Today at Work

Friday, June 6, 2008 at 9:53pm
So we're all sitting around the lunch room at the final coffee break of the day and the assistant manager looked at his watch and said "Sheeee-it boys, it's 2:00 already, she's almost 'beer:30'." and then he sent the other new guy and I to close everything down for the day.
The sun came out and it was nice and the work was easy and quiet and I said to Jimmy (the other new guy), "What did you do before this?"
"I worked at Mitchell's for 21 years." he answered, and he had a cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth, and his voice sounded like maybe he had another half pack caught in his throat.
"Oh yeah," I said and then I said "When I was a food rep we got a tour of that plant, and they took us down to the kill floor."
"Were they still doin' beef then, or just pigs?" he asked with a cough.
"Just pigs." I said. "There was a guy there with probably the worst job that I'd ever seen in my life. I told myself that no matter what else I did in life, I'd be happy that at least I wasn't doing that."
"What's that? Killing the pigs?" Jimmy cleared his throat and hoarked a big green loogie out.
"Worse." I said. "There was a guy standing up on a platform, and the dead pigs would come by hanging by their feet from that overhead rail. His chair was set so that he was looking straight down at the pig's ass, and his job was to drill the assholes out of pigs all day long. One every 30 seconds or so."
Jimmy was nodding enthusiastically. "Yeah," he growled. "That was the best job in the plant, she's a class 13 job, best pay there is. Guys were lined up for that job."
"Really?" I said.
"Oh yeah!" Jimmy said. "Were they using a knife or the drill when you saw it?" he asked and I said the drill and he said "They used to have to use a little pocket knife and then they'd cut around there and pull 'em out by hand. That's why it paid so high, but when they brought in the drill they couldn't cut the wage back, so the guy was suddenly getting paid the same for doing half the work."
"Interesting..." I said.
Jimmy hoarked up another loogie and lit up another cigarette. "Best job there, man