THE MEAT FACTORY
HOBART, read the logo on the big
dish washing machine.
On his first night as a
dishwasher for the Chalet, Wolf got to know ole Hobart a lot better
than he bargained for. Scotty, Bob and Jeremy, the pukes who were
supposed to train him, cut out on Wolf at nine thirty,
unceremoniously leaving him holding the bag.
It was a lot to be left with.
Restaurant dishes landed, no end in sight. Wolf's hours were supposed
to be three to eleven. He was alone and the dishes kept coming.
Wolf was excited about being
hired. “Your first real job!” His mother said, embracing him.
“I'm so proud of you!” Wolf was nineteen. He'd steered clear of a
job until after graduation. He felt that any obligation, even
part-time, might hurt him scholastically. Beyond a few neighborhood
odd jobs, like mowing lawns, Wolf never looked for work.
Post-graduation lofty ideals were
abound in Wolf's head. He wanted to go to college and become a
journalist, and maybe from there a famous writer. He wanted to attend
the Joe Kubert Art School and become a comic book illustrator. He
wanted to sing lead for a heavy metal band, and given his name, Wolf,
he figured he had a good stab at that enterprise, even if he couldn't
sing.
With all these conflicting
possibilities dangling before him, Wolf saw the necessity in taking
the year off and making a few bucks. Besides, given learning
experiences in “the working world”, it all seemed to lean toward
the positive.
He originally applied for
anything the Chalet would give him---he fancied himself a bellhop in
one of those old fashioned hotel monkey suits, running luggage and
begging for tips.
When he was called in for an
interview with Joseph Barr, he was told to go to the receiving area.
Receiving Area. Where applicants are received for interviews, Wolf
imagined. He heeded every word of job interview primer ever handed
to him in school. Soft-spoken but firm. Good handshake. Radiate
confidence. He had it all down.
When he got there, he discovered
the Receiving Area was actually “shipping and receiving”---the
loading docks. He found out that Mr. Barr, the honorable interviewer,
was really the dock supervisor, Joe Barr, a scruffy, no-nonsense type
only three years Wolf's senior.
Wolf came to the quick assumption
that he had primed himself for the wrong job. It wasn't one you
dressed up and spoke softly for; it was a job lugging crates around
on dollies, unloading trucks. As he left the interview he knew he
wouldn't land the job, that Barr had pegged him as a softy, which
Wolf supposed he was.
Two weeks later, Wolf got a call
from Bob LaMontagne, who didn't mention what job he wanted Wolf for,
but invited him down for an interview.
LaMontagne's interview wasn't
so much an interview as it was a sales pitch, a hard-sell. “We
gotcha insurance benefits after ninety days, we got free use a' the
health club every Tuesday, ya can't find a better place in this town
ta work,” he rattled, showing Wolf around the hotel kitchen. Wolf
was delighted over actually being ASKED to work a job, as opposed to
the disinterested grilling he'd experienced with Barr.
The job, he discovered on the
grand tour, was dishwashing. “An easy job,” LaMontagne told him
at least twice. Filling out his signature on the ob description form,
he read his official title, “kitchen help”. The job was said in
the form to consist of cleaning the kitchen and occasionally
assisting the culinary crew with food production. LaMontagne shook
his hand and told him to come in on Thursday, and so Wolf had been
hired.
Wolf's training consisted of the
pukes showing him a few keys steps of operation---loading dirty dihes
onto the conveyer belt, taking them clean off the unloading end and
storing them on the correct shelves---then popping outside for a
smoke that lasted an hour or two while Wolf floundered. The pukes
blew out the door for good around half past nine, Wolf holding the
bag and uninformed as to what happened next. Dining room waitstaff
hauled in an endless barrage of dirty dinnerware and
garbage----steaks, lobster, salad, cream and cheese
spreads---leftovers that mixed and meshed in the disposal trough.
Leftovers blobbed off the dishes as Wolf loaded them and would become
stuck in the conveyer belt, only to land in the Hobart's washtubs and
boil. The stink rose and filled Wolf's senses. The parade of dirty
dishes was unending, carried in, over and over. Waiters and
waitresses were still hauling in the dirty wares and food scraps.
Eleven o'clock, quitting time, had come and gone.Wolf felt like his
head was spinning. It's a meat factory, he thought, a dumping ground.
When does it stop, and when do I get to go home, like everybody else?
The first lull in the action that
occurred, Wolf shut off the machine and ran. Christ, did he imagine
it? As that busboy brought that last tray out to the dish machine,
was he laughing at him?
'Hey,” yelled one of the fry
cooks as Wolf made his break, “where ya goin'?” Wolf didn't
reply.
****
On his second night working,
Wolf learned a new word and that word was BANQUET.
At the height of the action
there were ten guys working on the Hobart. Even LaMontagne was
getting his hands dirty at one point.
There was commotion and traffic
everywhere. The kitchen was jamming with wait people carrying trays.
Wolf thought it best to stay on
the unloading end of the machine, removing and sorting clean dishes.
LaMontagne was animated, rattling
off commands like a gattling gun. He shot a big, harried smile at
Wolf. “This is it, son---the big one!”
“Whu-what's going on?”
Spluttered Wolf, who was genuinely shaken by all the activity.
“I'm not gonna lie to ya,
son; we're gonna be buried,” said LaMontagne, scrubbing a few
plates.
“Great,” groaned Wolf.
LaMontagne's words from a couple of days prior came back to him--
“It's an easy job!”
The scene was claustrophobic;
bodies everywhere, hustling, fighting for an inch of space.
FIRST COURSE: Wait people dropped
trays full of champagne glasses onto the counter and placed the
glasses twenty-five at a time into plastic racks. The glass racks
eventually jammed the expanse of the counter. The saucers and the
paper doilies that underlined the cocktails were all pushed
haphazardly into the disposal trough along with a few stray glasses,
which smashed. More trays landed, faster than they could be dealt
with. There was no end in sight.
“Let's go, Wolf,” yelled
one of the dishwashers on the loading end. Wolf couldn't keep up. He
tore as many clean dishes off the conveyer belt as he could. His
progress was slowed because the dishes came out hot and they burned
his hands. When too many dishes accumulated on the unloading stand,
Wolf would have to stop and put them away. When he did, the belt
would crowd to capacity and stop moving. Then the yelling would
commence.
“Let's go, Wolf! My grandma
unloads faster than you!”
Scotty, an effeminate,
pimply-faced teenager who was on hand the day before, came down to
the unloading end. “Listen,” he seethed, “I know it's hard.
But if you keep stopping, we're going to get killed up there! Now,
can you please move this thing?!”
“There are ten of you and one of
me,” Wolf complained.
“Goddammit,” Scotty pouted,
“pick up the pace!” He stormed back to the counter and whined to
LaMontagne. Wolf resigned himself to unloading, unloading, unloading.
Meanwhile up front, the counter was jam-packed and several waitresses
were bitching, telling the dishwashers to hurry up.
LaMontagne turned and headed
toward Wolf. Scotty was whimpering some sour interjection that Wolf
could not hear. LaMontagne whirled on Scotty and yelled at him, all
unintelligible, except for the last sentence, “if you're not happy
with it you can go the hell home!”
Scotty turned back to the work,
looking sullen. LaMontagne hopped onto the unloading end to help
Wolf. “Come on, Wolf,” he shouted, “let's show 'em how to run
this thing!” There was a heavy liquor smell on his breath.
The two toiled and managed to
stay ahead of things. Wolf was staggered by the mess on the counter.
“Is this that banquet I've been hearing about since I got in?”
“Oh,” chuckled LaMontagne,
“this is just the beginning!”
Wolf shuddered. The two worked
on. The feeders had glutted the belt with saucers, which were now
overlapped, ten to a row where only four should have fit, and one or
tow would periodically roll off the side of the conveyer and break on
the floor.
“Come on, come on!” LaMontagne
hollered to the feeders. “You're going too slow, ya bunch of
lightweights! Me and Wolf are falling asleep down here!”
Up front somebody yelled, “come
on, y'old fart! We'll bury your ass!”
On the counter, the saucers and
glass racks gave way to the second course---salad plates.Hundreds of
salad plates came back from the banquet. Most of the salads were
half-eaten, if touched at all.
Halfway through the salad
course, LaMontagne left. “I'll be right back,” he grumbled. He
wandered out back and Wolf was alone again.
“Let's go, Wolf,” urged
Jeremy, at the helm of the Hobart. On the other side, waitresses
complained and shouted. The Banquet Chef harangued the lot of them in
his sharp, annoying voice. “Gawdamn dishwashas! Whaddaya here for?
Whadda they pay ya for?!”
LaMontagne returned, wearing a
light jacket. “Wolf, I'm going home. Do a good job! Hey,” he
shouted to everyone else. “I'm leaving, now! One a you c'mon down
here, help Wolf out!” And he was gone.
Wolf was helped, thereafter, by
Rob and a tall, vacant-looking kid named Steve. The counter was chock
full of dirty pots and pans, salad plates, sauce bowls and dinner
plates. More trays were landing than could actually fit on the
counter.
“I don't believe this,”
muttered Wolf. “Does it get any worse?”
“It should,” Steve
deadpanned. “We're hitting the busy season, now. It'll be this way
every weekend.”
“Oh, my God,” Wolf said. “How
late does this shit go? I'm scheduled to leave at eleven-thirty...”
Steve nudged Rob. “Hey,”
he grinned. “He thinks he's leaving at eleven-thirty.” They
laughed.
“I don't think it's funny,”
bittered Wolf. Oboy, Wolf, he thought. Your first real job.
The onslaught kept going. Gooey
stacks of dirty dinner plates landed along with hundreds of little
monkey dishes that contained half-eaten chocolate sundaes. When the
monkey dishes came through, many of them were still soiled with
chocolate syrup and had to be sent back. The backup was incredible.
Finally, amidst squawking and
bitching from wait people and cooks, Jeremy shut the dish machine
off. “We're all going on break,” he announced.
Glasses broke and a waitress
whined. Jeremy's call seemed the equivalent to a declaration of
mutiny. Wolf didn't know if it was a good idea to pull out; all he
knew was that he wanted to.
“Who's in charge?” Asked Rob.
“I dunno,” said Jeremy. “I'll
go find out!”
Wolf and the others stood about
and waited for Jeremy. Wolf heard more dishes breaking, wait people
snapping and yelling, “what's going on back there?”
“The dishwashers stopped!”
“Why?!”
“They say they're all going on
break!”
“All of them at once???”
“They're always on break, the
sons of bitches!”
“Come on, you guys,” a
waitress shouted. “We need room!”
Jeremy returned, grinning.
“What'd they say?” Asked Steve.
Jeremy snickered. “They said,
'please don't go!' “
“Should we go?” Asked Wolf.
“What do YOU think? Wolf didn't
know what to think---he just knew he had to get out of this.
A stout, tight-lipped woman in a
navy blue pantsuit stepped into the dish area. All eyes turned to
her.
“What's going on here?” She
demanded.
“I don't know,” said Steve.
She looked at Wolf. “I don't
know, either,” he answered. Everyone shrugged their shoulders;
nobody knew.
“We're on strike,” cracked
Jeremy.
“I see,” said the woman.
“Would you gentlemen like to keep your jobs?”
“That's questionable,” said
Bob.
“Is it?”
Everyone reconsidered the
situation. “No,” they all answered. Wolf was actually still on
the fence, but he opted to say nothing.
“Well,” she said, “let's
get rolling.”
They turned the Hobart back on.
Inconceivably, it got worse.
Eleven -thirty, quarter to twelve and Wolf couldn't believe it was
all still coming, wouldn't stop, wouldn't even slow. “Jesus,” he
kept repeating, “oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus.....”
Junk piled in upon junk. He'd gone
to an orientation meeting earlier that day. He'd felt somewhat
secluded there among the newly-hired waitresses, busboys, sales reps
and aerobics instructors, being a lowly dishwasher, bottom of the
hotel's caste system---the personnel director, a smiling, maternal
woman, was pumping the enthusiastic catechism of heavy business, the
Chalet Team Brotherhood spiel, how they were all salesmen and women,
working to promote a winning, positive image of the Chalet.
Garbage upon garbage. In the
disposal trough, wasted food mingled and clashed with scrapped paper,
wads of wax from candles, spent cigarettes and ashes and the
occasional broken champagne glass. Big pots, pans and soiled, sticky
dinnerware bombarded the counter in heaping, unstable piles. Sections
of the mess were systematically wiped out, then replaced by more
almost immediately.
The catechism of promotion stops
here, thought Wolf. We're the toilet cleaners of the universe.
Nothing got sold or promoted here. It's just where they brought the
leftovers to be destroyed.
Assortments of burning wares
rolled out on the conveyer belt in a relentless procession. Wolf
blundered through it and eventually learned there was no place left
to put anything. The belt stopped with greater frequency while Wolf
had to look further and harder for places to put the dishes and pans.
“Hey,” smiled Steve. “Think
this is fun? Look over there. We gotta do all that, too.”
Wolf peered over a storage shelf
at the pot sink on the other side of the kitchen. In the three big
washing tubs, dozens if not hundreds of pots and pans, in all varying
shapes and sizes, formed a jumbled mountain that rose three feet
above all three tubs.
“I can't believe this,”
moaned Wolf. “I can't. Oh, Jesus, oh, esus, how do we ever get out
of here?”
“Just leave,” offered Rob.
“Whu—no. No, I can't! Look
at all this!”
“Hey,” said Rob, “you've
done your eight measley hours. It's all volunteer from here on in.
One more or less person won't get this shit done any faster!”
“But you guys---I can't---”
“Sure you can! You did your
eight hours. You can get the hell out! Hey, you're new at this!”
Wolf looked at the scrap disaster
again. “Huh. Uhh, you sure?”
“Hell yeah---go!”
“I don't wanna shaft you
guys...”
“You're not shafting us. Go!”
Wolf headed out of the kitchen.
“Hey,” yelled one of the fry cooks after him, “where ya goin'?”
Wolf didn't look back and didn't reply.
He ran down the stairs and
clocked out. He headed down the hallway and up those last two flights
of stairs at a brisk, fearful getaway pace. He hit the night air and
was astounded for a moment by the stillness, the quietude. His first
real job. Christ. Wolf ran all the way home, the stench of the
garbage and the steamwash sticking hard to his senses.
Copyright 1992 C.F. Roberts/2019 Molotov Editions
******************
As I've kinda been spinning my wheels on several novels in the last couple of years I've decided to put more energy into what's working out for me like gangbusters----short prose and short fiction.
Shit, a good many writers I know and admire have succeeded in banging out book length product for public consumption at this point. Me? NUTHIN'. I feel like that's gotta change.
To this end, I've started compiling two book-length collections of short stories, which I hope to have completed by the end of the year. Card is subject to change, as we rasslin' fans like to say, but the rough lineup presently looks like this:
- THE MEAT FACTORY AND OTHER STORIES
NOW:
The Lost Diner
---originally published in
SHOCKBOX
The Meat Factory
---previously unpublished
Zoned Industrial
-----Originally published
in THE BIRDS WE PILED LOOSELY
Monster Kid
Shit Flavored Shit
----Originally published
in VAGABONDS: Anthology of the Mad Ones
Hannibal and Sandi in the Afterglow
Thursday (Sound of Tiny Planets Dying)
The Aquarium
-----Originally published
in BLIND IGUANAPRESS
The King of Moths
-----Originally published
in FEARLESS
The Scowl
-----Originally Published
in ILLITERATI
The Jennifer Tree
---Originally published
in ALIEN BUDDHA ZINE
After the Bataan Death March
Acquaintance
-----Originally published
in THE MOWER
Maggie and Merrill get Real
-----Originally
published in PARAPHILIA
The Mask
Superman, Jesus and Rice Patties
----Originally Published
in UNLIKELY STORIES V
Cartoon Land
SPECIAL FOR THE COLLECTION:
Return to the Meat Factory
Love and Desperation in the Meat Factory
Son of the Meat Factory
--- In the works
ALSO SOUGHT/PROJECTED FOR BOTH COLLECTIONS
(i.e., I'm presently hunting to locate this stuff!)
Ghetto Head
---Originally Published in MASSACRE
ANNEX (Shockbox Press Chapbook)
Seeing
---Previously Unpublished
The Second Wound
----Originally Published in
BIZARA
Second Coming
--Originally published in
FAIRYTALES FROM THE URBAN HOLOCAUST (Yorkville Press), DIMINISHED
CAPACITY
The Night is for Lovers
----Shockbox Press Chapbook
Scorched
------Originally published in
FAIRYTALES FROM THE URBAN HOLOCAUST (Yorkville Press)
- THE EVANGEL: Tales of the Irrational
NOW:
The Great Tradition
---Originally published in
FAIRYTALES FROM THE URBAN HOLOCAUST (Yorkville Press)
Snapshot of the Rural Pogroms
Faith
---Originally published in
ALIEN BUDDHA ZINE
The Day the Sun got an Eye Gouge
--- Odd Books Chapbook
Boil Order
----Originally Published
in CORVUS REVIEW
The Crazy Fuckers
Hubcap Diamond Star Halo
Fat Chance
----Originally
Published in THE MOWER
trinityTrinityTRINITY
After Carnival
----Originally published
in CRAB FAT MAGAZINE
Hannibal Shooting Fish in a Bucket
Fort Apache the Exchange
Junkyard King
------Originally published
in VOX
Old Man Delprete
----Originally Published in GOTHICA
The Windshield of a Moving Car is Hard,
especially when you drop on top of it from Thirty Feet
----Originally Published
in UNLIKELY STORIES V
The Walk
---Originally published in
FAIRYTALES FROM THE URBAN HOLOCAUST (Yorkville Press)
Uncle Drew's Lysergic Backbrain
Apocalypse (Slight Return)
Give Up the Sun
----Originally Published
in PRESSURE PRESS PRESENTS
Wet
----Originally published in
THIS ONE TIME THE ALIEN BUDDHA GOT SO HIGH (Alien Buddha Press)
The Seven Virgins of Eufaula
---Presently in the works
The Night they Shut the Geek Show Down
----Molotov Editions
Chapbook
The Shrill
-----Originally
published in RANT
Both collections are gonna be bent, because being bent is just in my DNA---but THE MEAT FACTORY will be a little more earthy in tone, whereas THE EVANGEL will be more along the lines of "somebody dropped something in my egg nog---WOAH NELLY!!!"
Anyway----any takers?
THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:
THE BOLSHOI-Friends
BRIAN JONESTOWN EXPERIENCE-Strung Out in Heaven
Whatever else you got
No comments:
Post a Comment