As soon as the Spring Festival is over, a cousin from my hometown will go to Guangdong to work.
When I first heard the news, I was surprised that my cousin was only 17 years old this year and had not finished his second year of high school.
But his father explained to me that my cousin did not have good grades, did not have the heart to study, and indulged in playing "glory of the king" every day, and it was better to make a living early.
Looking at my cousin's excitement and longing for the appearance of free playing games after working, I still can't help but remind him:
The assembly line is more brutal than you think.
01
18-year-old assembly line
The documentary "18-year-old assembly line" focuses on low-educated workers.
Yang Peng, who dropped out of junior high school and entered an electronics factory, was assigned to a position that no one wanted to do.
On the first day, I came home from work, so tired that I couldn't even keep my rice bowl stable.
At work, Yang Peng would often be cut by sharp tools and his fingers would be cut, and the blood would flow.
After he simply stopped the bleeding, he rushed back to the assembly line.
It's not that you love your work, but the assembly line doesn't allow you to rest.
Each post has a fixed division of labor, and once you stop, the entire line is affected.
What's more, every product produced was tied to the wage, and he didn't dare to stop for the numbers on the payroll.
Here, overtime is the default "unspoken rule", and working 12 hours a day has become a routine operation.
Managers must force overtime at the first order, and few people will resist.
After a busy job, it's not delicious food that soothes the hungry.
Meals served in the canteen are often cabbage and peppers without oil and water.
The meal was a fixed half hour and the time was very rushed.
Yang Yujin works as a welder, because the solder temperature is high, and often solder joints will jump to the hand.
This girl has been here for half a year, and her hands are scarred.
Approaching the New Year, she counted the days she would go home and muttered, "I want to quit my job and go home for the New Year, it's not fun here."
"What about next year?"
She fell into deep thought and did not speak for a long time.
These children come to work in factories, half to make money and half to have fun.
Some children are no more than fourteen or fifteen years old, and the purpose of making money is to play: go to KTV and then open a house.
I didn't have the money to work for two months, and then I had money to play.
Long-term plans? What are you planning for the future?
Never thought about it.
02
Les Misérables on the Assembly Line
Foxconn poet Xu Lizhi once wrote about life on the assembly line:
Hands like machines tirelessly, grabbing, grabbing, grabbing.
Until the hands bloom with bustling cocoons, bleeding wounds,
I never found myself standing as an old sculpture.
I grind away the edges and corners, I wear away the language, I refuse absenteeism, I refuse sick leave,
Next to the assembly line I stood like iron, and my hands were like the wind.
How many nights, I just stood and fell asleep like that. ”
When you stand on the assembly line, you become the assembly line itself, no longer having freedom and individuality.
Going to the toilet and fetching water requires a report to the team leader, and permission to leave the workstation for a few minutes, and even the toilet is stipulated at 10 minutes.
Here, it is also difficult to take time off. Because there is a fixed workload every day, if there is not enough manpower, the team leader will not approve the leave.
Unfree and oppressed, the workers passed on a slip of the tongue: "Look at the factory from a distance like heaven, and only when you look closely do you know that it is a cell."
High-intensity and repetitive and boring work is not only a torture of the flesh, but also a tempering of the spirit.
Remember the video of a factory in Kunshan that was brushing the screen on the Internet at that time to "rudely issue certificates"?
When the factory staff issued work permits to new employees, they casually threw the work permits on the ground, and the new employees could only bend down to pick them up.
There was a strict hierarchy in the factory, the purpose of which was to temper the young people.
Whether the criticism of the superior is justified or not, as long as the employee is silent, it is "backed".
During a supervisor inspection, he casually said, "There can be no defective products here."
Ding Yan, a female worker, subconsciously replied, "There are no defective products here."
The supervisor immediately narrowed his eyes and angrily rebuked, "You resist."
Ding Yan tried to explain, just opened his mouth, the supervisor again scolded , "You still dare to interject."
The group leader also rushed over to make her apologize.
Half an hour later, the group leader told her that she had been reported to be lazy and dozing off, and now she had to roll up the covers and leave.
There used to be a saying that "the severed hands and fingers of migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta can circle the earth."
Although there are exaggerations, the dangers of working in the factory are always there.
19-year-old Xiaopeng was involved in the machine with his right hand at work, and when the accident occurred, the factory did not remove the roller in order to protect the machine, and only after more than 1 hour did he open the machine to "spit out" his hand.
He asked the factory for compensation, but the factory pushed him to go home first and recover.
After being injured, many people get the supervisor's complaint that "you broke my machine" and hundreds of yuan in compensation.
Low-level migrant workers have long had low voice, low self-esteem, and no security, which is the miserable world of their real lives.
03
Where is the way out for the assembly line workers?
When Yang Jie, an 18-year-old welder, mentioned the future, his eyes were blank: "What future do I have?"
The future is a beautiful word, but in them, the word seems very distant.
The entry threshold of the assembly line is low, and the recruitment requirements are simple: it is a living person.
It also means that the position can give you limited room for improvement.
Most jobs are called "fool jobs" by workers: the machinery and equipment are all tuned, and you can't learn anything.
Most of the factories are located in the suburbs, and the assembly line works 12 hours a day, regardless of the day shift or night shift, it is difficult to see the sun.
This gives the workers a sense of isolation and limits their already barren imagination.
At the same time, the mechanical high-speed work swallows people's thinking power, so that they can't think of where the future is.
As difficult as assembly line work, there is also idleness after work.
Living space is extremely compressed by work, entertainment activities are also very poor, Internet cafes play games, play billiards, has become one of their few choices.
To this end, they continue to fill their own emptiness with consumption, and use short and superficial entertainment to kill time and escape troubles.
In this way, youth is wasted little by little, and they become numb and tired.
As the migrant poet Zheng Xiaoqiong described:
"Part-time work is a word of vicissitudes... Fishing around in the ocean, what you catch is a few thin bills and fading youth. "
What's even worse is that the purse is also empty.
Quan Guangbin in the documentary "Part-time Work", 23 years old, graduated from junior high school and has not saved a penny for many years.
There is also a question that cannot be avoided.
Artificial intelligence continues to develop, and front-line workers with low technical content are gradually replaced by machines.
In 2017, Foxconn's factory laid out 40,000 robots, reducing the number of employees in the Kunshan factory by 60,000 at one time.
The World Economic Forum has estimated that by 2025, AI will eliminate 85 million simple jobs and create 97 million new high-tech jobs.
That is to say, artificial intelligence may steal your rice bowl at the same time, and then hand a rice bowl that you may not be able to afford.
Maybe I won't have the opportunity to serve dishes at the restaurant in the future.
This day will come, and when the times abandon you, they will not even say hello.
04
Is it better to study than to work?
Even so, countless children who drop out of school every year resolutely decide to go to the assembly line and take the baton from their parents.
The reason given by many people is that reading is not interesting, and it is better to work.
In the documentary "Part-time Work", a teenager stumbled on two sentences because of a quarrel with his parents, and he gambled not to read.
At that time, he was only in the first year of junior high school, and he felt that school restricted his freedom, and if he went to work, he could smoke and drink as much as he wanted.
His parents, bound by traditional ideas and considered it useless to read, agreed to their son's decision.
But after really entering the assembly line, they invariably have a yearning for reading.
Someone said:
"I used to think that reading was boring, but I didn't expect that part-time work would be more boring."
Others say:
"If there is a chance to do it again, I will choose to read."
When I was young, I felt that reading was too hard, refused to pay, and chose to quit school.
But after experiencing the beatings of life, I found that it is easy to escape and lie flat, and the rest of life is not good.
Until now, many people still hold the traditional idea that reading is useless.
"Keeping pace with the times" will say: I can't find a good job when I go to college, and now my academic qualifications have depreciated.
From an objective point of view, now that graduate students are full of streets, college diplomas are indeed no longer the golden signboard.
But what they ignore is that over time, more and more people with good academic qualifications will increase, and low academic qualifications will be even less competitive.
Academic qualifications may not be used several times in a lifetime, but each time will or will change your life.
Only after experiencing it first-hand will you understand that learning can give you choice and give you a more dignified life.
Some people may say that going to work in factories is one of the few ways for young people in rural areas.
Some of them are to share the financial burden for their families; some of them are poor and lack a way to rise.
But I am writing this to tell the children who have chosen.
The ropes of destiny are in your own hands.
Reading is hard, but the hardships of life are even harder to eat.
Life is first bitter and then sweet, first difficult and then easy, it is easier to spend.
If you have the option to read, please don't give it up.