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[continued from yesterday's post; series began 10/20]
When my inability to keep up in the upper shroud position became obvious I was reassigned to the lower position, on the floor itself. Now that the shroud had been draped over the tops of the sides where the meat hook was, workers there (guys this time) flipped up the bottom of the shroud and pinned it into place on both sides, like a diaper that tucked up the loose meat and fat hanging down.
I dove in full-bore with what I was supposed to do. They had a system where the pins were delivered in special stainless steel wheelbarrows that had holes in the bottoms so they could be sprayed with hot water before being put back into service. One of my jobs there was to get a big yellow hose and spray those things down with very hot water...almost boiling. The pressure coming from the hose was pretty high, and if you didn't grab it just right it would get loose from you and wreak havoc, burning anyone that was near.
As for the pinning, I struggled to keep up, and must have looked comical to those close by. As simple as it sounds - after all, you just bring up the bottom of the shroud and pin it into place on both sides - there was a flow, a method that you had to adopt or you would fall behind. And I got behind a lot! The beef was freely swinging from hooks, and if the job was not done properly would pivot and turn around, which meant I at times ended up facing my coworkers from the wrong side of the line. This would completely throw the rhythm off, and sometimes I ended up literally chasing the sides almost to the door into refrigeration! A time or two I had to watch forlornly as it entered those doors with the shroud still handing free, pins stuck uselessly into the dangling cloth.
In spite of these theatrics, out of curiosity I would take every opportunity possible to look into the other parts of the floor. The shroud line was at the very end of processing on the kill floor and was situated so that it was the first part of the line you'd see after coming out of the locker room for your shift. Everything done beforehand to the freshly-killed beef was much deeper in and off to the right, behind the wall of the knife-sharpening cage. I nevertheless peered curiously in that direction as often as I could; to me the place was fascinating. From my duty station I could see just a sliver of what was going on there: part of the skinning line, and parts of the tongue and head lines further in the distance, all simultaneously moving in different directions at the same speed. I wondered, Would I ever get to go in there and just take a look around?
As it turned out, the answer to that question was a big fat Yes.
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