This is a long post. It’s not funny. A few people might read it and take offense or exception to it. Such a defensive response only happens when someone is speaking the truth, usually one that isn’t favorable. I have hundreds of stories.
Last December, a woman was basically decapitated while cleaning pizza-making machinery. She was doing so without being able to lock out the machinery. It seems preposterous to most of us. But not to me. She had less protection than most because she was working as a temporary employee. Many of these facilities are operated and cleaned by employees who don’t have a lot of options, much less training. Even with both things being true, the financial pressure exerted to be efficient tends to overwhelm even common safety measures. This happens all across the United States every single day of the year. People are expected or required to work faster and to cut corners. Companies tend to say the right things when it comes to safety, but so many employees go to work every day knowing that they will have to cut corners to get the job done with the staffing and time allotted. It’s no secret that most companies cut labor costs. Fewer people are expected to do more while maintaining the quality of whatever they’re producing while simultaneously building a house of cards in regard to safety.
When I was very young, I was involved in an absolutely astounding case involving food safety that also dovetailed with personal safety. It had such a huge impact on my attitude. Working in a dairy removed any doubt as to the process of what goes into milk.
Later, although years ago, when I worked at a food manufacturing facility, I watched a lot of this happen. I had several near misses, a couple of which I still sometimes dream about. One of them could have easily ripped my head off, and only luck kept it from happening. The machine was a huge rapid cooling machine with interconnected mobile shelves connected to a dual elevator. It was -40° and 40 plus feet tall. A huge bank of powerful motors constantly roared to feed the gigantic cooling coils.
Prior to my introduction to the machinery, a maintenance person had almost been cut in half by the moving elevator portion of the apparatus. It was interesting hearing management’s perspective on this. The maintenance person survived but was severely impacted by the injuries for the rest of his life. It wasn’t until I became responsible for the machine on my shift that I realized just how pernicious the demands of efficiency were and how they constantly violated safety protocols.
I had subcutaneous frostbite on both knees from working on the incredibly cold surfaces. Getting shots behind one’s kneecaps is not something I recommend. When I’m about to do push-ups, I go through long periods where I have to use one knee to kneel. Otherwise, there’s a strange pain that has lingered through the years. I’m sure some of my hearing loss is attributable to those roaring fan systems.
Working in negative 40° environments required very specific and expensive protective footwear. Many employees, especially those from staffing agencies, were not given proper footwear and often had to work in this environment with rubber boots. I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating. There was more than one occasion when I took the employee and bought him boots, using my own money, that would protect him. And even those weren’t up to the expected standard demanded of the machine. On one occasion, my middle manager threatened to write me up or fire me if I bought boots for another employee again. He was angry that it made him look bad. Shame would have been a better response. Had Jesus been in the room, someone would have been smitten.
When management would decide it was time to defrost the system, the engineers who developed it indicated it needed at least 3 days without use simply to defrost it to the correct temperature. Of course, management allotted less than a day. Even though it cost millions of dollars to construct the immense machine on an insulated pad, It was no surprise that huge cracks formed in the foundation constantly. The powerful drive shafts constantly failed as the junction boxes warped. Metal shelves weighing hundreds of pounds fell or got hung constantly.
At one point, I fell about 20 ft from the elevator platform. My padded freezer suit helped lessen the fall. I didn’t break anything but was impossibly sore for several weeks. A co-worker was on the platform with me at the time. He later said he was certain that he was witnessing a death. In some ways, I was a much different person back then. Had the wrong thing been said to me about this incident or ignorant questions about safety protocols implemented at the time, I would have handed them a list of several hundred contributing factors that had not been addressed. Everyone knew we were running the operation under the “wink” system. Just remember the Manhattan Project and the first nuclear bomb if you’re not sure what the “wink” system is. While the scientists were certain that the first nuclear bomb would not ignite the entire planet, the people authorizing the project would have proceeded anyway. They wanted a bomb and a test to prove its viability. The infinitesimally small risk of setting the entire planet ablaze wasn’t much of a concern.
Despite the fact that there were very rigid protocols on paper for correcting mechanical issues, the truth is that there was enormous pressure from management to do whatever had to be done to keep the machine operating. Half of the plant’s food production required the use of the machine for chilling or freezing. Some of this is also why I shake my head at our alleged USDA inspection system. The truth is that companies producing food are given too much leeway to monitor their processes. Time and time again, food-borne illnesses prove that processes can’t be trusted. Trust God but keep your powder dry.
When I read restaurant inspections, all of the swirls in my head. The people who own restaurants have a complete list of requirements. They are a part of doing business. Yet, when inspected, a wild variety of problems get noted. And most of these have been going on for a while when they are caught. Again, some of it is due to improper behavior by employees. Noting that, however, never negates the obligation of the people in charge of the restaurant to ensure that things are done correctly. It is their job to hire, train, and keep people functioning safely. The blame always falls on the people whose job is to ensure standards adherence.
When I worked at the food facility, I wasn’t proud that I ducked participating in the alleged defrosting and cleaning of the system. There were a lot of accidents during these shenanigans. I’m not sure how to characterize what we were supposed to be doing versus the objective. There was no correlation in reality. I can say that most of the motivation for doing it was to satisfy the perception that we were cleaning and maintaining the machine properly. A couple of times, I probably should have been fired for not participating. I expected to come back to the immense department to a vertical crack in the machine platform, similar to after an earthquake.
Everything about it was handled improperly. Both from a food safety perspective and its mechanical operation. People who had no knowledge of the apparatus were constantly making outrageous decisions about every facet of its operation. Were the department and machine mine, I would have required lengthy training for everyone associated with the machine. But we were constantly tasked with doing whatever we had to to keep it running, with people walking in off the street or from staffing agencies. The language barrier wasn’t a problem for me because I speak Spanish. But none of the operational or safety literature was provided in other languages. Even if it were, we were never going to be allotted sufficient personnel or time to train people. Most days, we felt exactly like Lucy as she attempted to eat all the chocolates as they went past her.
There were a couple of other operators whom I trusted with my life with that machine. (Because I was trusting them with my life.) We were often in the machine while it was operational. It was during one of those occasions when I was inside, and one of the operators I trusted was attempting to keep the machine operational in order to keep the plant moving. The sweep arm moving product was behind me as I observed the mechanical arms in conjunction with the photo sensors. It hung up and dropped just as I stepped away. It caught me across the back of the neck and shoulders and began pulling me. I realized immediately that I had to act fast. So I fell to the floor a couple feet ahead of the horizontal shelving. Had I not done so, I would have lost my head.
One afternoon, I was lying on the conveyor system, attempting to keep the output window functional. I’d been in there several minutes, and my nose was running freely. It’s important to remember that the huge banks of fans were blowing hundreds of horsepower of wind through the machine while I was in it. You learn to ignore a runny nose or wait until it freezes on your face. Once it freezes, you forget about it. My face mask had hardened too much, so I pulled it up to be able to breathe. Since the system was running, I rolled over to avoid getting pushed out of the narrow output window. On each side was a stainless steel gear case encompassing the conveyor system gears. As I rolled over, my face made contact with the stainless steel that was around -40°. My face stuck instantly to the metal. Because the product was coming out at my feet, I rolled again, and as I did so, the mucus from my nose that had instantly froze stuck to the metal gearbox. It took me several minutes to realize I lost the skin across the side of my nose and above my lip. That’s what that kind of extreme cold will do.
I don’t dream about that machine much anymore. I tend to have them if I have a fever. Most involve injury or metal platforms falling off the elevator system from 40 feet in the air.
When I see news stories, especially ones that have marked similarities to what I experienced, I get irritated again. Because I know that more people will get injured or die. It’s true that some of these cases are a result of the employee being negligent through their own fault. Is it a secret that we can be stupid? It’s equally true that another portion of these are the consequence of employees being required to do things unsafely or too quickly in order to get the job done. People who are not familiar with such industries or jobs object and say that the solution is for the employees to simply refuse. The work world does not work that way for most of us. Most of the things you enjoy, from your chicken sandwich to your phone, get produced through the efforts of countless people who are risking their safety constantly.
If you’ve never stood on a production line needing to go to the bathroom but can’t, or you’ve realized that the only reason your job exists is because that machine can’t do it, you’re lucky. You can say that a particular person can get another job. That’s true. But our production machinery requires someone to do these jobs. If it’s not you, it must be someone. A lot of ‘someones.’ Not that it’s related to this post, but in part, this is why I get so annoyed at those who object to the idea of a living wage. If we expect people to be in those jobs, those jobs exist because we expect the result to be available to us. Whether it’s a hamburger or our car washed. Anyone performing a job that we require through our choices should be able to pay their bills based on that exchange of time for money. As for whether someone who unclogs a toilet deserves to make as much as someone providing healthcare, the answer is that it’s complicated. I certainly expect my sewage to disappear and don’t need to wonder too long about what happens if it doesn’t. That result is valuable. We need brain surgeons. But go a week without a working toilet and see how quickly you dream of working pipes.
There’s a whole hidden world of production and service around us. If you’ve never seen it, you might see the story I mentioned at the beginning of this post and easily shake your head at the stupidity of the person who was injured or killed. I have the opposite perspective. I know that in most cases, that employee was put into a position most of the time where reality imposed a different set of rules. She came to a job with minimal training, a language barrier and quickly saw how other employees got the job done. She did not have a lot of options regarding work. I am certain she was glad to be employed in order to live and provide for her family.
We need our world of workers. It’s easy to fall into the trap of failing to respect that they are assuming a risk each day they work. The very people who need our support the most often get scorn for the jobs they’re doing.
There’s much more I could say, even though you might look at the length of this post and wonder how that’s possible. I’m pragmatic about work. Most of us are. Even when I’m loving my job, I often think of the hundreds of thousands of people doing more with less for less money. I might not be at risk of literally losing my head while doing my job, but somewhere, someone is.
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