Rivethead:Tales From the Assembly Line

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Summary: true-to-life, hilarious, right on !!!
Review: as a 23-year general motors employee, i am here to testify that this guy hits the bullseye - his grasp of the hum-drum assembly line experience is right on, and his recounting of how we get through the day using humor is so accurate its scary. i laughed and cried and laughed and cried.

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Summary: An accurate description of line work
Review: As a former line worker at a Japanese assembly plant, I can honestly say that this is a very accurate description of life on the line. Although the working conditions at the plant I worked at were not as bad as at GM, the mentality of the workers and how they deal with management is the same in a non unionized Japanese Plant. In fact even though it is thought that there is more cooperation between management and worker at Japanese Plants, I found that there was still a deep division between the two. The description of the pranks are hilarious. In summary, if anyone thinks that workers in Japanese plants are any better off than the North American plants, think again. An auto plant is an auto plant.

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Summary: Best book I've read yet
Review: Being from a manufacturing town, I can tell you that the stories and reflections in this book ring true. It is a great book. I actually lost the book because it was passed on to so many other friends. The book ends a little weird, but these types of personal reflections on life sometimes do.

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Summary: A reluctant champion of the shoprat
Review: Ben Hamper is best known as "the guy shooting free throws" in Michael Moore's "Roger and Me". But he was also a longtime columnist under the title "Rivethead". Years of working under the hypocritical policies of GM drive him to write his scathing this book about how to pass the time and abuse numerous substances while building Suburbans for upper-middle class soccer moms. If anyone thinks that working for GM, or any industrial powerhouse, is a plum job with high pay, good hours, and loads of fun, then read this book and learn something about the way corporations value human capital.

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Summary: A highly entertaining, insightful look at factory life.
Review: Ben Hamper shaped this darkly humorous account of his years working on a General Motors truck assembly line with considerable skill. While his engaging prose firmly establishes the mind-numbing, repetitive nature of factory work, he also reveals how he and those around him on the line maintained some level of humanity by using humor and other diversions in their never-ending battle with the clock. Hamper's take on GM's outmoded management techniques and bumbling efforts to maintain market share in the face of global competition during the 1980s (for example, assigning an employee to dress in a cat costume and patrol the factory as a mascot for quality) is especially amusing.

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Summary: why didn't you go into brewing?
Review: ben hamper would have made a great brewery worker , with his cynicism and wrath he could have been the next Hunter .s Thompson,,,and we would all have loved it...RivetHead is and was my best read book of 98... I can only hope for another book of it's caliber..and to all the Stroh Family members and brewery workers in the USA,i strongly advise this book as a case study in the American Blue Collar Dream, as our legacy.

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Summary: "Rivethead" describes life on the GM assembly line.
Review: Ben Hamper's outrageous description of life on the car and truck assembly line had me laughing out loud at the antics of both workers and bosses at the GM factory in Flint, Michigan. Hamper uses words like rivets and blasts them at the nearest human target; no one escapes his savage attack, not even himself. Hamper is a "flake" and he knows it, but he is an observant flake who is just as adept at turning a phrase as he is finding ways to avoid work. He seeks to please no one, not even himself, and he succeeds beyond even his expectations. Read at your own risk is how Hamper himself might caution us about "Rivethead."

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Summary: The Rivethead Hammers it home!
Review: Ben Hamper, aka The Rivethead, is the one guy with the courage to tell the truth about the American assembly line. Hamper worked in the GM Truck and Bus assembly plant for over 10 years, and along the way met more characters and drank more beer than most do in a lifetime. He also wrote one of the funniest and most revealing books about the American workplace ever published. Spend an afternoon on the rivet line with Ben Hamper, and find out what "Quality" really means.

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Summary: Great book
Review: Great book. Must read for anyone wo works in an auto factory.

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Summary: Ben Hamper, Where Art Thou?
Review: I bought this book on the recommendation of one of my graduate school professors, thinking I would suffer through it. Contrary to my preconceptions that it would be a dull account of factory life, I simply could not put the book down once I started reading it. Hamper's insight into the Greaseball Mecca (GM) assembly plant culture was both entertaining and informative. I started and finished the book in the time span of one weekend and plan to read it again soon. Ben apparently hasn't written another book yet...