Ramp Rat, D.D.S.

Jan. 10, 2012
Brian A. Hamann might offer "gentle family dentistry" these days, but he's a veteran of ground support.

With gas way past three dollars a gallon, my long-time Chicago dentist just didn't seem worth the 180-mile trip to my hometown to get my teeth scraped and polished every six months. So last month, I walked into the nearby office of Brian A. Hamann, D.D.S., to make an appointment.

He asked me what I did for a living and when he found out he proudly identified himself as a former "ramp rat" for United Airlines. Last Friday, armed with a tape recorder, I interviewed him from the chair. Considering my state, I couldn't ask him too many questions, but I did manage to mumble and spit out a few. In his own words, here's how he related his experience at ORD:

"This was in the late-1980s until the early-1990s. I worked out on the ramp for United Airlines for about six years and helped put myself through school.

"I actually started out in the flight kitchen, which I have to say was a less than glorious job in the third shift. We worked from 10 at night until 6 in the morning. After a few months of that work, I graduated to the ramp and spent the rest of my time with United handling baggage and delivering "hot" mail. I did all the jobs of baggage handling, driving the tractors, operating the belt loaders and getting in the pits and taking care of the baggage in every way. Of course, there's also "hot" baggage, too.

"The ramp was a great experience. It was certainly hard work, but there was a great variety to it. I know it sounds like a cliché, but at the age I was then, it did introduce me to a hard job that needed to get done working with many other people to fit into one workflow.

"I guess that's the best thing about the job – simply learning to get everything done that needed to get done, working with others and knowing you had to do it within a certain amount of time.

"Whatever I made working on the ramp, I put toward my undergrad schooling and my parents paid the difference. Both my folks worked for United for many years at the executive office in Elk Grove Village so it obviously helped me get a foot in the door.

"It was full-time work during the summer and they'd call me back for the month that I had off during Christmas break so it worked out to be four months of paychecks total.

"Dental school, on the other hand, was all on me."