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Boeing Factory Tour
Last weekend, I drove up to Everett, WA with a friend of my roomate’s who was in town. He’s a pilot and former shareholder of Boeing and wanted to take the factory tour they offer there for fifteen dollars. A bit high of a price, but I went along for the hell of it. The place itself was very weird. It felt like being in a foreign country. The air was thick with unfamiliar corporate propaganda extolling the virtues of their corporate vision and of their up-and-coming 787 “Dreamliner” with its slender flexible wings.
The people running the tour were thickly overly nice in that way that tour guides only can be. From the parking lot looking out at the factory and vast concrete fields, all you could see were small green hills constructed to hide the razor wire fences around the place. We took a bus from the “Future of Flight” center over to the gigantic factory building, which is apparently the largest building in the world by volume. It was painted in bright hues by the 3M corporation with an image of a giant German model stretching her arms out in flight against the sky, and the illustrious 787 (not yet in production) echoing her dreamy ascent into the technological sky.
3M, of course, was not the only other major corporation mentioned on the tour. It seems that most of their major initiatives interlock with several other corporations from around the globe, in such a way that there is probably no real disentangling of all these corporate interests one from another.
Our tour consisted of only five visitors, three Japanese, my friend and myself. We had to sit through two laughably “inspirational” videos in their media center before we were allowed out on the actual grouns. The first seemed designed to thrill you with the technocratic marvels of the corporate scientific utopian vision of which Boeing believes (or portrays) itself to be a part of. The second was a goofy time-lapse video of a 777 being assembled in 7 minutes. Neither had any words.
Out by the factory, the tour guide told us a tale of Bill Gates and his daughter recently visiting. The story seemed designed solely to inform us that Boeing is the leader employer in the state of Washington, and therefore an integral part of all our lives. She also explained to us how employees who worked for Boeing for 25 years were granted parking spaces right near the factory, while everyone else had to park up to a half hour’s walk away. Although, apparently, Boeing operates an enormous fleet of bicycles for employee use, and has an entire department devoted to their maintenance and repair.
“Wouldn’t that be a wild job?” She asked us. We agreed that it would.
In a rare moment of candor, my friend somehow managed to get our tour guide to admit how harrowing her training was in that area. She admitted that while she was training and no doubt memorizing facts, statistics and regulations, she would go home and “cry every night.” Looking back, it seems to be an odd admission on her part. But the whole place was so weird. It really did seem like another country, with it’s own culture and even religion. She mentioned the 1997 merger between Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, which got me thinking about the intricate details which must be dealt with in mergers of corporations of this size. Who decides what corporate culture and creepy proto-religion will win out? How do they motivate people to enter into a new system of indoctrination - one which makes them go home at night and cry?
A friend of mine was working at Boeing in 2001, when 9/11 occurred. He lost his job as airline spending was slashed, but he told me that employees at Boeing were granted some kind of “points” system for good behavior and the successful completion of various tasks. When enough points were accrued, they could redeem those points for prizes from some kind of locked prize closet - almost like the way kids win tickets at skee-ball and then get to trade them in for plastic mustaches and BB guns.
One of the particularly odd things about the tour was that at no time did our guide mention or remotely allude to the massive amount of money that Boeing receives from defense contracting, nor any of the aircraft or weapons systems they produce for that purpose. It almost seemed like they didn’t want to even acknowledge it in their public face. Not sure why - maybe because it goes against everything that their 787, their “Dreamliner” stands for…
- Rock Star Buses & Motor Homes
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- C n’ C ice cream factory
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October 2nd, 2006 at 2:22 pm
Having been a tour guide for a state historical society for 5 years, I have some insight into your tour experience.
It is not at all suprising to me that your guide went home and cried every night. The amount of information and context one is expected to have at the ready at that kind of job is equivalelent to a full semester’s worth of college lectures, without access to notes. On top of that, the guide must adhere to the bland, polyanna-ish spin that the employer wishes to put on everything. That “thickly overly nice” demeanor is part of cold-reading a group of strangers to determine their needs, interests, and education while at the same time preventing them from darting off and breaking things. I can only assume that things are worse in a corporate environment where irritating the wrong belligerant-know-it-all visitor could literally cost one their job.
On the other hand it sounds like a pretty creepy, extra-brainwashy tour.
-JJ
long-timer lurker
October 2nd, 2006 at 9:08 pm
I was waiting for you to say something about the defense contracting, which you only brought up at the end (fitting, since it was omitted entirely from the tour).
I’ll tell you something from the trenches of another well-known place where extra-brainy people work: the “coolest” projects are the ones that are most sinister in their potential (or actual) applications. You can almost be certain that the engineers that get stuck working on the 787’s are the “losers”, relatively speaking, with low pecking order among the pool of engineers that work there. If you’re an engineer with a high security clearance who is working on technology that is almost indistinguishable from magic: that’s how you get the proverbial chicks.
October 2nd, 2006 at 9:52 pm
my father worked at aldermaston in britain in the 60s and i assure you there were no public tours of that facility. the anti-war movement in the 70s made aldermaston thier favorite target as it was making and testing nukes primarily……..as well as the magic stuff which dad only alluded to in jest now and then. boeing is only in the passenger jet business as a public persona. thier real business is in the weapons trade.
October 2nd, 2006 at 10:25 pm
I’m sure you’re absolutely right. They sell passenger jets because it is a run-off from the technologies of their true business and because it can make them look useful in the eyes of the general public, beyond simple killing power
October 3rd, 2006 at 10:49 am
Thanks for reminding me why I’ve never gone in my 26 years here.
The Boeing affect - along with generous ammounts of other engineers around Puget Sound - is the reason, my lawyer told me, why this area gets such low settlements in injury cases, for “pain and suffering.”
How is an engineer supposed to accurately gauge nebulous and abstract conditions related to emotions and the psyche? Herein, methinks, lie an important factor in the inherent lameness Seattle has always struggled with - despite all the college credentials so often cited among our citzenry.
Next: how about an Experience Music Project review???
October 3rd, 2006 at 10:52 am
Ha Ha! I love all the ironic Boeing ads now popping up all over this page!
“Find great deals and save!” *snarf*
October 3rd, 2006 at 12:04 pm
Jason:
Why is it that something that relies on a hinterland to feed it is inherently unsustainable? Why does that make it parasitic if the form of cultivation, whatever it is, produces a surplus, and is sustainable? Why does something have to be self-sufficient in order for it to be sustainable? This does not make sense to me.
October 3rd, 2006 at 12:06 pm
Tim:
You believe in my ability to control myself. Guess what! I don’t know how to control myself! I need you to help me control myself by banning this IP address, and others with my name on it, off this site. I have autism. That is a mental disability that means that I do not have the impulse control to stop myself. Please ban me. I am begging you. You seem like a reasonable person–why don’t you just help me out here?
October 3rd, 2006 at 12:33 pm
the majority of aircraft manufacturers, boeing , bac, sud aviation, mcdonnell douglas, etc are in the armament business. so are siemens, phillips, panasonic and any other technlogy company. killing is a vast enterprise. one that we tend to want to seperate ourselves from for etical and moral reasons, but at the end of the day we are all carnivorous predators by nature and will fight with tooth and claw ( and it`s maclunanesque extensions.) when prompted sufficiently. there are very few of who will give up a fight. the buddhist monk who lit himself on fire as a way of protesting the vietnam war is just about the only example that i can think of. sitting still while burning to death is the exact opposite of how the majority of us would behave……….
so we fight to live…….