands down best part of our tour – the ice cream sandwich line. One of the workers was loading the sandwich cookies into the hopper and all of a sudden the line went nuts. Ice cream sandwiches were backing up and cramming against eachother. It was chaos. Finally another worker ran over and (with gloved hands) starting grabbing newly smushed sandwiches off the line and throwing them into a bucket until she managed to get the line clear. Crisis averted.
At the end of the tour you emerge into a huge ice cream shop where you get a free scoop of ice cream and additional scoops are only a dollar. I coulda stayed there all day.
The Heinen’s Bread factory in Huntington, WV. For those who have ever toured a bakery, it’s all about the sweet, yeasty smell that permeates the air during the walk from the bus to the door of the factory. As I’m typing this, I can almost smell it. I can’t remember a damn thing about the factory. But I remember that smell. And whenever I go back to Huntington, I have to drive by the factory in hopes of smelling it again.
I’ve been on litterally dozens of company tours – my family is a little odd. Favorites include the RJ Reynolds cigarette factory (in my hometown), Royal Cake company – great smell of cooking oatmeal and raisin creme pie cookies, Corning, Louisville Slugger, beer factory, winery’s, battery factory, multiple hearing aid companies and 2 nuclear facilities but the best by far was the ice cream factory where we got to taste all the flavors….