The Idler

Processing Plant

Back in the glory days of University my dad got me and my brother summer jobs at the semi-conductor plant where he worked. We were gophers, carrying boxes of semi-conductor wafers between the various processing plants in the buildings as they underwent all the different processes. My brother elected to take the night shifts, which meant that he got paid more and had very little to do (production was slower at night) and could sleep on the trolley we pushed the boxes around on when it was particularly quirt.

I however took days. 12 hour shifts carrying boxes weighing 2kg each around in supermarket shopping baskets (2 boxes per basket) or occasionally, blissfully, pushing them around on a flat bed trolley. Doesn’t sound too bad? Well, if you’ve ever worked in a semi-conductor plant you’ll know that the successful production of wafers relies entirely on cleanliness. Wafers are extremely fragile and when blank only cost around �20 each but when finsished can cost as much as �1,000 each. A speck of dust will render a wafer completely useless.
This meant that we all had to wear ‘clean suits’, a large plastic baby grow with nylon and rubber boots, rubber surgical gloves, a nylon elasticated hood and a surgical mask and large plastic goggles. Pushing your mask below your nose to breathe in the labs was a disciplinary offence. It was hot, it was August and there was no air conditioning, as that too carries dust. We had three breaks in 12 hours totalling one and a quarter hours. At the end of each day I would arrive home at 8pm with only enough time and energy to bathe (as I smelt of sweaty potatoes), eat and crawl into bed ready to be up at 5.30am for work at 7am. For weeks after I finished working there my hair was lank, my nails soft and my skin sallow.

We gophers used to try and relieve the pressure by skiving to the ‘dressing’ room or standing under the warm air jets in the ‘decontamination’ chamber but, if we did, work would simply build up on our trolleys back at our posts and we would have to shift boxes faster when we got back.

After a while my supervisor realised I wasn’t as much of a gimp as the other gophers and began training me on the lab machines. Soon I could run 70% of the lab equipment on my own (my dad was proud!). However this was to lead to the nightmare of me accidentally ruining a whole box of wafers (24 wafers worth about �800 each) when I put them through the wrong process because someone had stuck the wrong process label on the wrong box.

Other problems I experienced were not being able to recognise any of my co-workers when they were wearing their clean suits in the lab (you can only see peoples eyes) leading to some embarressing occasions of mistaken identity; the other women avoiding me because my Dad was ‘one of them’ .i.e. an engineer working in middle management; bemused co-workers of my dad coming up to me saying ‘but we thought you were 3 years old’ based on the photos on my dad’s desk and the way he talks about me.

The company was also later to become an enemy of my family when they almost poisoned my dad with a chemical that burns you from the inside out and then made him redundant, though he was their longest ever worker of 22 years and stripped him of all of his share options,through a legal loophole.

However the saddest thing was probably the realisation that the women who worked as machine operators without engineering qualifications for the same money as me were some of the brightest, most talented people I have ever met, but who did not have the courage or will-power to fulfill their potential.

Justine Marie