DAY ONE

Early Morning

THIS SECTION HAS NOW GONE 32 DAYS SINCE ITS LAST MAJOR ACCIDENT! stated the notice on the large blackboard near one side of the thick, rubber double-doors leading from the adjoining section.

Chris Smith stood beside the Greek foreman, Georgio, just inside the canning and bottle capping section of the factory.

Along one wall, just inside the large double-doors, stood the foreman’s office.   The double-glazed walls of the office shut out most of the factory noise, while allowing Georgio to keep an eye on the workers without having to step outside.   The rest of the vast building was covered almost from wall to wall with machinery, with barely room enough to squeeze between the machines.   Chris thought, “I could just imagine Lou Costello trying to squeeze through the few centimetres between these machines in a hurry.   ‘Abbott and Costello meet The Mangler’ would be a good name for the movie”.

The section produced aluminium cans and bottle tops.   The outlines of the cans or tops were painted onto large aluminium templates, which were stacked by hand onto a pressing machine, which literally punched out the complete can or top, leaving the scrap sheet metal behind.   The tops were then transferred via a small conveyer belt to an overhead hopper upon a second machine.   The hopper rotated continuously, keeping the tops in motion as they tumbled single file down an open runnel, made of four thick wires, to a threader to have a thread imprinted, then through a second runnel to drop into a large cardboard box on the ground.   They were then carried across to a gumming machine where they passed through a bath of warm rubber, which set inside the tops to act as a sealant.

As Chris stood near the doorway, his head was already throbbing from the sound of the machines, which were all open, without metal guards or outer walls.   Which not only meant there was a danger of falling into a machine as Chris noted from the blackboard near the door — but also that the decibel level of the factory noise could probably never be believed by anyone who did not hear it for himself.

Rubbing the right side of his head, Chris thought it was ironic that teachers and parents warn you against the danger of loud rock-and-roll music, then send you out to work in a factory like this one, where the noise level is many times greater than the loudest rock concert possible.   “Stop bludging, get a job and go deaf and mad!” thought Chris.