Willie Wonka is a W*nkerSeriously, the worst job I ever had (and I've done a hell of a lot) was in a chocolate factory. Honest!
I won't name it, but if I say they produce a certain citrus fruit made up of segments...
Anyway, I did 7 weeks on the night shift, 11pm to 6am. As it was 'only' 7 hours, total breaks were two 10 minute breaks at about 1.30am and 4am, during which most of us managed to smoke two fags.
The job was packing chocs into the trays for a fairly up-market product in a Gold box. As there were 3 layers, the production line was pretty long. Each worker sat on a high stool right up against the production line, and filled each tray to pass in front of you with two chocs. I was given 'bags and barrels'.
Now, the shock came when the belt started, and the trays started coming past in a continuous stream at what was roughly a fast walking pace, i.e. about 2 trays per second. The chocs were on big metal trays about 4 foot square on racks above the line, so you had to reach up, grab two chocs and place them in the correct spaces, the right way round...twice a second...for seven hours...with two ten-minute breaks.
You cannot imagine the ache in your back at the end of a shift, when I got home I lay on the kitchen floor for about 15 minutes to recover. By late afternoon when I got up again for work my hands felt like two bunches of sausages.
Not only that, by the line superviser (a humourless 25 year old bitch) would shout at us if we didn't manage to get our 'work' as they called the chocs in the right holes each time. The shout of 'Get your work in' when you've no idea what it means sounds like 'Get working' which is a real wind-up when you're stuffing chocks like there's no tomorrow.
I worked out that on an average shift, taking into account occasional hold ups in the line and breaks, that I'd pack over 50,000 chocolates.
To sum up, I came up with the following riddle:
'What's the difference between going for a crap and packing chocolates? Answer: you have to wash your hands after packing chocolates.'
I suppose the bright side is that after eating all the chocs I nicked over 7 weeks that Xmas, I've almost given up eating chocolate altogether.
(,
Tue 11 Nov 2003, 16:02,
archived)
I won't name it, but if I say they produce a certain citrus fruit made up of segments...
Anyway, I did 7 weeks on the night shift, 11pm to 6am. As it was 'only' 7 hours, total breaks were two 10 minute breaks at about 1.30am and 4am, during which most of us managed to smoke two fags.
The job was packing chocs into the trays for a fairly up-market product in a Gold box. As there were 3 layers, the production line was pretty long. Each worker sat on a high stool right up against the production line, and filled each tray to pass in front of you with two chocs. I was given 'bags and barrels'.
Now, the shock came when the belt started, and the trays started coming past in a continuous stream at what was roughly a fast walking pace, i.e. about 2 trays per second. The chocs were on big metal trays about 4 foot square on racks above the line, so you had to reach up, grab two chocs and place them in the correct spaces, the right way round...twice a second...for seven hours...with two ten-minute breaks.
You cannot imagine the ache in your back at the end of a shift, when I got home I lay on the kitchen floor for about 15 minutes to recover. By late afternoon when I got up again for work my hands felt like two bunches of sausages.
Not only that, by the line superviser (a humourless 25 year old bitch) would shout at us if we didn't manage to get our 'work' as they called the chocs in the right holes each time. The shout of 'Get your work in' when you've no idea what it means sounds like 'Get working' which is a real wind-up when you're stuffing chocks like there's no tomorrow.
I worked out that on an average shift, taking into account occasional hold ups in the line and breaks, that I'd pack over 50,000 chocolates.
To sum up, I came up with the following riddle:
'What's the difference between going for a crap and packing chocolates? Answer: you have to wash your hands after packing chocolates.'
I suppose the bright side is that after eating all the chocs I nicked over 7 weeks that Xmas, I've almost given up eating chocolate altogether.