Mess #4
It's Raining Soy Sauce
When product came off of the line it was put into cases. The cases were stacked on wooden pallets. The pallets with full cases of product on them were about five feet high each. They were then stretch wrapped with clear plastic.
Out in our shipping warehouse, there were tall racks where the loads were placed into with a forklift. The racks were up to four loads high.
From personal experience, I can tell you that going four pallets high on the racks with a heavy load is touchy. It requires full attention. The worst thing I ever put up four high was a load of four 55 gallon barrels of soy sauce concentrate. That product is a lot denser that water. With all of that weight, going all that high, it felt like the back end of the forklift was wanting to lift up off of the floor.
I have picked up very heavy loads with the forklift. If you exceed the lifting capacity, the back end will come up off of the floor, then you have no steering since the steering is in the back. You could tip over. That adds extra concern to the job.
The first time I ever drove a forklift, my department manager told me to get on the forklift and do the job. I did not want to, with the high potential for damage and injury. A forklift is much heavier than a car. Food plants are extremely crowded and there is always something or someone in the way.
Nevertheless, they made me drive the forklift with no training whatsoever. The first time I got on one and moved it, I back up and broke a light off of it. They just laughed it off and said to keep going.
I drove forklift quit a lot over the years. The key is to assume nothing. Look everywhere all of the time.
Anyway, I was out in the warehouse looking for some packaging, I think. A forklift driver was walking around in a daze with the shift manager. He had tried to put up a full load of bottled soy sauce on the top level. Evidently the load caught something and the stretch wrapping broke and cases fell like cluster bombs from the height down on him.
Fortunately for the driver, there was a roll cage on top of him. No full cases could hit him.
However, that did not stop him from being battered with shattering glass bottles that broke upon impact of hitting the roll cage. A salvo of hundreds of full bottles barraged him as they fell from the warehouse stratosphere. Most of the load had fallen.
To add insult to injury the salty soy sauce drenched the cuts to his body. You never know how many cuts and blemishes you have on your body until you are drenched with soy sauce and feel them all burn.
One time I was hooking together a hose from a pump and it burst open. I was drenched. Completely. I had little stings everywhere. Of course that minor discomfort was not as bad as bringing attention to myself by looking like a walking piece of chicken teriyaki.
The mess from the costly bottled soy sauce mess was huge. You can imagine the mess in your kitchen at home if you would break one bottle of soy sauce.
Puddles of soy sauce ran and glass bounced all over the area. There were piles of wicked broken glass to clean up. Many load of finished product had to be moved and cleaned under.
The supervisor made the driver clean it up. I had to take his place so he could do it. My job at the time was to run a crew who packed special order institutional sized frozen packages. No one took my place, but my crew was responsible and well trained. I was just glad I did not have to clean up that one.