Ryan: Welcome to 10-Minute Tech Comm. This is Ryan Weber at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and I am very excited to feature on the podcast a father-daughter research team.
Elena: Hi, I’m Dr. Elena Garcia, and I am the writing program administrator at the University of Detroit Mercy. I have been teaching predominantly first-year writing for the past 12 years, but I do have this outside interest in workplace writing and studying how that happens.
Lupe: My name is Lupe Garcia. I’m a retired factory worker. I worked in the same company for 47 years. It’s a union plant, so it’s slightly different what some people know. And I’m her father.
Ryan: Elena and Lupe recently published “Considering the Factory Floor” in the journal Technical Communication Quarterly, and their article takes a unique approach both in looking at factories as spaces of technical communication, especially among factory floor workers and between those workers and their supervisors, and looking at the tensions that often occur between them.
But the article is also interesting because it combines Elena and Lupe’s voices. Elena as a practiced academic, and Lupe as a seasoned but now retired veteran of the factory floor at a company that the publication refers to as Pillar. And I love seeing these two voices come together as a great way to expand the kinds of voices that are in technical communication and the kinds of spaces that we consider.
I was particularly interested in covering this article because this episode of 10-Minute Tech Comm is part of the 2024 The Big Rhetorical Podcast Carnival, which features over a dozen podcasts in rhetoric, technical communication, writing studies, and other disciplines coming together to cover similar topics. And the carnival theme for this year is Politics/Rhetorics: Navigating Crisis, Culture, and Civility. And this theme asks us to consider how our rhetoric can help us work through extremely difficult situations, whether they are international crises or local cultural differences.
In “Considering the Factory Floor,” Elana and Lupe discuss two different cultures: the more blue-collar, union-informed factory worker floor, which is loud and chaotic and involves a lot of hands-on technical experience, and the world of the supervisors, which is often more white-collar, office-based, more informed by academia.
These two cultures have a very difficult time communicating civilly. And so Elena and Lupe break down for us the reasons for these bad communication practices and some ways that we can try to transcend them. I appreciate Dr. Charles Woods inviting 10-Minute Tech Comm to again participate in The Big Rhetorical Podcast Carnival, and I encourage you to listen to all of the episodes, which will be released from October 28th through October 31st, 2024.
The Big Rhetorical Podcast Carnival is always an exciting event to bring podcasters together, and we’re glad to be a part of it. I hope you enjoy the episode.
BEGIN INTERVIEW
Ryan: Well, I love having the both of you here. I’m really excited for our conversation. And I really liked your article, too. It’s a lot different than a lot of the stuff that I see in a really great way. Can you tell me a little bit about kind of what inspired you to work on this article together?
Elena: So we have been working together for maybe 15 years at this point, slowly for a while, mostly going to conference presentations because of my dad working really long hours. And then in 2013, I had moved out to Utah from Michigan. So time and distance were a big factor. But when he retired and I moved back to Michigan, we were finally able to kind of sit down and actually go through an entire writing process together. And I wanted to challenge him a little bit, and I wanted to see what it would sound like if we combined our voices rather than having sort of an academic voice and then quotes from him as sort of asides. What does a collaborative writing voice sound like?
Ryan: Yeah, you can really see it in the article, too. I thought that was one of the things that really stood out in like a really exciting way. Yeah, Lupe, what brought you what brought your interest to this?
Lupe: OK, well, I was surprised when she showed interest. And so what inspired me to do it was her thinking I’m kind of smart, you know, or I know what I’m talking about, you know, and so that kind of boosted my morale a little bit. And then it kept growing from there. And pretty soon my head was big. And so I had to shave my head so my hair wouldn’t pop off, you know, so it was cool, you know, that but that’s what inspired me. I was really glad that she thought I had something to say, you know,
Ryan: Cool, cool. So you wrote this about communication issues that happened between union factory floor workers and supervisors at a company that you call Pillar. And can you tell me a little bit about kind of what it was about this communication situation or, you know, these communication problems that made you want to write an article about that?
Elena: Well, we had previously written a chapter in an edited collection on autoethnography and writing studies. And we did a sort of short, collaborative autoethnography study of just what’s going on surrounding writing at Pillar. And we noticed (me mostly noticing, he already knew about) the conflicts between the floor workers and the supervisors. And that when the call came out for the special issue of technical communication quarterly, on basically what do professional technical writing students need to know before they go into professional workplaces? What are those workplaces like? I’m like, I bet they’re not thinking about a factory floor as a professional workspace.
And so I just basically brought that idea to my dad and said, “What do you think about the factory floor as a professional workspace for engineering students and managers and whoever might be coming in there?”
Ryan: And so you’ve got these factory floor workers, union factory floor workers on one hand, you’ve got these supervisors on the other hand. Tell me a little about the relationship between the factory floor workers and the supervisors.
Lupe: Okay, well, it used to be good because the supervisors would, when I started, which was 47 years ago, the supervisors were selected from the employees that knew the whole thing and were interested in becoming supervisors. So they knew everything that’s going on, right? They knew what was what and all that. And plus, it wouldn’t take no BS. So it started changing and they decided that maybe college people would be better, that they could come with knowledge about psychology, all that stuff, how to talk.
Well, they come out sometimes and don’t know what the heck is going on. And it’s kind of frustrating because you’re up there trying to figure out what the machine, the same damn thing that he’s wondering about. But the communication part is that he should come out with the information, what the heck’s going on. Also, there’s the communication between them is that they stay in the office because they don’t want to come out because it’s hot. So they stay in there quite a bit and they need to travel a little bit, walk around a little bit, see what’s going on.
And basically, the communication that we have is strained. Nobody wants them coming around because all it does is take you from working and from troubleshooting because they’re sitting there in your face and all that. I knew a guy who could fart at will and he’d fart on them when they were there, getting real close to them.
But that is a lot of what’s happening. They come with no knowledge, no experience. And then they try to act like they know what’s going on when they’re out there. And when they see that you don’t really want them in out there, instead of learning, they go hide. And so it’s just a continuing thing until they do something or whatever that gets them promoted and gets them out of there. So basically, anybody who’s there just wants to be promoted. They’re not all in on the production.
And so that’s what we notice, superficial stuff. That’s the communication type piece, how we interact. We know that you just want a promotion. And we know you don’t know what the crap’s going on. You’re just talking like you do. So yeah, blah, blah, blah. That’s what’s going on right now.
Ryan: So you used to have a situation where it was internal promotions. They would understand the situation on the floor. They would know the people on the floor. And then you started bringing in people from the outside who don’t have factory experience, who don’t really understand the situation and aren’t making connections with the factory floor workers, aren’t really understanding the situation.
Lupe: Exactly. And there’s something that we wrote that comes to mind about what would help. Both of us came up with the idea that instead of having a new supervisor follow a mechanical engineer around and showing them stuff, then working for a week with another supervisor in the department they’re going to be in, why not take the time and just go through a quick thing with the mechanical engineer, send them down for a month to just walk the floor and work with the supervisor and get to know the employees and get to know what’s going on.
So after I retired, I was at a restaurant. A business unit manager that worked in my department came up to me. “Hey, how you doing? How’s retirement?” Things like that. And then she started talking about work. I didn’t bring it up. But she started talking about work and how things were getting bad, that production goals were dropping so that it looked like you were doing good. Oh, they’re in the green, they’re in the green. But no, you’re running 50%. Anyways, she came up and I asked her, I said, “Would you benefit from supervisors coming in and just going through the floor, let’s say one week in this area, another week in another part of the process, another week here, a week in the raw material area, and just watch how the employees are, get to know the employees, see what they do, maybe even get to see what kind of attitude they have?”
And she said, “You know what, I wish we could get six weeks out of it.” And then she said, she said this, she said, “I got a brand new supervisor. I said, you know what, this would be a good idea. It was, you know, I should send him around and say, get oriented with the stuff.
He’s back in an hour and said, ‘I got it.’” You know, that’s the mindset, you know, that’s going on there. But totally agreed with the thought that we had about that, that they need to come on the floor and get oriented on the floor. The mechanical engineer is going to show them paperwork. And who needs that?
Ryan: So when the supervisor said, “I got it” he meant like, “I understand, I don’t need to do this,” basically. Is that right?
Lupe: Yeah. He said, “Okay, I understand everything.” Yeah. In an hour of going up in there, you know, and he said, that’s what I got to work with. I said, well, “What can you do about that?” She goes, “Man, we can’t get people to stay here long enough to actually fire them.”
Elena: And coming in sort of from the outside, I had a chance, it was quite a few years ago, I was still doing my doctoral work, and I got a chance for a half day visit to the factory. And an hour to figure out how those spaces work, let alone where the operators are going to be at certain times, what the process actually looks like, because there’s machines and conveyor belts and forklifts and boxes and giant containers of like raw product. And it is loud and hot. And it feels like total chaos, 360. And you stay on this, like, yellow line, I think, so that you don’t die, basically.
And, you know, you got these machine operators who’ve been doing their job for some for over 40 years, who are kind of intimidating, honestly, you know, they’re yelling because it’s loud in there, and you can’t quite hear them. So there’s a lot of stuff, the physical space, and then kind of the factory floor environment, socially, kind of culturally, it’s really different than academia. And that difference is immediately noticeable.
And so the idea that a brand newly graduated mechanical engineering student can go into this workplace and after an hour be like, “Yeah, I got it.” No, absolutely not. It would take a long time to really get a handle on what that space is like, beyond just the initial shock of the whole thing.
Ryan: And one of the things I loved about your article is you have a lot of different insights on kind of what the supervisors could understand about, you know, better communication with the people on the factory floor, what other insights do you have, aside from kind of embedding yourself for a while, really understanding the situation, what other insights did you offer about kind of what the supervisors could do to sort of foster better communication?
Elena: One of the things we focused on was the kind of interpersonal communications between supervisors and floor workers. Yeah, learning what’s going on so that they’re not asking what sound like dumb questions while also trying to tell the workers what to do. You know, interns can ask dumb questions, but if you’re a supervisor, you’re supposed to know the answer to the questions, not asking them.
But that because Pillar is a union shop, there is a bit more power on the part of the factory floor workers to push back against supervisors and that they don’t have to automatically do whatever the supervisors say. So that pushback, I think, is a jolt because it’s like, I’m the supervisor, perhaps I’m supposed to be the one in charge here. But if you’re 23 and you’ve got someone who is my dad that you’re talking to, you’re not going to be in charge in that situation.
And so recognizing that the floor workers have power and that they have important knowledge and experience that the supervisors have to rely on in order to be able to do their job and that the way they’re communicating with those floor workers needs to show some respect for the expertise that they have and for the time that they put in. So knowing how to supervise a group of people in that kind of situation when they really don’t want the supervisor around. So they give them a hard time and they basically get them to sort of hide away in their office so they can just do their job how they want to without that oversight. And so, yeah, a lot more consideration that the floor workers have power and they have important essential knowledge. And to approach them in that way has to be considered.
Lupe: Yes, they do go and hide. And I would say that if they took the pushback, okay, they could handle it, maybe walk away and then come back and just observe. But don’t go and hide, you know, come back and stay observant and then see what’s actually going on before you go up and talk to somebody. But don’t give up. And almost 75% of them give up. They just go and hide and say, “Well, I don’t know, they do whatever the F they want,” you know.
And yes, in the factory floor, the F word is almost like out here when you say, “I know, I know.” Well, the F word in place of I know, you know, it’s like you hear it everywhere. You hear from men, women, you know. So if a guy comes in and there’s like, while talking to him, I say like 10, 20 F words, you know, and he might freaking freak out, but he should still come back and take it. And as somebody who’s been there so long and seeing supervisors come and go, I respect that more, you know. And then maybe I’ll start talking and sharing, you know, some knowledge so he knows what the hell’s going on. But if he goes and hides, I say crap to him, you know.
Ryan: Yeah. It sounds like there’s sort of this, you know, pushing away where they’re like, instead of, you know, putting more effort into understanding the floor that they’re just sort of like, nevermind, I don’t understand this world. Maybe I don’t need to talk to these people very much. I’m just going to go duck away and hide instead of really cultivating those relationships.
Lupe: Yeah. They do paperwork, you know. They go and do, okay, I’ll do the paperwork instead and say that, you know, okay, they didn’t meet this goal, but never go out there and wonder why didn’t you meet the goals, you know. And they talk to each other and say, hey, because I’ve heard of, you know, and they go, “Man, so and so don’t know what the hell they’re doing.” And I’m going, “Man, that guy’s been here 20 something years or 30 years. He knows what he’s doing.” It’s just, you know, he needs to figure out where and who to call for support.
But you can’t just say, “I need so and so.” If you don’t know what the heck’s going on, you have to troubleshoot. But you call a skilled trade guy and it ain’t his job, he’s all over your ass, you know. So, yeah, that is basically, you know, what they have to do. They have to stay out there. Get tough, you know. Don’t be sitting there, whip it out, you know, get tough and learn something.
And the pushback that we give most of the times of new supervisors is that they don’t know the job that you’re doing. Not that you’re running a machine, but what the job entails and what area you’re responsible for. So, they come out and they’ll say, “Hey, why don’t you go sweep that up over there?” or “Why don’t you come over here and help so and so?” And I blow up on that, you know, “Hey, wait a minute, you got people that are supposed to help you.” You know, I’m here. If you don’t know what a job description is, maybe you should go read about it when you’re sitting in your office, you know. So, I mean, that’s big beef for me, you know.
Elena: Yeah, I think part of it could be at times sort of a, even a class issue, class conflicts, where, you know, you’ve got factory workers, they’re physical laborers, they’re, whether economically or not, working class is how we tend to self-identify. And if someone is from a very different socioeconomic class with a very different environment at home, different friends who have been around, like I grew up around my dad and all his friends from work and the guys like him. And so, the yelling and the swearing isn’t anything to me. But if you’re not used to that, it can be pretty intense.
And the idea of just sticking up for yourself and how to do it so that you earn respect has to be a learned skill. And if you didn’t grow up learning it, then yeah, it’s really difficult. Because my brother was in a similar kind of situation. My older brother’s an electrical engineer. And he was working in a factory floor as a supervisor while he was an intern, even doing some of that work. But then when he graduated, he became a supervisor doing that exact kind of thing. But he would stick up for himself. And he would talk back to the people in ways that he knew would work for the floor workers, while still being able to go into the office and talk to the other engineers and talk to the managers. And so, being able to communicate with both audiences really served him well.
Ryan: He knew, from the jargon of our field, he knew the different rhetorical situations and how to respond to those because he understood the different groups.
Elena: Yeah, he was basically…
Ryan: And was able to kind of communicate between them.
Elena: Yeah, code switching at work, but a very particular kind.
Ryan: Great. And this is something that your article points out. We are not really preparing students for this at all. If they happen to have this kind of knowledge or background, that’s where they’re going to get it. But we’re not giving students sort of any preparation at all. What can we do to kind of help students navigate sort of these cultural and class and workplace differences as they move into their jobs?
Elena: So, we thought a lot about what could really be done in the classroom to help, what could be done in workplaces. Part of my thoughts are that a school can educate someone only to some extent, but each workplace is its own new situation and has its own people and issues and culture. And that giving space for people to learn what that culture mode of communication is and who everybody is before they’re being asked to do tons of work, I think it would be a really useful way to help build greater success. But I know they don’t want to do that because get them working right away. I’m paying them to work. I’m not paying them to be educated by us.
But with every place being different. If you want people to be successful in those workplaces, giving them space to learn about the workplaces, especially if there are a lot of very diverse audiences that they’re going to be communicating with, that, like if I could push in classrooms the importance of that, then those people get out into workplaces and eventually become the people making the decisions and realize how important it is to learn what those spaces are like. That was sort of what my initial thought would be is they have to be able to learn there specifically.
Ryan: And that’s true for any workplace, but it sounds like the challenges here are even sometimes broader than it can be in just, you know, tech writers can’t talk to engineers or whatever it is here. You’ve got kind of additional barriers.
Lupe: Yes. I know that the companies are money, right? I mean, they got to make a profit to pay me. So that’s good. They have internships where interns come in and especially mechanical engineers who end up being supervisors come in and they only work in the office, see what a mechanical engineer does. I would say, do that after you go and spend time on the floor, maybe spend one summer on the floor and then the next summer come back and walk with the engineer. You know, that would save the company a lot of money. And not only that, it would save them money when the guy came in and knew what the hell was going on.
Elena: I also think that when teaching technical communication, that I know that writing for different kinds of audiences is a part of that teaching already, but considering whether it’s role play situations or case studies or more exposure to the idea that they might end up in this kind of space.
It’s not all offices where, you know, engineers might work or other technical writers might work. And so building that recognition into the ways we already teach about audience and rhetorical situations and consider like, okay, what about this person over here that we might not have thought about? And so that might involve researching who are the people who work in these factories? What do they think? How do they talk? And that’s part of what I’m really thankful to be able to do is kind of bring my dad into our space and share this really different set of knowledge than most of us have experienced. Well, yeah, and you’re right.
Ryan: You know, our academic field is not very good at considering sort of working class conversations and communication as part of tech writing when it is. Like you say, you know, people like you, Lupe, have all this knowledge that is, you know, technical expertise. And, you know, we kind of, we miss that a lot in the way that we talk about tech writing.
Elena: And that when thinking about writing for workers like machine operators, recognizing that there is a great deal of knowledge, but it isn’t understood in the same way an engineer might understand that knowledge. The way an operator understands how a machine works is totally different. And so when it involves like writing process manuals, that’s a big part of what we studied.
It’s different to write a process manual for an operators to use than it is for, you know, engineers to consider. And so like not thinking about dumbing down the writing, because that’s insulting. But how do you write it in a way that these operators will understand it, but that isn’t talking down to them in any kind of way? That’s something else that takes practice, and takes being aware that that’s a potential audience.
Ryan: This has been super insightful. Any closing thoughts or anything else you want to mention?
Lupe: I’ll do my closing thought. For new guys, college guys, they think you need to say “Good job,” say “Good job.” Do not pat a union worker on the back, cause everyone will think he’s a kiss ass. Got it?
Ryan: That’s good advice.
Lupe: Go ahead dear.
Elena: Yeah, it’s a whole thing to learn, a whole culture to learn. My thing would be that we need more voices that are not academic voices that show up in our research and are truly brought on as collaborative partners. There’s no way I could have done this work if I didn’t have an invested co-researcher, who’s willing to put in over a dozen years working and talking about the same thing. And so, for folks who study writing and communication, and have people we know who are experts in their field, and a field that doesn’t show up in academia, like sharing those experiences and helping those folks bring their knowledge into an academic environment. Because I don’t just bring his knowledge here, I try to invite my dad in to partner with me so that people listening to us at presentations or reading our stuff hear him, not just him talking through me.
Ryan: Well I really enjoyed talking to the both of you. Thank you so much for talking to me.
Elena: We did too!
Lupe: Thank you, Ryan.