Fall River Reflection

Over the course of my visits to Fall River I think that my capacity to observe my environment and the factories stayed consistent. I naturally pay attention to minute factors and functions of my surroundings which I think is why I tended to focus on the machines and the smaller aspects of the factory. I also tend to be more reserved in social situations which lends myself to not being as willing to approach people, particularly because of the language barriers we faced at both factories and that such a great number of the employees did not wish to participate in the project. I think that over the course of my visits I was able to conceptualize all of the small parts of the factories and understand how they work in unison but I was not able …show more content…
I think this is partly because they were working and there was work to be done. I was told that for Anchor Uniform, they are receiving an overwhelming amount of orders which could have lead to the diligent work ethic and their need to really focus on their work. To deal with this, we tried to be friendly and pleasant and not too invasive or forceful. One man, Paul approached us and he was very willing to share what he does at Anchor Uniform and introduce us to Tara, who is kind of like a Paul-In-Training. Another factor that made it difficult was the language barrier between my group and majority of the workers in both factories. At both, few people spoke English and unfortunately no one in group was familiar with Portuguese. At US Bedding, Adam was very helpful in showing us around the factory and explaining all of the aspects. He was open to talking and shared a lot about his past struggles with college, drugs, and alcohol. He had a very strong story of perseverance and will-power to overcome his alcohol and drug addictions. So although he was rather informative and forthcoming with information, we were unable to interact with the other workers who were actually making the