Lam: What do you do and how did you get into it?

Whitley: I've been doing this since 1988, which is roughly 28 years. I got in the business early; no rhyme or reason about it. At that point, I needed a job. I made a few mistakes here and there along the way, but I started at the bottom and worked my way up to where I am now—which is a supervisor. There's not really much that I can't do in a cutting department; I've kind of done it all.

When I was hired, I unloaded trucks, moved cloth around, and organized the warehouse as needed. As time went by [my managers felt] like, “he's better than that, so let's move him up to a spreader.” I was spreading (laying cloth in piles properly to prepare for cutting) at the time, and spent eight years spreading. I was a really good at that, so my supervisor moved me up to cutting because he wanted to utilize my skills a little bit more. I was a terrible cutter to begin with, but, in my opinion, became very good.

I was promoted to an assistant supervisor, and once my supervisor retired I was able to take his place and became supervisor. Once American Giant came in and took over, we made changes and we trimmed fat where it needed to be trimmed, which was something that was overdue. We downsized, so not only am I the supervisor, I also do the work. It’s definitely hands-on every single day I’m here. We push hard and work on from start to finish.

Lam: What does your job of cutting involve?

Whitley: We cut fabric with a 10-inch Eastman knife [machine]. You might look at someone that cuts and think, "Oh, wow, that looks pretty easy. I can do that." I always feel like if somebody's job looks easy to me, that just means they're an expert at what they do.

I think a lot of people get the misconception that cutting is just pushing a knife through a line of material, but there’s more to it than that. The actual cutting part the knife does, but if you don’t think about your free hand you're just making a mess of your material. I use my free hand to hold things in place and everything and keep it right there close to the blade. We have these metal gloves that we wear for protection. The more you cut, the more tricks you learn, and the better you get. You get to cut different types of material, not just T-shirts. We cut Max-Dri fabric; we cut the meshes. Each different material is a different challenge in itself.

Lam: Did you see yourself doing this kind of work?

Whitley: Honestly, I didn't have any direction whatsoever. I got out of school and I needed to get a job. Back in 1985, you just got a job in our area, and went work. At 19 years old, you’re just having fun. This just happened to be something that I got into. I didn't realize it at the time, but time flies by so fast.

When I finally got my head on my shoulders and got to thinking whether this is what I really want to do, it turned out that I had progressed so far in the company that it was dumb for me to try to look for anything else. I'm almost 48 years old, and I've been doing this for 28 years. You get comfortable, you know what you're doing. At 48 years old it's hard to change jobs because most people look at you and think, “The body's probably used up or injured, and it can't do this or that.”