Building Trust: Senior boys gain older employees’ trust, mature at cabinetry construction company, Shield

Here come the summer boys.

It was CEO Lori Gorman’s first thought when six seniors wearing Lululemon shorts and backward hats walked into Shield Casework, a cabinetry manufacturer, on their first day of work. Stepping onto the sawdust-covered floor of the warehouse with a hint of a new tan and expecting a fun summer job, Drew Trotter, Max Holzbeirlein, Tyler Moore, Hoch Saylor, Will McClelland and Michael Scott were the only teenage boys out of 100 or so employees.

“When they walked in, you just felt like you were headed to the pool or something,” Gorman said. “It was like, ‘OK, are you guys ready for some hard work?’”

Whirring drills, blasting fans and floating dust from freshly cut wood would become their everyday lives at Shield. Other employees were skeptical of the boys — after all, they were a group of teenagers who got in when Drew’s dad — the CEO of Shield’s sister company — asked if he and his friends wanted a job.

The boys’ parents encouraged them to trade in their occasional shifts scrubbing cars at Waterway or selling pizza at Indian Hills Country Club to get a “real job” with hard, manual labor. Sanding wood, screwing nails — something worthwhile to spend their summer on.

The rest of the summer, the boys worked weekdays from 9 to 4 at the warehouse assembling cabinetry, eventually fabricating lockers for famous NFL and college sports teams. So far, they’ve built lockers for Montana State, Utah State, Wayne State and Vanderbilt. Working on lockers for teams that play on TV wasn’t just something the boys could brag about to their friends — it meant their managers trusted them to take on the big jobs.

But they didn’t get their hands on the lockers right away. Their coworkers are in their 20s and 30s, most with a few years’ experience at Shield. It took them time to warm up to the inexperienced group of teenagers. Managers were supportive, but a few coworkers plugged in headphones and avoided them altogether.

“Some of them were blatantly mean to us,” Max said. “At first they were giving us side work. Cleaning up trash. Breaking down boxes. I don’t think they had that trust in us — they thought that we would mess stuff up.”

It didn’t help that on their first week, the boys got stuck behind a passing train for 25 minutes on their way back from lunch — not a solid excuse to their foreman. Unconvinced, he told them to get back to work. The boys saw the other workers roll their eyes and mumble remarks.

“Nobody believed us,” Hoch said. “The people that were working in the shop were like, ‘Do they think they own the place?’ They didn’t say anything, but we could tell that they were annoyed with us.”

But over time, trust built up between the boys and their older coworkers. They proved that they could handle the tough work, according to Hoch. After a few shifts of sweeping floors and taking out trash, the managers gave them their first construction task: applying epoxy to plywood and screwing boards for 350 small shelters for the Los Angeles County homeless.

It wasn’t easy. This wasn’t washing cars at Waterway.

“The first time I started putting stuff together, they were like, ‘Go get a three-quarters-inch flathead screw’ and I was like, ‘What are you talking about? I don’t know what that is,’” Max said.

Max and the boys soon learned what the screw was, and they switched out five-inch-inseam Lulus for ragged old shorts and Shield T-shirts. In the middle of the summer, they worked on a shipment deadline for Utah State football — their first shift on a deadline. That morning, the shift manager told them to load 30 lockers — each weighing 700-900 pounds — onto two-by-four wooden pallets to be shipped out by 6:00 p.m. The only way to do that was by lifting them.

“Everyone was busting their tail to get this shipment out,” Max said. ”It was an 8 hour day that felt like 30 minutes. It felt like we were a team.”

Lifting the lockers tested Hoch’s work ethic. One more, he told himself. Keep going. He says surviving the shift was the turning point — they were ready for heavier tasks.

Long days spent applying polymer and inserting screws became bearable for the boys when they got to know their coworkers. Their project supervisor, Jared, helped them with assembling the lockers and would ask about their lives and weekend plans. Callie, who operated the forklift, would talk to Drew about cars and show them pictures of the sports bike she was modifying.

Andre, the line sander, would drop by in the break room to talk about lunch or show them Instagram memes. He called them “the Dream Team.” On the last day of work of the summer, he came to say goodbye and shook each of their hands.

“It was great working with you guys,” he said.

At the end of the shift that day, Gorman stopped the boys as they were leaving the warehouse.

“Hold on, we have something for you,” she said, leading them to the main office.

Streamers, cheesecakes with candles and 30 or so coworkers waited for them. After giving a thank-you speech for their help and promising the boys they were welcome back any time, they showed them the new concepts for their upcoming projects, including the ones for the Denver Broncos, which they’ll work on over winter break.

Their names are still written on the whiteboards in the engineering department — where their managers would write the boys’ daily tasks during the summer. Gorman said they couldn’t find it in themselves to erase the “summer boys’” names. They’re still active in the payroll system, and the door’s always open for them to come back to work.

The boys look forward to seeing their coworkers again and meeting new ones over winter break and the summer, when they’ll start the Carolina Panthers lockers. After they graduate, most of them plan to work there over breaks during college, and Drew is interested in a project managing career.

Whether or not they want to continue working in the construction field, they all appreciate the work ethic learned and friends made at Shield. Even if it meant driving home with a mix of sweat and epoxy stains on their clothes at the end of every shift.

“I feel like everyone should experience [a hard labor job],” Hoch said. “It gives you a lot of respect for the people that go out and bust their butts at a nine to five, doing that hard stuff. I’ve grown working as a team [member] in a workplace like that.”