Death by turkey steak - chapter four

Monday, 17^th May

Afternoon

I saw it as some form of achievement to have seen out my first full week at T.F.L. without throwing myself under a large vehicle like a lorry or a train or Butch Sue. The second week began with the more social able start of two in the afternoon, but it took a Monday morning of being wide eyed and aware of the impending doom to figure out that the early shift was going to be preferable. Nobody wants to be told of their execution; it is better for the soul if your head is wapped off from behind, unknowingly. Sulking around hoping that two o’clock in the afternoon would never come is not a good look. Wide awake and terrified? Na, I’ll take asleep on your feet, only coming round with the first break. And so I longed for the early shift when I resembled a slumbering, frozen lobster lowered into a bubbling pot.

By the time I’d start work at two in afternoon, the lad trio of law-unto-himself Luke, Big Dick Ben and ‘Captain America’ would only have two hours left of their day. Bastards. It was all the more apparent that without them I’d have to up my quest for new companions.

Britney did it again and again and again all day, but not without the help of Madge’s ‘Beautiful Stranger’ and Lou Vega’s host of wanton women. Sluts the lot of them. Probably sipping champagne pool side bolstered from the royalties of endless factory play while I stank of meat and hoped the end was nigh.

I packed all day with faceless white topped workers who wouldn’t dare be seen looking an orange hat in the eye. A time ravaged woman, BitchDeVill, saw fit to make a non-existent point of repacking one of my so-called attempts as it whizzed past her on the conveyor belt. She looked at me as if I’d wriggled out of a week old chicken carcass. She tutted to a colleague, Bitchzilla, who shook her head in abhorrent disgust.

No ladies, you are right, tut away. I am scum.

I had spent all morning loose in civilisation hoping for time to stand still, now here I was fielding the savage looks of people who could align meat better than me, hoping for the end of time. Tick...... tock........ tick....... tock......tick.......... Hey! It stopped! The clock stopped! For a few seconds, I’m sure, it stopped! Butch Sue! Call the Prime Minister! It is an injustice.......!

Shania popped in for three minutes and twenty five seconds to proclaim that she felt like a transvestite. Again. Bitch. The white windowless walls crept closer and closer. Those not rooted to the spot wandered hither and thither looking at clipboards whose non-existent information told them nothing about everything and nothing. Butch Sue appeared, then vanished and then reappeared to tick boxes and scour the factory floor for a problem she could doubtlessly ignore. In, out, in, out, tick, tock, tick box, tock, tick, tock, in, out, suck, exhale, suck, exhale, thigh, breast, leg, tick, box, tock, orange, white, fade to black.

Three pounds and ninety four pence an hour? Sign me up for life.

Wet

Afternoon’s at T.F.L. were less populated than the mornings and I couldn’t care less why, it just meant that there were fewer people to call me a ‘twat’ in the canteen. At least Olwen and Co. were in residence. Emily smiled at me as I sat down. I think she was, as it is in known in the trade, taking a shine to me.

“What are you having?” she asked looking at my plate of sausage and chips.

“Smoked haddock and green beans.”

“You’re funny,” she smiled. Our high level flirtation was curtailed when Olwen beckoned over a man with a face like the inside of a poacher’s satchel.

“Hiya Karl love. Alright?”

“Breathin’. Just.”

“This is Tom.”

“You on sweet an’ sour Ol?” he asked, refusing to acknowledge my existence.

“We all are,” Jeanine said brightly.

“I’m on Thai chicken. Can ‘ardly get the machine to pack this afternoon. I’d ‘ave taken a metal bar to it. In another life.”

Silence. A scowling woman cradling a Ribena bee-lined for our table and sat opposite me, two seats down from Karl with Olwen wedged between.

“’Ow are ya, Joy, love?”

“Alive. An’ not just from the waist up.” Karl winced and took it into his tea.

“Nice weekend?”

“Not really Ol. ‘Ad a fuckin’ pain in my ‘ead for fourty eight hours.” Karl squashed an escapee pea on the table with a fist.

“My sister gets migraines. Lavender tea is the only thing that smoothes it. Some days she just has to lie in a darkened room for hours,” Jeanine said.

“It’ll take more than that, love,” Joy bit, stabbing the foil straw cover of the carton, “I’ve ‘ad it constant for twenty two years.”

“That’s a long time Joy. You should see a doctor.”

“A lawyer an’ a piece of paper would take it away.” Olwen looked forlornly for a Jaffa cake, but she’d vacuumed them all. She looked to Karl, but he stared straight ahead. “Problem with the pain in my ‘ead is that it makes a dull, repetitive noise, a bit like a castrated bear fumblin’ for ‘is forgotten balls.” Karl slowly closed his eyes. Olwen looked desperate to depart, but she was hemmed in.

“I’ve ‘ad pain in my groin for the last twenty two years an’ all,” Karl reported.

“Maybe you should see a doctor too?”Jeanine continued. Olwen was trying in vain to lasso her eye.

“That wouldn’t help. It’s external. Got a pair of claws in my wallet.” Joy sucked the carton dry as Karl continued, “I’ll tell you what I did at the weekend. I went to see a marriage councillor.” Jeanine caught the lasso and said nothing.

“Any good, Karl?” Joy asked, indenting her fingernails into the cardboard.

“A complete waste of fuckin’ money as it goes, Joy.” Silence. “Although there was one moment of revelation.” Silence. “The councillor wouldn’t ‘ave it that we ‘ad nothing in common an’ asked us to think long an’ ‘ard to find somethin’,” Joy had reduced the carton to a mere ball, squeezing forth little drops of purple to join the pea green squish, “’I got one’ I said eventually. ‘Neither of us like givin’ blow jobs.’” Olwen was gazing so far into her lap that her forehead was almost on the table. Jeanine swallowed a laugh, but it got stuck and struggled back up so she morphed it into a cough. Joy, with eyebrows raised and eyes closed, slowly got to her feet and leant over Olwen towards Karl.

“Go fuck yourself, you twat.”

Headless pecking order

Christina Aguilera was warbling something about wanting a genie in a bottle or that she had had sex with a genie in a bottle or that she’d built a ship in a bottle and a genie had sat on it: or something. I prayed that Butch Sue would intercept and whisk me away to another task, but she was snowed under with continuously flicking back and forth the same piece of paper on her clipboard and so I rejoined the turkey steak line. BitchDeVill and her sidekick Bitchzilla shook heads in tandem, “Yes ladies, I’m back and hopefully more retarded than ever before.” Bitchzilla intercepted my first tray of turkey and the tone was set. Are these the women who write into points of view to object that a presenter’s smile was too intrusive or offensive? Or pen a letter to the Sun entitled ‘It’s the youth what is ruining the country’? Do they pace their front room ruing all those trays that were a tenth of a fraction off a perfect formation and spend weekends prowling supermarket aisles buying up rejects that slipped the net? Very easily so.

The character assassination continued as one in four of my trays were intercepted and corrected when, like a Knight in oddly assembled clothing, William turned up as drunk as a grouse. He absorbed some of the silent bullying as he arranged steaks in a care free fashion then dumped them onto the belt, steadying himself after each one by clinging to the stainless steel shelving. The Bitch sisters were inconsolable to the point where, after a monosyllabic conflab, Bitchzilla huffed away to tell tales to Butch Sue. She nodded sagely and was about to intervene when a clipboard must have called her in the office, because she disappeared and was not seen again for an hour.

Eat and be eaten

Will’s, myself and our orange hatted kind were the lowest on the T.F.L. hierarchy food chain. Savage Ann and the Bitch sisters had done everything in their power to suggest that a new worker was in fact lower than the poultry. After this the pecking order was somewhat blurred. Everyone wore a white hat, red if employed in hygiene, but workers were set aside by varying levels of ‘skill’. Lee, it would seem, as a meat man was higher up than Savage Ann and co. because he bore more responsibility. If he was tardy with a delivery, then it affected those packing below him, but if the machine broke down, then Lee, like the workers was instantly hamstrung. Therefore the ‘machine managers’ had many below them by the collective goolies. And they knew it.

They were the chest out, strutting, spanner tinkers who firmly believed they were the heartbeat of the factory. Despite all machines being relatively fool proof to operate and maintain they still postured as if they were bomb disposal experts placing themselves between life and death. When a product backed up and armfuls of plastic bound inside its guts, they’d spring into action, tighten a few screws, tweek a bunch of bolts or just clout the stainless flanks and hope for the best. Though like any blagger worth their salt they toiled in such a way as to suggest to the on looking packers that their job required an engineering degree from Havard and not, as the case maybe, a 75% attendance record from the technical college, Hereford.

It was difficult to ascertain if the ‘trolley boys’ were above or below the machine managers. These guys were the wheels of the operation. They transported the goods to the departure bay. Although their skill was effectively mastering the art of walking, they too treated their position with a high calibre. They may not have been rooted to the growling machines, but they were in charge of large hydraulic trolleys decorated with a dashboard of multi coloured buttons, although they only ever pressed two: up and down. They impressed that the trolleys were ‘not toys’ and in fact, as Stefan told me, far more serious than that. He caught me looking, tethered up his steed and strode over.

“Impressive bit of kit, innit?”

“I suppose, but it’s affectively a piece of metal on wheels isn’t it?”

Stefan was offended. “Oh, reckon you could ‘andle ten ‘orses do you?”

“I thought we were talking about trolleys?”

“Over ten ‘orse power in that bastard.” I looked blank, “ah yeah, not too cocky now then? She could do some serious damage. In the wrong ‘ands.” And what hands would they be then? ETA? The IRA? The Herefordian’s Independence party? “You orange ‘ats are all the same. You get good at pickin’ up a box an’ think you can drive a forklift.”

“But that is not a forklift.”

Stefan was getting restless, “might as well be,” and he stomped away to restrain his ten horse drawn forklift trolley.

I see; the forklift was the holy grail. I bet the trolley boy pretenders paused down at the departure bay and stared in awe at the whizzing professionals loaded with gas canisters picking up tonnes of bird in one stab. I imagined that the forklift operatives parked up to break open a Yorkie and smirk over to their lower placed colleges who could stomach nothing more than a Twirl. I would have to tread carefully in here. I could see a lot of nerves to be touched.

So: orange hat – meat – white hat worker – meat man – machine manager/trolley boy – forklift driver - .........

So where did that leave Butch Sue then? The fact that she didn’t do anything made it difficult to place her. Actually, hang on, of course: the fact that she didn’t do anything made it easy to place her. Human Resources. Way above everyone else: on level par with a Colonel. The hirer and firer, the eat or be eaten and, judging by her size, she’d consumed a fair few workers. There was no one to touch her. She came and went, ticked the boxes she had drawn herself and all she had to do was bollock someone once in a solar eclipse and that kept her head above water. Good old Butch Sue, one of life’s barnacles.

All is Rosey

Destiny’s Child were being obsessive about ‘Bills, Bills, Bills’ when the mother of the food chain approached.

“Could I borrow you, please?” It was one of the phrases that Butch Sue used continually. It only ever meant that I was being deployed elsewhere, but I feared for the day when she meant it literally and used me like a towel to dry between her legs. I was led into an adjacent room and the obligatory glaring commenced. The room was full of orange ladies both in spray tan and sauce as they stood around tables covering non descript meat in barbeque flavouring.

“Michael,” Butch Sue said and vanished. Michael Rose, our box lifting Jedi, approached.

“Turkey thigh in container, sauce on turkey, container in machine. If you can’t master that I’d ‘ang yourself tonight.” There endth the lesson. I joined a table and commenced my task in hand. Rosey was managing the production line, but was also getting his hands saucey. The flavouring was gag inducing. It was the kind of sickly sweet gunge that Mr. Blobby would yak up after a night on the tiles. It came in industrial tubs and was the same colour as my hat. A thigh was dumped into a container, embalmed with a ladle of Blobby vomit and placed on a conveyor belt that zipped it along to be sealed by a guzzling machine. A long streak of sauce down the back of one of the male workers suggested that it sometimes got ‘spilt’. Rosey came and stood next to me.

“You’re a rare breed,” he stated. Here we go again, a set up line to be followed by, “a lesbian without a fanny,” I suppose, but Rosey, to his credit, was not of that ilk.

“And what is that then?”

“You survived the first week. It’s like the Grand National on induction week. Many start the race, but only a few fuckers finish it.” A peculiar sense of pride and shame washed over me.

“And how long have you been here?”

“Too fuckin’ long, shag. Too fuckin’ long, but I’m ‘atchin’ my escape plan.”

Rosey was a rare breed himself. Some loved T.F.L. like a forever giving pet, most used it like a self help manual to make themselves feel special and the rest were just happy to use it as a shield against the outer world, until the security of death saved them; but Rosey saw it as a ploughed field, with the grass being greener on the other side.

I received his life story condensed into five minutes. He’d been a jockey, but, by his own admittance, a pretty bad one. No kidding. He was about six foot three and probably fourteen stone in just bone and sinew. He wanted to get back into horse racing – one way or another. He and his mate Millsy were attempting to become race horse owners. He looked up at the clock.

“I’ve got a meetin’ with ‘im anytime now.”

We were glared at all the while by a woman who had mugged a clown and made off with his make-up box. She waited for Rosey to march off and check the machine and then decided I was ripe to be picked on.

“Orange hat?” that was me, “you’ll find that break time is for talking.” A standard worker punching well above her substantial weight. Human Resources material right there. Rosey returned and Mrs. Happy crawled back into her shell and scowled out from under its lip.

“I’ve got a fuckin’ stellar plan,” he continued then returned to the machine that started to bleep and flash.

“Uh, what did I say orange hat?” Mrs. Happy asked.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You cheeky little bastard.” She looked horrified, set aside her container and marched off in the possible direction of Butch Sue. Rosey returned.

“What’s her problem?” I asked as she disappeared through the plastic strips.

“Ronnie? Take no fuckin’ notice. She makes my shit itch. ‘Ere ‘e is.”

Millsy was very much the same as Rosey in build and posture. Another bubbling volcano of ideas and I don’ts.

“You rang my lord,” he said in a mock posh tone, “what’s the Jackie?”

“Well there’s..... the what?”

“What’s the Jackie?”

Rosey looked perplexed. “Onnasis?”

“Plan.”

“What’s the Jackie Plan? What the fuck you on about?”

“Chan.”

“What’s a Plan Chan?”

“No you dull fucker. Jackie Chan – Plan. What’s the plan? Cockney rhymey slang innit, mate? You’d ‘ave been no good in the war.”

The meeting was off to a flyer.

Rosey looked around and lowered his voice. “I’ve been thinkin’.”

“Oh aye, thought I could smell summut burnin’,” Millsy winked at me.

Rosey pulled a folded glossy pamphlet out of his pocket and handed it to Millsy. “Read that.” It was the T.F.L. newsletter.

“All of it?”

“’Eadline.”

Millsy unfolded it and took a step away from splashes of Blobby puke. “Chicken outwits worker?”

“Otherside.”

“Maxman makes it nine in a row?” he read aloud. Rosey nodded slowly. “Who the fuck is ‘e?”

“Chief exec of T.F.L. in ‘e? Got this mint ‘orse, a stallion, been winnin’ all before ‘im, most successful thing on four legs since The Pet Shop boys.”

“An’ what? We put some money on it?”

“No. You remember what we were on about yesterday?” Millsy cast his mind back as Mrs. Happy re-entered the room, shortly followed by Butch Sue. She took up her previous position and wore the smug grin of a playground snitch. Butch Sue hovered dangerously by the doorway. Millsy was struggling to remember what he had had for breakfast, so Rosey recalled their conversation.

I ladled sauce as Rosey broke away from the thighs. It would seem that Millsy’s father had recently died, which had upset Millsy greatly, though not through grief; rather the paltry offerings of his Will. Millsy’s father had lived as hard and as fast as the racehorses he had owned and had nothing to show for it. Millsy had inherited nothing, except a retired mare.

Butch Sue surveyed the entire work shy conversation as I eavesdropped and continued marinating and then intervened.

“Could I have a word please?” she asked and I looked up expecting the meeting to have been interrupted, but Rosey wasn’t drawing breath. I glanced towards her and it was me she was fingering.

“Me?”

“Who else?” Mrs. Happy was smouldering with satisfaction. Butch Sue guided me over to a wall. “What is T.F.L.?” She wasn’t there on the first day of the induction so perhaps she didn’t know.

“Uh, a poultry processing factory?” she was un-moved. “Am I in the right area?”

She leaned into me. “DO NOT get cocky with me.” Butch Sue was fairly humming with contentment. “It has come to my attention, that your attention,” pause for double word use recognition, “span has a habit of wavering.” Rosey and Millsy were now leant on a table away from the production line, deep in meat unrelated conversation. “We are all here to work and not play. Now you start doing some work and think about that. In silence.” Good work Butch Sue, well done. Find something that isn’t broken and sit right on it. She waited for me to return and vanished. Mrs. Happy broke away from her own conversation to eyeball me.

Rosey and Millsy chattered on for twenty minutes and the meeting was only halted when the forever gorging, never hungry machine bleeped and flashed. Millsy bid farewell and Rosey marched over. He pushed some buttons, yanked at some plastic, it started all over again and he returned to the table.

“Michael?” Mrs. Happy asked fluttering her clogged eyelashes.

“What the fuck do you want?”

“Ronnie’s absolutely gasping for a tinkle. Do you mind?”

“Piss yourself dry for all I care,” he bit.

“Thank you Michael,” she purred, eyeballed me and minced away.

“So, put the world right?” I asked.

“The wheels are in motion. We’re gonna wank off a ‘orse.”

Baste

In the hour up to lunch Mrs. Happy never returned and Rosey foretold of his path to Gold Cup glory. Millsy’s father’s mare had been an above average steeplechaser, winning more races than it had lost. It was now to be converted into an incubator for a potentially promising foal. Maxman’s farm was a twenty minute ride out of Hereford and under the cover of darkness Rosey and Millsy were going to sneak into the stable, bring the stallion to climax into a bucket and then artificially inseminate the mare.

“Have you ever basted an animal before?”

“Eh?”

“It’s the technical term for masturbating a creature.”

“Bastin’, wankin’, don’t matter what you call it as long as we get some seed out of the fucker.” You had to admire him.

“So whose drawn the basting short straw?”

“Dunno yet. We’re gonna ‘ave to toss for it,” he said then marched off to beat the bleeping machine. I assumed he meant flip a coin, though with these lads you were never too sure of their intentions.

He returned and continued. “We’ve already got the name an’ all,” he looked around and whispered, “Sir Winalot.” A touch premature; let us hope the Stallion is as well.

“What is the gestation period of a foal?”

“You’re speakin’ in fuckin’ tongues now mate.”

“How long until you get the foal out of the mare?”

“As quickly as fuckin’ possible.” Excellent. The plan to take the National Hunt community by the mane was finalised to the enth detail.

“When is the night of love?”

“This Saturday. We’ll go down Edgar Street first to watch the bulls, have a couple of looseners at the final whistle and then make our way there. Stop off for a couple more pints on the way, bit of Dutch courage y’know?”

A drunk fondle under the stars? Rosey really knew how to approach a date.

Lunch

There were six cubicles in the men’s toilets and six sinks. A tall, bony man was shaving in front of a mirror. A steadily drawn out snore was reverberating around the room from behind the closed door of one of the cubicles. As I washed my hands the snore morphed into a series of rapid snorts, something was muttered and a tapping noise sounded. An empty orange juice bottle slowly rolled out and the snoring continued.

The two vending machines in the canteen were crammed with salt and sugar and were never without business for long. Only a small percentage of the work force queued for a square meal, though still enough to keep Graham the chef busy with pan and tongue.

I selected a table in the far corner bathed in sunshine. The view was of pre-fabricated offices housing the intelligence of the T.F.L. company.

Two men wearing ties and blue shirts stood at a window overlooking the canteen. One nursed a coffee, while the other looked as if he were kneading something inside his trouser pocket. The coffee drinker nodded towards the canteen and the other laughed. Behind them desks were laid out in parallel lines. Erratic plants lay dotted around the floor illuminated by the strip lights above. A short, rotund lady waddled towards them and spoke as she passed. The coffee drinker smiled and replied. He watched her go, looked back at the canteen and spoke. The other tie shook his head, folded his arms and screwed up his face. A svelte lady in a bottom hugging skirt approached from the other direction carrying a file. Her ponytail bobbed with her stride. She acknowledged both men and continued on through a doorway. Both watched her all the way. The man unfolded his arms, clenched his fists and thrust his pelvis twice towards the window. The coffee drinker nodded slowly.

Tuesday, 18^th May

Time did not pass at T.F.L.; it collected. It banked up around the machines and wedged itself under the roofs. Tonnes of poultry entered the factory naked and exited at the other end dressed in plastic; but time never went anywhere.

Wednesday, 19^th May

During an exhilarating period on chicken drumsticks I worked out that I could swim the English Channel eight thousand, eight hundred and forty five times during the rest of time at T.F.L..

Lunch

I returned to the table in the corner on the canteen, but without the sheen of sunshine. It was a grey day. The trouser kneader was at the window leaning on a water cooler. He waved a plastic cup elaborately as he engaged the svelte lady in conversation. She twirled the ponytail around a finger and nodded. He rose up on tip toe and mimed a flamboyant square cut cricket shot. She released her hair and placed her hands together.

A young lady took up a seat next to my table. She sipped some tea and wiped her eyes. Tears were a common occurrence at T.F.L.. Somebody was forever snivelling on the factory floor, in the departure day, by the taps or here in the canteen. A female colleague joined her.

“Just ignore them,” she said and ran her hand along her friends arm. A broad, older woman steamed between the tables and joined them.

“What’s on go ‘er?” she demanded to know, stirring her coffee round and round and round and round.

“They just won’t leave her alone,” the counselling friend said and the girl cried harder.

“Now you listen to me,” the broad woman snapped causing the girl to look up, “while they’re botherin’ you, they’re leavin’ everyone else alone. Now you take solace from that,” she said with a defiant nod. The shock of the sage advice momentarily halted the girl’s tears. Back over in the office the man’s trousers and shirt were a much darker shade and the water cooler lay on its side. The svelte lady’s back was arched in merriment.

Friday, 21^st May

On the tiles

Excitement had built steadily throughout the week and now on this glorious day it reached a crescendo. The factory floor was a hub of smiles and laughter. Monday’s were a stark contrast of bagged eyes and low brows, but Friday’s signalled the start of the weekend. All talk was about getting drunker than had been achieved the weekend before. The week’s pressure was going to be relieved all over town and in its gutters.

“My liver ain’t goin’ to wish it were born!” Stefan declared to Eddy, a machine manager, as they postured around his hydraulic trolley.

“We’re you startin’?” Eddy asked.

“I’ve got a couple of cans in me locker an’ I’ll bury them before I leave.”

“Me too.”

“Then I’ll ‘ave a look in at the karaoke an’ bury a couple in there.”

“Tidy.”

“I’ll sink a super turbo shandy in the Oxford en route to the Oak where I’ll smash a double gin.”

“See you in there.”

“I’ll ‘ave a Strongbow in Jake’s.”

“Yep.”

“A Smirnoff Ice in the Newmarket.”

“I’ve read you.”

“A WKD, no two, in the Imperial.”

“I knows.”

“Then into Mazzer’s an’ drink all the fuckin’ lager they’ve got.”

“Not if I beat you to it.”

Stefan lowered his voice. “You got any marchin’ powder to get you round the circuit?”

“Sam’s got plenty. She’ll sport you some.”

“Cock on, shag. Drug takin’ WILL be tolerated on THESE premises!” Stefan declared pointing to his face. “I don’t want to remember a thing about tonight, mind. Not a thing.”

Even when time was of their own the workers meant to disappear it as quickly as their bodies would allow.

The only worker not to show the same enthusiasm for oblivion was Butch Sue. She was as unanimated as usual. She’d probably already planned a night in whispering suggestively to a spreadsheet over a chilled bottle of gravel.

Lunch

It took some acute soul searching whilst on turkey thighs to work out why I didn’t share the same want for self destruction as the rest of them; because after the completion of my second whole week of employment I had been rendered sufficiently immune to enjoyment.