Bean factory: halcyon days...As a student, I once whiled away a summer working in a green bean processsing factory in Norfolk. I was responsible for ensuring that items which were not beans did not get packaged and distributed. As the beans were hoovered off fields around East Anglia, an awful lot of 'not-beans' came past me in the course of a day, many of them animals of the great outdoors.
One night shift, after 8 hours without a break on a bean inspection line, I was beginning to halluncinate vaguely, and had long ago become sickened by the prospect of picking eviserated toads and bleeding, legless rodents out of the flow of beans. So I let a mouse go past me, into the machines which trim the beans into an acceptable shape for the Jolly Green Giant. These machines work by having rotating drums covered in abrasive, spiky metal bits which effectively sand the beans down to the right shape.
End result: a disgusting spray of blood and a skinned mouse emerging from the machines, and a wave of vom emerging from me. I cleaned up the sick, and never mentioned it to anyone else at the factory. The mouse was processed and packaged along with the beans, and most likely ended up frozen in a Tesco's somewhere. I worked for the rest of the summer, went back to university, and never ate green beans again.
(,
Tue 11 Nov 2003, 12:41,
archived)
One night shift, after 8 hours without a break on a bean inspection line, I was beginning to halluncinate vaguely, and had long ago become sickened by the prospect of picking eviserated toads and bleeding, legless rodents out of the flow of beans. So I let a mouse go past me, into the machines which trim the beans into an acceptable shape for the Jolly Green Giant. These machines work by having rotating drums covered in abrasive, spiky metal bits which effectively sand the beans down to the right shape.
End result: a disgusting spray of blood and a skinned mouse emerging from the machines, and a wave of vom emerging from me. I cleaned up the sick, and never mentioned it to anyone else at the factory. The mouse was processed and packaged along with the beans, and most likely ended up frozen in a Tesco's somewhere. I worked for the rest of the summer, went back to university, and never ate green beans again.
I must ask: I may have gotten that bag. I was very young (17, at a corner store called Mertin's or something), I bought a bag of green beans as a cold compress for my boyfriend, whom had busted his leg on the sidewalk exiting the car. As the bag thawed, a MASSIVE wave of putrid stench wafted out of the bag. My boyfried barfed on the apholstery, and I was screaming and threw it out the window of our old former sports car. we may have had that bag. The world will never know.
(,
Wed 12 Nov 2003, 23:26,
archived)