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by - December 10, 2008 - 11:57 AM
by Kelsey Timmerman, author of Where Am I Wearing?
In my global quest to answer the question “Where Am I Wearing?” I picked my favorite items out of my wardrobe and traced them back to where they were assembled. I went to Bangladesh for my boxers, Honduras for my favorite T-shirt, and China for my flip-flops.
I also tracked my All-American blue jeans back to a factory in Cambodia. This is what I discovered as I disappeared into endless rooms of workers and sewing machines:
The walls are lined with motorized grinding stones on workbenches. I watch as a young woman picks a pair of jeans from the denim pyramid at her side and starts grinding the cuffs and pockets. She stops to judge the level of fraying and, happy with her job, adds them to a smaller denim pyramid. In a way, this woman is the Queen of Cool. She takes a regular pair of jeans and bestows upon them just the right amount of fraying. She applies the imperfections just the way we like them. She is not a machine. She has a name.
At another station, a man sandblasts jeans with a sand gun. It’s noisy and sand piles up at his feet. He wears glasses and something that looks like a blacksmith’s apron. The legs of the jeans flop in the sandstorm. These are sandwashed jeans, and this is the sandwashing guy. He is not a machine either.
We enter another vast Blue Jean Land. Kan Chen Chin, the factory’s manager, smiles and taps his watch. We’ve been walking through the factory for an hour, and he probably needs to get back to his business.
“My boss says it is time,” his assistant says.
“Time to go?” I ask.
Before she can answer a voice comes over the speaker, and a thousand workers step from their stations. Club music pounds a rhythm in the background over cracking speakers. The voice directs calisthenics. The workers stretch their arms, necks, and legs before shaking them out. The voice stops after a few minutes, and the workers get back to making our pants.
If there were a blue jean machine, it probably wouldn’t need a break.
Tuesday’s Entry: Adventures of an Undercover Underwear Buyer
Go out and buy Kelsey’s fascinating new book today at Amazon.com. (Seriously, it’s great!) And if you want to see what Kelsey’s been up to today, check out his website whereamiwearing.com.
Comments (6)
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Man, we never got club music to go with our calisthenics when I worked at a battery factory as a summer job. In fact, we didn’t even have calisthenics, they could probably care less if we all developed carpal tunnel and crooked backs.
The small town I’m from has a large number of factories, so during the summers a lot of the area students take jobs to earn a little extra money. It’s something I hope to never have to do again. You get completely filthy within 5 minutes of walking through the door, spend your day tired and sore, doing the exact same thing all day long, and get a grand total of 20 minutes for breaks, lunch included – and this was considered one of the better factories to work for!
posted by Sam on 12-10-2008 at 1:57 pm
I’m really enjoying these-thanks for posting!!
posted by Kate on 12-10-2008 at 1:59 pm
@ Sam
Darn, you just outed my next two books: 1. “Where are my batteries from” 2. “Calisthenics: overrated or underutilized in today’s workforce.”
I was a child laborer myself in a factory building wood trusses. It was the family business and apparently parents can work their own kids as much as they want.
I come from a small town in Ohio. It used to have a lot of factory jobs, but not anymore. How about the small town you came from?
@ Kate
I’m glad. It’s been great working with the Mental_Floss folks.
posted by Kelsey on 12-10-2008 at 3:20 pm
Kelsey, do you have any idea how many jeans a factory like the one you describe produces per day? What does the average worker make? Do they have any benefits outside of a regular paycheck?
posted by Clark on 12-11-2008 at 10:09 am
I love how Kelsey writes about the woman who frays pockets on jeans and is all “She is not a machine. She has a name” but doesn’t even mention her name. Must not have been that important, huh?
posted by melissa on 12-11-2008 at 2:13 pm
@ Clark
I don’t know right off hand how many jeans the factory produced per day. Probably in my notes somewhere. Workers in Cambodia earn around $50 per month and they don’t exactly have health, dental, vision insurance or a 401K. Really, they are lucky if the don’t have to pay a bribe to get the job in the first place.
@ Melissa
Yep, I don’t know this woman’s name and for good reason. When you are getting a tour of a garment factory it’s best not to show too much interest in the workers, but more interest in the garments. If I would have stopped this woman to ask her her name, I have no doubt that my tour would have come to an abrupt end, and I never would have had the opportunity to see the Sandman in action. While in the factory I asked questions about blue jeans and observed the workers. I did all of my interacting with the workers away from the factories. There I spent quite a bit of time with Nari, Ai, Phoan, Chendu, and the list of names goes on. Not to mention, interacting with the workers in or around the factory may have gotten the workers in trouble.
I hope you’ll forgive me for not knowing her name, but, trust me, she has one.
posted by Kelsey on 12-12-2008 at 11:33 pm