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Emarg Notsoh's
Flying Workplace. Edition 1. Life as a food production operative
I had never before been in the sort of workplace that still used punch cards to 'clock in'.
It was so novel I felt like Fred Flintstone on more than one level. I was now a 'food production
operative' a fancy title for a role that in my own case might otherwise have been labelled 'food
juggling operative'. To explain what I did is made difficult in that I was never put in the same
place thrice in a row. First I stacked cookies into piles of six, then I cleaned crates, then I
boxed rolls, then more cookie stacking, and finally home.
The week progressed similarly; first
roll production, then nan production. then general cleaning, then potato scones, and finally the
weekend The pattern that emerged was thus: as soon as I was capable of the complex food juggling
tricks they expected of me, and also keep up with the machinery then I would be moved elsewhere.
The major exception was cleaning plastic trays (which catch all the waste food and are disgusting)
where I visited for an entire week. Something of a record. I pretended to enjoy it, which did the
trick and got me moved but it was a close call.
Every time I was moved I would then have to start
from scratch learning once again the 'knack' of whatever new job they had found for me. A similar
rule applied at the opposite end of the scale, where some of the staff were left in the same job
for upwards of sixteen years. Left to stupify until they were so set in their ways that
when finally moved to a slightly different job, they left the company because the thought of doing
something different was too much to bear.
At other levels the place was equally
perplexing. Everyone I spoke to agreed they hated the work. The wise would act on instinct and walk
out on the first day. If you stayed it was a slippery slope towards retirement; leaving forty
or fifty years later still adamant about hating the work. I asked many who left where they
were going to, and discovered they were merely transferring to another prison.
Did I say Prison? I mean another factory.
The only people in the
place to have regular fun were the forklift tuck drivers who would wing around the place like
Roman charioteers, hurling abuse instead of spears. Piercing glances instead of arrows shot at you
if you were in their way.
Fun for the rest was trying to be somewhere else! The patient would wait
to get their time in dreaming of a never-never land. The impatient would smoke copious amounts of
ganja until they were there too!
What really summed up the plight of the factory worker for me,
was when someone returning after two years away walked in and exclaimed 'God it's like Groundhog Day!'.
On enquiry he said that everyone was exactly where they had been standing when he left two years ago.
Two years from now I will go back and see if this is still the case. On closing I would like to advise
anyone thinking of having a career in factory work have a backup plan for the day R2D2 makes you
redundant.
Emarg Notsoh reporting for www.gerardkeegan.co.uk
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