Between
the
Times

A morning like any other. He got up early, a little before five, and had drunk his malt coffee. The soft May wind met him on the bike to work, made him want to swim in the cool lake water after the hot afternoon, when he would meet his wife and children in the Seebadi, like every beautiful summer evening. As he drove past the station, the dark orange-colored illuminated letters of the station buffet went out. In front of it was the car of the village doctor, who treated himself to a morning pint before he drove home after the night shift and unlocked the office. The doctor was one of the few people in town who could drive and pay for such a vehicle - always the latest model, like this Chevrolet Master, which he had specially ordered in America and had it delivered by ship.

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The locker room was poorly lit, but the man who had been a foreman in the factory for many years would have found his locker blind and in the dark. The blue work clothes smelled of cold sweat and had become stiff from the motor oil mixture with dust and dirt. He shuddered as he stepped into his overalls and tied the nailed lace-up boots. Everything as always and yet something irritated him. A lonely lightbulb flickered in the long corridor to the hall, and now, as if one had something to do with the other, he noticed that it was quiet. Very quiet. The pounding of the machines, the roar of the engines, the clinking and scraping on the workbenches, the hissing of the welding torches, the clicking of the ratchets and blades of the tools as they fell on the floor - none of this could be heard, and he was amazed because it was a morning like any other, a working day in May as it had been for years, nothing unusual, nothing that would have been different, today or in the days before.

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Suddenly a door banged far away at the other end of the hall, there was one and only now did the foreman notice that he was alone, that he had not seen or heard any of his colleagues. The space in front of the factory had been deserted, the bike rack empty except for a forgotten bike that had been rusting there for months. Did he miss something? Had he not received an announcement about the stoppage of work, the closure of the plant, the day off that had been decided out of sequence? May 1st, Labor Day was over, the time clock had marked 5:48 a.m. and the date: May 15th. The man paused and stopped when there was a strange hissing sound, then a deep sound like a gong. It came from the factory floor, it had to be the other person who had let the door slam gently, yet clearly audibly, earlier.

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The foreman, a short, stocky man, ran his hands over the many hairs on his head, then put his callused hand, in the folds and cracks of which the car grease had carved like a fine grid pattern, on the handle of the heavy metal door Halle and opened the door on the spur of the moment. All machines gone. The workbenches, the swivel stools, the trolleys, the welding equipment, the wooden boxes with the tools and the materials. There were no more screws, no nails, instead long tables with screens, with a flat keyboard in front of them, as he knew it from the typists' typewriters.

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An open ground floor, whitewashed, rhythmized by a few supports, lit by a window front that extends over the entire long side, green behind, hazel bushes, garden idyll. Tall metal frames, paper lamp balloons, stool-sized letters like the ones he knew from neon letters in the station buffet, seemingly stacked at random, the antlers of a ten-fender on one of the pillars, a brown circular area on the floor the diameter of a children's carousel and an orange line that goes from door to door shows the way out. To where the changing room was, the locker, the time clock, the exit, his bike, the life from which he had plunged into this quiet, bright world in which he recognized nothing.

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Plans on the walls, milky-transparent boxes with metal parts, foils, strange materials that he had never seen before. Small colorful machines stood around and from somewhere strange music rang out, a spherical mood, bright as the sunlight that fell through the large window panes on the long side of the room - they were still the same after all. Outside, a white-blue train rushed by almost noiselessly. The foreman wiped his head again, pushed his fur back and forth, stood at a loss when he saw a man standing in the opposite corner at the end of the room, with his back to him fiddling with a small device. The strange hissing sounded again, accompanied by a deep hum, then the whole room smelled of coffee. Real freshly brewed coffee beans. The man sniffed the small cup, lifted it to his lips and drank. He was slim and had his long hair tied in a braid at the nape of his neck, as had been the fashion of the previous century. The foreman carefully took a step back and the other must have heard that, because now he turned around and smiled. He didn't seem to be surprised at his unusual visit, maybe he had even expected him?

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“Come and see what happened to the factory floor. Where machines used to mill metals, today people sketch, sand foam, check handling with models, develop solutions and chase brainstorming sessions. "

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"Brain ..." replied the worker in a questioning voice, then, almost reverently, "Ristretto".

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"Would you like one?" Asked the long-haired man, and when the other remained silent, he turned the machine again without further ado, it buzzed and hissed, and a little later there was a steaming coffee, blacker than night, in a cup the size of which was half an eggshell in front of the worker. He carefully raised it to his lips and drank. When he carefully put it down again, the man with the slightly gray ponytail began to explain his ideas to him. The foreman, who at the moment was more interested in where his work colleagues and the contents of his workshop, yes, his entire life, had come, only listened with half an ear, as many of the terms the other used were unknown to him, yes, it It was inconceivable to him that in such a quiet room anything could be created for which money was paid, with which one could earn a living, which had any value at all.

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“What is really important about design is invisible. You understand the real ideas, what makes a really good product? " the blonde asked kindly.

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«No,» what else could he say? For him and his colleagues, what the other called design had never existed. There were sample books, drafts, blueprints, matrices and plans according to which a workpiece was forged, filed, sanded and processed until the client liked it, until he was satisfied and paid.

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The worker looked into his cup and turned it a little so that the last drops of coffee could collect. Then he tipped it again and emptied it.

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“Design is an interplay, hunting and collecting and researching, and those involved - engineers, marketing and management - work together towards a goal that we industrial designers try to understand and implement as precisely as possible, we combine the various wishes and views under a design idea. That is the goal. If this process succeeds, the result is products and services that are not only good, but excellent. Because good is not good enough for me. " The man had talked himself on fire and the worker realized how much the other burned for his work. That reminded him of how he had started in the factory, how he had worked and toiled till he dropped, how in just a few years he had risen from unskilled worker to skilled worker, to foreman, and - but wait, what had the other one had said?

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"Earlier?" the factory worker was a single question mark now.

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«Yes, we are product designers and have been here since 1997. In a changing team, we design and develop coffee machines, cleaning equipment, household appliances, sensors, laboratory equipment, products made from recycled ski boot shells, kitchen mixers, machine controls, user interfaces ... »

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"Machine controls," interrupted the other, forgetting his suspicion that he had slipped into another time, that he was no longer in the first half of the twentieth century, but somewhere in the future. "Can I see them?"

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The blonde leads him to one of the long standing workstations at one of the screens and begins to explain the 3D graphics. The two start talking shop, drink coffee after coffee, the foreman forgets work, colleagues, time clock, wife and child. The two lose themselves in time and space. It is early evening and a pink light hangs over the lake when the foreman gets on his bike with a slight dizziness. He pedaled hard. He is on his way to the seaside resort, to his wife and children. As he passes the station buffet, he sees that the doctor's car is still there or is back there again, but the illuminated letters have been dismantled.

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Later he smiles and steps into the cool lake water. An evening in May, not quite like any other.

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