This is the story of my intense stint working in the A+W and President's Choice burger factory. It was mind numbing (I'll often describe it this way) and boring -- but may have taught me more than anything else ever has about how the world really works. A blessing and a curse. Enjoy the life of a patty slave by proxy...
I've got ink on my hands, we wear different coloured hardhats--
There's flowing and whirring along every which way.
Conveyor belts and mechanical contraptions punch out windows in walls,
Never altering their rhythm, or slowing their pace.
Logic shot down because someone else is in charge.
They steal little chunks of time, so we'll soon learn their way.
And no one really talks and no one really smiles,
So sometimes I'm forced to whip burgers around...
Just the march of the worker, light industrial.
This shit is serious. One day engineers will rule the world. Until they lose control. I go to work in a burger factory day after day to stand in my place and get worked by machines. Lines break down. You wait. They speed up. You follow. And I become mezmerized. As I watch them lure me in with cheep words and dangling trinkets I know I'll never receive. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who can see what's happening. But I do it because I must. And I do it for the experience. I do it so I will know. And by the end I've found out. And it ain't pretty. If you're not careful it will sweep you off your feet and never let you go. Through the whole ordeal the movie Koyaanisqatsi resides constantly in my mind, its famous song plays on and on in my head.
We have meetings, lots of meetings -- old food safety proceedure movies mostly -- right when I start out. I was pretty stoked to work at the only place in Canada that produces A&W burgers. And I've personally grilled President's Choice burgers in past summers as part of my lifestyle, so I was totally interested to see the primary "production" portion of the supply and demand burger cycle. A lot of people would freak out working around meet -- but I've never been a vegetarian. And a lot of people would expect a fast food giant's burgers aren't really made out of quality beef. And I was once one of them. Once. But there were no hidden curtains or magic "spices" so far as I know -- and no that doesn't bum me out either. I mean, so long as you are okay with the fact that humans are humans and some mistakes will happen (i.e. lugnuts found in burger packages every now and again), and especially if you are down with the whole hormone-injection kick society in currently working with these days (beefing up our beef from the get-go on the ranch), you should be okay eathing A&W. Myself, I will walk away and never forget the blue-collar drive of daily factory work -- respecting the worker, light industrial, for all that I can. And having been subjected to "the grind" of the cycle, I walk away, knowing shit many never will...
Koyaanisqatsi -- Life Out of Balance
[Movie shows clips of our human species interacting in giant flows of production and communication with our environment. This particular portion of the film includes shots of hot dog manufacturing. Many of my fellow employees had just been laid off from the hot dog factory across town.]
For me, the most soothing moments at work come when I just space right out, and I push my earphones in real far, so it cuts off all the choppy poundy noises of clanking machines and falling pallets, but not far enough so I only get bass throbbing -- instead that happy medium where I hear the perfect rush of streaming sound. It usually only works when I'm working at the back of either Line 1 or 2 -- "palletizing" (stamping boxes and putting stickers on them before stacking them as neatly as possible at a sometimes-frenzied pace on a pallet), gluegunning, master-packing or doing that one job where I just have to stand there and make sure the burger-boxing machine (they had a fancy name for it I didn't understand and might get in shit if I divulge this info) didn't get jammed. And this technique I use usually only works when I don't sleep much the night before. But sometimes, in a sort of delusion, the whole airplane-hangar-sized production facility (which reminded me of that videogame Portal, or from that one area "the Facility" in Goldeneye for 64) would turn into a giant jungle of vines and leafy trees and tree trunks that just went on forever. Tubes run up and down like branches (carrying water, soap, and liquid nitrogen), support ladders cut through the open air vertically about a story and a half up, conveyerbelts snake their way through walls and diagonally across the airspace, and metal rods stretch out every which way. It's hard to figure out quite what everything's for sometimes. If you had to get a new meat "rework" bin you would disappear for a bit into the wafting mists from the freezing machines and duck under falling meat next to the grinder -- the way you would have to slip beneath fallen logs and slither through foggy wood. I manage to manipulate the spectrum of sound entering my ear to just the frequency so that all the noises all around me sound like fresh running water. The indistinguishable rush of rainfall. The rushing streams. The exploding water droplets.
Or I spend another minute or so trying to jam in the earplugs as far as I possibly can -- to just get those nice deep billowing bass ripples and nothing else -- and it feels like I am trudging along the ocean floor underwater. Everything moves in slow motion. I manage to rearrange time. Box box, stamp, push, sticker, weigh, stack, return. Box box, stamp, push, sticker, weigh, stack, return. Tape machine breaks. Fix it. Box box, stamp, push, sticker, weigh, stack, return. And so on. I notice little peices of machinery that "drift" through their own life-cycle at the same speed and time as I -- humming along, doing some stupid fucking job, and trying to just vibe out... if possible. The machines break down all the time, though. We look up to the ceiling and it's way the fuck up there. And us, we're stuck here on the bottom, amongst rotting burgers and silly sharp objects you can easily trip on, feeding off the menial tasks we're tossed like crumbs, in order to feed our families, keep us pacified and even maybe even half interested.
Being in a cold hard factory, wearing a white lab-type coat, I realize I am about as far removed from these imagination lands as I could ever get -- but I make myself believe I am already there in these wonderlands. This is the only way to survive a burger factory.
I'm snapped back to reality [...yes I do sometimes feel like Marshall Mathers in 8 Mile -- minus the hot female in the picture] finally by some random yelling from five to ten meters away. WHAT??? I yell and whip around. With all the noise and everyone wearing earplugs, it's almost impossible to even hear what the guy next to you is saying. BREAK!! One of the blue hats (supervisors) smiles, about to start their stopwatch to time our break to the second. Sometimes I still can't hear what they've said, but they always make a motion as if they are drinking something quickly. That's how language works when language itself is impossible. Break is, no question, the best time of the day. And I go sit outside, sit in one of the farthest benches, and stare off into the south west -- just wishing, hoping, praying one day I will make it there. This image -- looking past the "Pack-Rat Storage" and "NOW HIRING $30 / h TECHNICIAN" signs, into the light posts of the industrial park and further on into the barren prairie landscape -- sometimes into the sunset, sometimes into the bright blue, and often into the pitch darkness -- this is picture will be imprinted into my brain FOREVER. A visual representation of ultimate longing.
Since I have two jobs, some days I go for 13 - 16 hours of work straight on 3 hours of sleep. Yah it's nuts. Sometimes I bike home along winding roads alongside desolate farm industrial buildings, passing the odd semi-truck driver every now and again, taking crash-out breaks to munch on sugar packets from work or just chill in the dirt allyways behind a lumber yard or giant production plant, basking in the wafting fragrance of slaughtered and "reduced" animals. I come to really enjoy these bike rides home. Compared with the city or the chaos of the factory, this place is so simple. There's no one to bother you. You just feel free like the prairie grasses. Sometimes I get home with just enough time to pass out naked on my bed and then go to work right away again as soon as I get up, depending on my schedules.
Sometimes I don't even have enough time to put on deoderant, I must admit, which isn't really that big of a deal since, for one, any sort of perfume you wear at all might get into the burgers, and two, when you're working with dudes that have done multiple stints in jail or rehab and such, you really lose that peer pressure desire to impress. I mean, there are seriously only a couple chill dudes that work there -- and they probably never wanted to work there either. Cheryl's super chill and Izi moved up here from Toronto to escape the gang violence his bro got him all tangled up in, so we could connect a bit (he even gave me a ride to town one day, and hung down at the nightclub I was working at too). But I mean, there were just so many knobs I've worked with. There were these really fucking weird Pakistani kids that work there. I don't know what it is about them, but they just pissed me off so much. I guess mostly it had to do with the fact that I saw them as basically the brownnosers of the workplace -- you know, the guys that suck up to the boss and show up early every day, but then just stand and do nothing as soon as the supervisor is out of sight. The one guy always looks at me real funny and stands too close to me. And so I'll recoil from him the way I would tear away from a wet dog. He has all these pimples and I thought he might just be going through puberty -- but it turns out he's like 25 or something. And then I just started feeling bad for him and his buddies -- they spent all week working making A&W burgers and didn't hang out or anything (at least I can chill out a bit in my limited spare time) and then they work not one, but TWO other jobs on the weekend -- one of them is at an actual A&W restaurant near their home. But one day I caught a glimpse of a look in their eyes that was the most depressing thing of all -- it was the way a younger brother might look up to an older brother. It bothers me I noticed that because the Burger Factory is pretty much the worst job I've ever had in my life. Anyone looking up to me at this point is making a huge mistake. But anyways, working in a place like this for extensive periods of time doesn't exactly encourage me to step up my "A-Game".
But I really like working with the Chinese guys. They seem strong, skilled and highly motivated -- truly happy to be here. It makes me somehow feel more connected to reality than when I'm working at the nightclub. Instead of facilitating the service of similar-tasting beverages that lodge their place in the hearts and minds of the priviledged consumers through massive marketing dollars and dumb chicks with tits, I'm doing the real shit that puts fuel in the bellies of millions, alongside the exact people who know how to do it best: China's finest. Sometimes I feel like, fuck bilingualism in Canada -- you know, that bullshit about reducing racism through forced French lessons. If we were serious about promoting fairness and equality or whatever-the-hell through language, we would all have to learn either Mandarin or Cantonese. For serious. I mean compare the number of French speakers in the world to Chinese speakers. That's your breakdown. But ya -- I don't think I would have survived if it weren't for the Chinese.
Sometimes I imagine these 30 and 40 year old ladies I'm working alongside could be my mother, too eh. And, even though they don't understand a single word I'm saying (because they're Eastern European or Chinese or just aren't that bright or have their earplugs in real tight), I still joke with them and have as much fun as possible with them. You'd be surprised how much something like that can improve your day. Johnson Wang (yeah -- that was seriously his name... but "unfortunately" he wasn't a dick... think about it...) gave me an inner glimpse of the game plan he and his wife shared -- ditch their teaching and journalism jobs back in China for the sake of their kids. Zen worked in a radar factory back in China, and he stood strong like a general. And then there was that one dude whose name I could never pronounce, but he reminded me of the monkey king character from that recent Jackie Chan movie. Instead of just eating snacks from the vending machine or sipping drinks from the coffee machine, sometimes one of the Chinese dudes would offer me lychee tea or green tea loaf or some other type of bun or something. It was always way better than my sandwich lunch, so I was always stoked to hit them up for shit. And I would just relax, for once, kick back and let the unintelligible sounds wash over me.
Blood like this could be from fist-sized clots
I mean these guys have already been on the receiving end of the international trade cycle (good or bad... feel free to weigh in...). So to me I really feel like I've been given a gift to be able to work with them, to learn as much as I possibly can from them. And the thing is -- and check this shit -- they're the only ones really willing to teach -- and that includes supervisors. Fuck, I mean, Hong used to work in a radar factory. Those two girls that were cousins but looked like twins (and even wore the exact same clothing, right down to identical workboots) were telling me about the giant residential factories the North Chinese hit up in the South of the country by Hong Kong to get big cash pretty quick for their families back home. To learn how to do factory work, don't waste your time on the authorities, because they have no interest in training you. Look to the guys who really know what's up.
I don't get much of a chance to hear much about what life is like back in the T-dot, though -- for one, none of my buddies are really loaded, and airtime is expensive, not to mention long distance charges -- and also, I'm always so busy planning for what I will end up doing and sneaking sleep in when I can, that I don't get a chance to try to send out emails much either. I got super stoked though one day when I called Pierre and he told me he met Jack White. Maybe he was lying, but it still was enough to motivate me. When your daily life becomes so banal and meaningless (burger burger burger...) it's nice to know your bud's having a chill time doing rad shit.
Because sometimes soundwaves do escape and travel long distance. Hearing about my buddies scaling and jumping a 12-foot fence to break into a building somewhere there along Bathurst down in the depths of Canada's largest city, to set up all nice and play what I know was the sweetest most refined agro-singer-songwriter-indie-ballads ever crafted -- and then leave without a trace -- well that would stoke anyone out. Props to Ai for hitting up the scene. Infiltration foreva baby!
See, summer is in full force there and I am missing it. If I were there right now, I know I would be listening to the swankiest oldskool dance and hiphop. But instead I keep my eyes on the prize -- working towards those waves I know are rolling in.
I'll just have to keep hitting up the burger scene -- helping create the most popular and certified
tastiest burgers in the land.
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