Mess #2
Fifty Pound Biscuits
One day I arrived at work to find that the entire plant had been shut down. There had been a fire in a flour bin that was at least 30 feet tall. A level detector inside the bin had shorted out caused the dusty contents of the bin to catch on fire.
The flour bin was in my area at the time. So another worker and I had the unenviable assignment of removing the burnt contents of the massive bin so the level detector could be worked on. The flour was black and brown and still had hot sparks intermingled with it. The smell was bad. The flour had baked into massive chunks so large that they had to be broken up by force just to get them through the man door to the bin.
This was perhaps the most physically demanding night of work that I have ever been involved with. The dust and heat was terrible.
All the while we were doing this, other than a few people hauling the biscuits to the scrap, everyone else was sitting around in the safety of the break room. You'd think the bosses would get the idea to swap us out occasionally.
Secret Conversations
I have worked with a lot of unusual people over the years. Perhaps Phil was the weirdest of them all. Phil had a couple of different jobs during the time I worked with him. One of the jobs was to mix dough for egg rolls. All he had to do was sit there and let the machine automatically add flour and automatically add water. If the mixture was too wet or dry, it would quickly be adjusted manually by adding flour or water.
Simple as this was, Phil would always end up in a panic because of his wonky work habits. He would be sitting there staring out into space. Then he would start mumbling. The he would start talking to himself. Then he would start pacing the floor and yelling an flailing his arms wildly in a fit of rage.
We would try to call out to him while this was going on. He was a nice guy. He would smile and then enhance his mellow. But then after a short period of time, would go through the same process. He would simmer for awhile. Next thing you knew he would be right back to the outbursts.
Phil was weird in some other ways too. I saw him grab a whole wedge of cheese once from a carry in luncheon and scoop up half a container of chip dip with it and cram the whole thing into his mouth. He had some other detestable habits that I will not go into here.
Phil would scream at his real or imagined adversaries while he would pacing back and forth in front of the dough mixer. While this show was taking place, the dough would become unusable. Then Phil would finally realize things were out of kilter, so he would panic and either pour a ridiculous amount of water into the mixer or go berserk shoving a stupid amount of flour into the mixer. Flour would be flying everywhere as he hastily tried to recover the mixer.
When we saw the action, we knew we would soon be getting a break from making the egg roll filling as the line would be down and the crew leader would be there to chew him out. Phil really had the knack of making the simplest job look difficult.
We always wondered what he was talking about during his solitaire arguments. We heard that he was re-enacting his divorce court. The guy I worked directly with started sneaking up on him while the drama was going on to eavesdrop. He would get close, then Phil would always catch him sneaking up. It was fun to watch because Phil was a good sport about it and would feign anger.