mredofcourse

Thanks, and...

I noticed that you don’t mention in your intro that you’re a Democrat. On your campaign page you talk about how this is your campaign and not a campaign for the Democratic Party.

Can you list some of the issues you’re not aligned with on the Democratic Platform?

Probably every boeing plane you've ever been on was built by alcoholics and hardcore drug addicts.

I had the same job at the Long Beach plant pre-Boeing. I worked there a short time and this was one of the reasons why I left. It was really a damn depressing environment. I did work the graveyard shift, which was probably worse. I remember my supervisor often looking like he was just totally coked out of his mind and staring out onto the floor where we were working.

Working there was a total spirit busting experience. I remember being all excited to make planes and then being put in my place for working too hard and getting things done.

I rotated jobs within the department all the time, usually just at the point where I was really efficient with a job I enjoyed or had come to terms with how much it sucked.

One of my favorites was when we got new wings in from Canada and they had to be lifted off the transport rigs and into the rigs where they would be assembled together (our department).

I had a job for a while where I would: Sign in Get dressed and prepped. Crawl to the end of the wing (on the inside). Sleep. Put a wrench on some bolts while someone else was on the other side. Sleep. Crawl back out. Lunch. And repeat when the wing was in the new position.

I remember having my Walkman with me and a lot of the music I used to listen to at the time. It actually was a lot of fun and kind of cool crawling through the wings, I just hated having to spend the whole night doing what could've been done in about an hour or so.

I didn't fly for a few years after working there. It really did freak me out, and when I fly today sometimes I freak out about it as well. It's not just the people working there and as the IAmA mentions, the ways in which mistakes and errors were covered up, but just dealing with the huge and heavy components and seeing them all in that context... It's like being freaked out about seeing the insides of a person.

Years later, I did get a pilot's license and flew a Cessna 172. But I still get irrationally nervous flying on commercial jets.

Wow, this is really bringing back memories.

I got the job because although being tall, I was very thin and being young, very flexible.

You know what's funny sad scary?

I used to look at those wings you sent us and think about how professional looking they were. They were like works of art before we got to them. No primer cover-ups, nobody's lunch tucked into any corner with cigarettes and porno mags, no sealant filling in obvious gaps between parts, no random tools scattered about or dried up pools of trichloroethylene.

I remember placing those fans too, along with those blowers... The ones that looked like megaphones with the mouthpiece pointed down. A high pressure air hose would connect to it and blow air like crazy up to the the top of the building. It was fun to let it suck up torn up newspapers and let the confetti fly all over.

Good times.