Kohler, WI - Part Deuce

Posted by John

After the best shower of my life this morning I met the rest of the group in the lobby where we were shuttled off to the Kohler Design Center to begin our tour. The tour guides are all retired factory workers who couldn’t possibly be happier about spending their retirement days giving tours of the facility that has provided them the community, family, and living that they absolutely love. Our guide was Carl, who looked, acted, and talked like your grandfather if your grandfather was born and raised in Wisconsin and started every statement with, “There again…” Carl worked for 28 years in the cast iron foundry as an enameler, which really didn’t mean much to me until we saw the actual enameling process. The enamel is the coating that gets baked onto the bathtubs to give them their color, durability and shine. It goes on as a powder then gets baked in a 1700 degree furnace for several minutes. Most of the enameling process is automated these days except for some of the high-end custom products that are still done by hand. Holy shit, after seeing how a cast iron bath tub gets enameled by hand gave me a new found respect for Carl. Basically a red hot cast iron tub comes out of the furnace where a guy in a fire-proof space suit shakes a bunch of enamel powder like you would powder the top of a funnel cake or some shit then shoves it back into a boiling hot furnace to bake that stuff on. We were standing 50’ away from the furnace and I was sweating my ass off and Carl did that shit for 28 years. For Christ’s sake, I can barely do a desk job without wanting to kill someone. If the phone rings I feel like stabbing someone in the face with a colored pencil, yet there was Carl in a space suit shaking powder onto molten hot cast iron for 28 years and loving every second of it.

Most of the processes in the plant are all automated now as you’d expect, a fact that Carl didn’t hide his disdain for. Every time we passed by a process he’d say something like, “There again you have a robot to grind down the edges of the tub. There again I guess a robot doesn’t need to take any time off but there again you won’t find a robot that will buy toilet now will you?” and then we’d move on.

One of the cool things was seeing the way Carl interacted with all the guys still working on the plant floor. They all had respect and adoration for him because they knew he had already put his time in. One guy who was polishing a bunch of brass fittings yelled out to Carl as we walked by, “Hey Carl! I want your job when I retire!” Carl smiled and waved but as we walked away he said under his breath, “That guy will never retire,” as if to really say, “That sonofabitch has the easiest job in this entire goddamn plant. Strap on the enameler suit and go stand in front of a furnace for a day and then tell me about retirement!”

We went through the portion of the factory where they make all the vitreous China (porcelain) toilets and sinks and whatnot, which was just like one big pottery factory. They literally mold all of the fixtures out of clay, set them up to dry, then send them through a furnace for 24 hours to harden. It’s pretty amazing that the technology to make a shitter hasn’t really changed since it began. The thing about that part of the factory was, they had to keep it at 80 degrees year round so the clay could dry properly. Understandably working in 80 degree temperatures could get a bit stuffy so that’s why most of the workers just didn’t wear a shirt. That was a little fact that Carl failed to fill us in on before we walked into the place, so you can imagine our surprise to find a bunch of fat, hairy, sweaty, shirtless union workers milling about playing with pottery. It was like wandering in on craft hour at a nudist colony or some shit.

All in all the tour was pretty awesome and if Carl hadn’t been such an honest, respectable guy I probably would have gone hog wild talking about upper deckers and number twos and whatnot but as it was I just enjoyed walking by his side and hearing what he had to say. Overall I gave the tour 3 turds and Carl earned one himself. Thanks for being such a good turd Carl!

We even got to see a brand new prototype that Kohler was actually hoping to keep under wraps. I'll respect them by not revealing what it was but I will say this just to pique your interest - inverted shits.

Perhaps my favorite part of the whole day had nothing to do with Kohler or the plant tour at all. One of the engineers, the one who was sucking down the most booze at dinner last night; the one who was most vocal and most obnoxious about his distaste for Kohler products; the one who had the class to get a to-go cup from the restaurant for his gin and tonic as we were leaving; that guy was so hung over this morning that he almost slept through the plant tour, barely completed the tour once it started, and had to excuse himself from lunch and the afternoon presentations to spend the rest of the day in the shitter puking his guts out. The Kohler rep actually had to retrieve him from the bathroom when it was time for us to finally leave. When he came out looking all pale and sweaty like he was auditioning for a role in the new Twilight film I wanted to ask, "So how did that Kohler toilet in there flush with your entire digestive track in it, douchbeag?"

I don't necessarily like to delight in other people's suffering but there again, in this case I did. 

So after two days in Kohler Wisconsin I have to give the overall experience 8 turds, which is pretty good. They missed a few opportunities here and there but there again, the plant tour really sealed the deal. No, I didn’t piss in a freshly made toilet; no, I didn’t press ham on every toilet seat that rolled off the assembly line; no, I just sat back and enjoyed myself pretty thoroughly.

Two things from the first day I forgot to mention:

-I’ve long known myself to be a conversational black hole. That is to say I am virtually incapable of starting a conversation, maintaining a conversation, and if you’re in the middle of a good conversation I will suck the life right out of it. This is largely owed to my own personal social awkwardness and the fact that I hate small talk. So, it was just my luck that I happened to sit down at the end of the table at dinner on Tuesday night with a Chinese dude, a Bolivian, a Peruvian, and a Cuban. I did my merry best to make small talk but when it was obvious it wasn’t going well those asshole just switched to Spanish and had they’re own little conversation for about 15 minutes around me. At one point, having no opportunity to participate in that conversation, I turned to the Chinese dude and asked him how his food was. “It’s shit!” is all he said and turned back to his steak. Well said, man. Well said. So I sat in silence.

Part way through dinner though the Peruvian and Bolivian started talking World soccer (in English) so I saw my opportunity to jump in and actually have a conversation. I started rattling off all these stats and facts I knew about all the teams and watched as the guys just sank into their seats thinking I was some sort of insane Yankee soccer fanatic. I asked them what team they were rooting for and one dude said Argentina and I was already a bit spiteful for the whole Spanish thing and I had a few glasses of wine so I just couldn’t help myself but to jump all over his shit. “Really? Argentina? You don’t think Maradona is just going to capsize that team with his ridiculous psychotic cocaine fueled behavior? I mean, the guy has promised to run through the streets of Buenos Aires naked if they win the Cup. Do you honestly want to see that?” Dude just cowered in his seat like a scared little child and was like, “I just really like Lionel Messi.”

And that’s why I’m a conversational black hole.

-My mom will likely cry herself to sleep tonight after reading this little nugget about how I completely wasted my youth, but after watching the toilet flushing demonstration with the little hand-made miso-paste turds I was reminded of my high school days. My senior year I had the second of three lunch periods with 4 of my best buddies. How this happened I have no idea but if the school had realized the administrative error that led to this they certainly would have corrected it immediately, splitting us up into different lunch periods or preventing us from taking lunch at all. In addition to running an underground Hostess Ho-Ho and Nutty Bar ring (which is another story for another day) every single day at the end of lunch we would take a chocolate brownie from one dude’s lunch, chocolate milk from another, combine them in a ziplock bag, squish it all together, and create a nice little brownie turd that we would then place somewhere in the school. I’m not making this up. 18 years-old. Seniors in high school. Brownie turd. Everyday. The only deviation from day to day was where we chose to leave it throughout the school. One day on the main staircase in the middle of the school; the next on the floor in the middle of French class; one day in the drinking fountain; the next in the mouth of the vending machine. It was like Where’s Waldo, if Waldo was a little man-made brownie turd.

If you’re doubting the hilarity of this in any way, go get a brownie, some chocolate milk, squish it together in a ziplock bag and tell me it doesn’t look exactly like a goddamn turd. Then, rather than let that little gem go to waste, set it on the keyboard in the cubicle next to you and try not to soil yourself while waiting for that dude to return to his desk.

There again I guarantee it’ll be worth every second of it, even the occasional detention for getting caught with a fake turd on your person.