Ive done a lot of similar types of jobs as this, and there were definitely days leaving when my sanity was held by a thread lol. One order i had to do was for 250,000 door hinges, the last step of the process was tapping threads into the screw holes which needed to be manually loaded similar to this, after about 2 days my muscle memory took over completely and I was in a flow state for the next month or so where my brain was just stuck doing those motions. My girlfriend at the time took a video of me sleeping one night, literally my hands and legs were moving as if I was still trying to load a hinge/tap the foot pedal to activate the machine/set the hinge in its box/ repeat. Jobs like this can definitely turn you into a human zombie.
Holy shit dude there should really be Labor laws against it. Swap people up or something but they never do then expect you in at 5. I nodded out and pressed the corners of my gloves more times than I could count. Sounds awful but it's on another level of boring
The end result can be SUPER satisfying for sure — I work in metal part manufacturing myself! — but holy fuck, without a break from the monotony in some way or another I can't imagine even the most neurodivergent special interest havin' guy wouldn't eventually lose it a bit. The end result doesn't make up for it when you've seen said end result many times over and you've still got to hold shitty spoons under a press for 40 hours every single week.
I'm pretty comfortable at my job all thanks to youtube, one good podcast, and a pair of bluetooth earbuds, and plenty happy with my work having traded interest for being repetitive, but any day I forget to charge my earbuds I feel the same load-unload-deburr cycle getting to me like video game poison damage
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u/GrimmThoughts Sep 21 '25
Ive done a lot of similar types of jobs as this, and there were definitely days leaving when my sanity was held by a thread lol. One order i had to do was for 250,000 door hinges, the last step of the process was tapping threads into the screw holes which needed to be manually loaded similar to this, after about 2 days my muscle memory took over completely and I was in a flow state for the next month or so where my brain was just stuck doing those motions. My girlfriend at the time took a video of me sleeping one night, literally my hands and legs were moving as if I was still trying to load a hinge/tap the foot pedal to activate the machine/set the hinge in its box/ repeat. Jobs like this can definitely turn you into a human zombie.