Before commencing philosophical undergraduate studies in the early nineties, I felt certain it would both benefit and befit my intellectual development to take up gainful employment inside the belly of the Capitalist Beast. Granted, there was the hardly insignificant matter of remuneration, but let’s not sully the memory of that great social undertaking which one might, even now, compare favourably to the noble labours of fellow thinker, Simone Weil. Despite never learning the accurate pronunciation of her surname, her seminal work, Waiting for Job, (possibly misremembered) was no small inspiration behind my own interminably mystic relationship with employment and its sidekick, mammon.
The great greasy pistons of this soulful enterprise drove me along the various gridways of that reconstructed Babylon that is the new city of Milton Keynes.1 Buckinghamshire’s once verdant pastures now sat cowed beneath its bullish concrete: foundation of a new, try-hard Britain. Drove constitutes a certain romantic licence here since peddle-power, a hearty breakfast, and hope of a brighter tomorrow were more the engines of industry. Yes, I was quite literally getting on my bike. Undeterred, then, by the prospect of toad work, pitch black starts and storms of diluvian disposition, I would make my mark, however small, upon this headlong world of ours.
A certain genetic giftedness for gobshite, (oft kindly flagged by friends and family), stood me in superlative stead when negotiating with the many agents of recruitment clamouring for my services. The eye cannot conceal its regard for a gentleman of character and trustworthy comportment and, despite endless forms and disorderly and somewhat unsavoury queues, the choicest of enterprises had soon been selected most especially for my good self and for the thirty or so others who, with remarkable fortune, happened to be in the vicinity.
Quarter to five start on site, (it was communicated), since one had to allow quarter of an hour to change into the required garments. Planning my route and factoring in ablutions, a hasty repast and the ritual of morning unburdening would mean egress from my temporary abode no later than four in the predawn morn. In the interests of data security, I shall leave undisclosed the precise time of my rising.
With the first flush of light greening the eastern ether and wheels whirring giddily over a mostly downhill road, the unexpected leisure of the moment gave rise not only to wide-ranging rumination upon matters philosophical (is it possible to ride the same road twice? to which class do towering but inexplicably overlooked intellects, for random example, belong? if a bike crashes in an empty road due to massive potholes, does it make a sound? what is the veracity of an event once rendered into story? define the ‘fair’ in fair wage) but, moreover, to a certain obsessing about what dizzying manner of apparel requires a full quarter hour bedizening.
Upon arrival - having first secured my trusty transportation with three d-locks under a decidedly makeshift structure - I was ushered into a changing area by an operative whose badge identified him as the ‘Dayshift Coordinator’.
Lesson One: for some things there’s just no preparation
Imagine the world’s most oversubscribed gymnasium where no one actually works out yet all still emit the relevant range of odours, and where all gather daily in the changing rooms, at the same time, either murderously intent on escape or in an arrival state of intensifying incandescence. Then imagine those departing are required to leave their white (yes, white) Wellington boots in bays marked according to size for their ‘dayshift colleagues’. Except they don’t. Keep imagining the ensuing scrum to locate and secure matching pairs of the correct size and the associated despair of having to entomb one’s feet in the wrong size either way for the forthcoming nine hours. Finally, imagine one’s surprise to learn that the lockers require pound coins to operate and are, in any case, of a size resistant to receiving any earthly chattel worthy of the name. And all these undertakings occur in a room suffused with a yellowish discharge that laughs in the face of electric lighting, giving the unavoidable sensation of full immersion in a bucket of stale urine.
Slip hazard Cellophane bags littered the floor like ghost skins shed by smarter creatures. Dressed now in their disgorged contents of matching white boiler suit of some impermanent fabric and provenance, I cast about in search of a familiar face. Yet all stood estranged by hair and beard nets or curiously shaped headwear. Muted by more than the early start, we lined up to punch our clocks upon the striking of the hour. I had not thought work might undo so many.
Lesson Two: for other things there’s just no preparation
A communication lauding my auspicious communication skills must have preceded me since I was swiftly ushered toward the ‘premium zone’ following a blast of the shift horn; an aural sensation that ‘resonated’ for a full ten minutes. Battling a creeping numbness, my eyes laboured to take in the full scale of this state of the art sandwich making and packing plant. Gleaming conveyor belts, presently stilled, were set in serried ranks throughout, and around these loitered blanched Lowryesque figures. A separate Goliath of a machine, I later learned, was responsible for detecting foreign bodies in the food which I even later learned might include such non comestibles as human matter, rodent or bird faeces, and various metals either misplaced by the hapless or having sheared away from unhinged machines.
Whilst I digested the ‘work briefing’, the factory fired into action and a deafening roar instantly reduced all to solipsist drones. The sole benefit was the drowning out of the advertising earworms from the invasive radio station. I’m no fan of Marx but…
Lesson Three: for some things there’s nothing like preparation
…that factory line taught me more in a day than a semester’s worth of study. Alienation from one’s work. Check. Mechanistic reduction of the human spirit. Check. A terrifying loss of connection to the natural world. Check. How was it even bearable? I knew I’d finish my shift, but as to tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow? Philosophy certainly felt different machined into the psyche. My allotted task was to box up the little packages of previously assembled sandwiches for despatch. Away into unknown mouths and unseen stomachs. One of the ‘better’ jobs, apparently, and something like a miracle of feeding. Though grossly in excess of five thousand. Yet something also like a nightmare. Eight hours of packing, over and over, day after day, and not exactly so that people might avoid starvation. Because…
Final Lesson: the right filling
…the premium aisle involved the part human, part machine processing of the highest quality sandwiches. There were foods, and in combinations, beyond my upbringing. But I’m sharing this because I’d just packed four full boxes (each containing sixty packets) of oak smoked salmon with watercress and lemon herb mayonnaise on seeded wholemeal and rye, when it was discovered they bore the wrong barcode. A small error further back in production but rectifiable with a little alteration. Except the economic calculus swirled around the cost of resetting the machines for a correction run against the time lost in further production. And my four boxes didn’t square up. So they were binned. Not given to staff or the homeless. Binned. Compliance or something.
Back then I concealed my writerly sensitivities behind a mask of machismo, but I don’t mind admitting to you now that I wept inside for those sandwiches. Not because I’d packed them and had developed a ridiculous sentimentality for them. Not that. But also because I knew not which river those salmon once swam in or where in the world that watercress farm was or those lemon groves or golden fields of nodding grains. And never would. Yet I knew in that moment two new things for certain. There would be no uniformed me at the sounding of tomorrow’s horn, and, I would thereafter wage a quiet war against wastefulness in my life.
To this day, does anyone else recall those boxes? If there’s such a thing as a sandwich afterlife then it must surely consist in memory alone. Hand-crafted smoked sentences are all I’m packing these days, so that will have to do for a memorial. Yet, I suspect a deeper lesson has been unpacking itself in the in-between. Perhaps the significance of those boxes lies precisely in their insignificance to production-line efficiencies. Small and beautiful things often don’t measure up to convenience and profit. I have lately found a vocation writing stories with all the wrong barcodes. Only fit for the skipping of the heart. And, lest I forget, they remind me, piece by piece, that outside the factory the air is real sweet.
Photo by Arno Senoner on Unsplash
Currently minus a mentionable football club.
"I would thereafter wage a quiet war against wastefulness in my life." Amen. This made me so sad. I've recently been taking courses with a local cooperative extension to learn more about various farming practices. But the callous things promoted in those classes (e.g., if your cow/goat gets a treatable udder or parasitic infection, it's cheaper to cull it than cure it) turned my stomach. Everything is a factory now, whether we see the conveyor belts and gears or not.
"giving the unavoidable sensation of full immersion in a bucket of stale urine."
This was glorious, Adrian. Totally get the sense of alienation. One summer after college I worked in the pie shop of an orchard and my job was to place the ball of dough in the pie pan, then pull the machine handle that pressed the dough down into a crust. All day, every day. Luckily I was working with friends and the boss let us talk nonstop or I would have gone out of my mind.