Identity Emerging

Winter 1980

I had worked in the ice cream plant for about 2 years. I was an ice cream machine operator and a member of the union. I liked the job. In the winter of 1980 I was asked if I wanted to become a shift supervisor. A management role. It was an easy yes. As a part time university student I was studying sociology and was interested in organizational stuff. A management role seemed to offer a good insight into organizations. And for some reason I still don’t really understand, I figured I would have some kind of management role at some point.

So now I would be a supervisor of the people I worked with for the last couple of years.

My first shift as a supervisor was a day shift; 7:00am – 3:30pm. It was a cold winter morning in London, Ontario. Still dark as I set out to pick up a fellow worker I was driving to work that morning for some reason. Her job in the plant was to pack ice cream and she had done that for quite some time.

She got into my car and after the normal pleasantries she said, ‘So now you’re a supervisor’. It was a statement of fact and I responded with a simple ‘Yep’!

44 years later her next statement is still with me and still makes me wonder.

‘Well there goes another friend.’

There is a lot in that statement; history, experience, assumptions, realities, definitions; lots more. I think I responded with something like, ‘Well I don’t think that has to happen’ but I might be creating history with that memory. Pretty sure the rest of the drive to work was as quiet as the early, dark and cold morning.

It seemed my identity had changed overnight, and while at the time that seemed sadly inaccurate to me, after 44 years of that statement sticking with me, I’m pretty sure my identity did change overnight.

I think why that statement has stuck with me for so long is that it was the very first challenge I experienced to how we see identities. At work. Overall.

I’m still grappling with that challenge.