The narrator goes to work at the paint plant immediately. After he makes a mistake with his first boss, a white man, he is sent down to the basement to work with Lucius Brockway, a black man in charge of the room where the paint base is made. He and Brockway dislike each other from the start because the narrator doesn't like the way that the old man orders him around, and Brockway dislikes the narrator because he's educated.
Brockway suspects that the narrator is trying to take his job. On his lunch break, the narrator stumbles upon a union meeting in the locker room, and he's thrown out because the union members don't trust him. He's offended by their reaction, but he doesn't know anything about unions anyway. When Brockway asks why he was gone so long, the narrator explains what happens and the two get in a fist-fight because Brockway doesn't like unions and he thinks that the narrator is a member. The fight ends when the narrator knocks Brockway's false teeth out, and only a few minutes after their truce, the narrator is in some sort of explosion that knocks him out.
