the-productionist-blog

[the-productionist-blog]

Scrub it real good.

One of my fondest memories of my food “career” was actually working with my brother cleaning in a factory.

We would manually clean hard to reach places and awkward machine parts on a weekend during a factory shut down.

One day I was completely hung over after a Friday night out at a nearby town. I was in my late teens, working 2 part time jobs and attending 6th form (because money and drinking). The cleaning was a bit of a throw away job, good money for shitty work. We sat on a break smoking menthols and drinking vending machine coffee. We chatted and really bonded. I enjoy working with family, especially my father and brother. Our logic processes and work ethics are very similar. We finished our break and went on to the next task in hand leaving our supervisor to finish his coffee. Our supervisor was a stocky fellow named Dave, who was lacking in personal hygiene, but was mild mannered. My brother and I had completed our task and wondered where our supervisor was as we hadn’t seen him since our break. Being hungover I asked my brother to wait a moment to see if he would show up, while semi-recovering for the next cleaning task. We danced to music (music was played over a PA system, I believe the song was Tom Jones; Sex Bomb) and messed around with disposable gloves and alcohol based sanitizer for a moment. With that my brother and I grew weary of waiting for our supervisor and set off in search. We found him playing on a fruit machine in the canteen. (To this day I could never quite understand why there was a fruit machine in that factory. They must have had one hell of a union!!) My brother asked him for more work, to which were told “get another coffee and I’ll get you a new job.” We sat down and guzzled a coffee. My brother grew impatient and again enquired after more work, our supervisor finished gambling and stuttered and scrambled for a task. My brother quite sharply stated “Come on Dave, you can’t take a break all your f*cking life!”

I will never forget Dave’s face. It haunts me as I write this. A teenager had called him out because he was taking the piss. I stifled a laugh and escorted my brother to go and have a cigarette. We were given our next task and then promptly dismissed for the rest of the day.

I think I just enjoyed working with my brother in general and spending time with him.

I don’t know whatever happened to Dave. I believe he married a Thai lady, who later left him. Maybe for hygiene reasons? One of the lads once informed us that he skid marks the size of mars bar in his underwear. Good job he was apart of the hygiene crew (ewww) I could be wrong, just rumours maybe.

#foodlover #foodblogger #funny #memories #food

[the-productionist-blog]

Your food & I.

I am the cupbearer of society. Mass produced products go through me before they hit the shelves. It’s a snap shot of runs & batches, a small fraction of product. But I’m there, scoffing away.

I’ve worked in the food industry to date for 11 years. Quality Assurance is my current role, however I started in production and packing before hand. I started as a temp/ agency worker & fought my way up.

I’ve seen things. I’ve heard things... and now I will share things through this blog. I’ll change names and details to protect those, but ultimately protect myself.

#foodblogger #food #foodlover