Casker Monkey

The Casker Company is a family business that started from scratch three generations ago and evolved into one of the top two wholesalers of watch parts in the country. I have worked at Casker a few times over the years and certainly did not expect to be back there after my last stint about five years ago, when the term "Casker monkey" came to be. As it turns out, if you quit your well-paying, white-collar sales job in San Francisco to go backpacking in South America for a few months, you may end up making sacrifices like working at Casker - C'est La Vie.

As a Casker monkey, one of my many tasks is to package the watch parts, which come in bulk from Asia and must be broken down. And so, it is possible that for an entire afternoon, or maybe an entire working day, I will be counting out spring bars, putting them in packs of twelve, making up gasket assortments or checking the inventory of the most recent shipment of watch movements. In addition to packaging, I answer the phones and fill orders for watch parts and am forced to try to answer questions about an Omega balance complete, a Hamilton stem, or any other kind of watch part that probably means as much to me as it does to you. This kind of blue-collar work, the packaging aspect in particular, was why my siblings, cousins, and I used to liken ourselves to child laborers or monkeys and why we were on the brink of insanity for hours on end.

What's more interesting than the nature of the work, however, is the environment at Casker and the people - the monkeys if you will - who work there. Imagine going from studying and backpacking abroad and trying to associate yourself primarily with open-minded, worldly people back to the simpleness of the Midwest, which seems to come to a head at the Casker Company. Talk about reverse culture shock! There is a distaste for most things foreign at Casker that has been almost as eye-opening as the perverse culture of San Francisco and the poverty of large parts of South America. A small-town co-worker of mine tells me about her trip to France, saying that she'll probably never leave the country again because she was so put off by the fact that they did not speak English. Another co-worker tells me how nervous she is to attend a soccer game in Chicago that will - gasp! - be largely attended by Spanish-speaking people (the opponent being Honduras), and time and time again, I overhear other co-workers say, "I hate foreigners" when they get off the phone with someone who doesn't place an order in perfect English.

It's not the opposition to, or even fear of, things that are foreign that's most shocking about the simple-mindedness of some of the Casker monkeys; it's the simple living and lack of social intelligence that's really striking. I have pretty well given up on asking co-workers on Monday mornings about what they did over the weekend, knowing that most answers will revolve around yard-work of some kind. And there's one co-worker in particular (we'll call her Shirley) with whom I never attempt to strike up a conversation about anything whatsoever. She, however, will come talk to me about anything and everything without any solicitation. Such "conversations" are comprised mostly of Shirley talking and laughing without much response from me, and she rambles about topics such as: 4H Club and the goats that she's been raising and is anxious to show off at the fair; the start of her step-daughter's period (that the girl started it at the grandmother's house and that the grandmother nor the mom were willing to go spend three or four dollars on a box of pads); and friends that Shirley has on Facebook, including a girl she knew from high school who's mother constantly told her how stupid she was. One of the most memorable Shirley quotes, in the midst of a discussion about another co-worker's daughter's breast implants, was, "Didn't they ever tell her more than a mouthful's a waste?" and she walked away bursting with laughter that showcased her bucked teeth.

There are times at Casker when you wish you could play the "I don't speak your language" card so you're not forced to "partake" in conversations about a step-daughter's period, but then again, maybe it's best to grin and bear it and to remember that it takes all kinds of people to make the world go round.