FRIDAY II. Friday's back and this time it’s personal

“Break time. Comon lets go.” The guy on line 1 seems overly happy.
“What are ye doing today?” I ask him.
“Nothing” he says, “they forgot to load one of the bays with Capacitors so all the product they made has been rejected. So, break time?”
I look at my watch and see its 12.45, break is at 1 but I thought close enough and start walking towards the canteen.
“They forgot to load one of the bays with Capacitors, isn’t there only like 3 bays on those machines? How did they miss the fact that one of them was empty?”
He shrugs his shoulders and we walk into the canteen. I can never figure out how no matter what time I walked into the canteen there was always a line. It was as if the person on the register refused to let anyone leave the line unless there was someone to replace them. As we got to the top of the line I looked over our three choices of main course.
1. Some type of pasta with white sauce and even whiter chicken pieces floating in it. 2. Something in Bread crumbs which I presume is cod. And 3 the vegetarian option which looks like someone has walked outside and put a load of leaves into a bowl and are calling it a salad.
“What ill it be?” asks the greasy and totally disinterested chief (I use that term loosely)
“I’ll have fish and chips. What is that cod?”I ask.
“Pork chops” is his reply, “You want some gravy with that?”
As I try to digest the fact that I have ordered battered pork chops and chips I look as the container filled with brown liquid with a black crust on top of it.
“No I’m good” I say and walk over to pay for my meal. Luckily the food is part paid for by the company so it only costs me €2.50 still I can’t help but feel I would have been happier with the money. I look around for some where to sit and see the guy from line one sit at a table with the guy working in the next station from me (who apparently hasn’t left the canteen since he went for coffee this morning) and a tech from line 3 so I go over to join them. As I sit down I look at the plate in front of the guy working in the next station from me.
“What the hell is that?” I say “did you go for the salad?”
“Ya I wanted to try it for a change. There was two pieces of carrot and the rest is lettuce. How can they call that a salad. Fuck, I’m going to get a bowl of chips.”
“You should get some gravy with that.”I say as he leaves the table.
I look over at the tech from line three who is talking to the guy from line one.
“I can’t believe you don’t remember him he was skeletor's master. I think his name was horlex.”
“Like the drink?” I say.
“Ya do you remember him?” he asks, “His face was half white and half black…”
“And his amour was shaped like a cup.” I say. He stares at me for a minute as if trying to remember if there was really a guy in he-man who looked like a cup. Luckily we were interrupted by my tech sitting at the table.
He turns to me and says, “Why didn’t you wake me I nearly slept through break?”
“I didn’t think it was an emergency.” I say “Anyway you never eat anything.”
“Ya” he says “but I have been looking forward to coffee and a fag.”
“You’ll never get back to sleep.”
“Don’t worry” he says and gets up and heads off to get his coffee.
The guy working in the next station from me sits back down and eats one of his chips. “I don’t think this is gravy.” he says as I cut into my pork chop. I now realize that the only reason to put bread crumbs on a pork chop is so you cannot see what the pork chop looks like.

As I walk out of the canteen at 2.20 the tech from line three walks with me telling me a story about how he once bought a car for €50 and drove it into Limerick drunk. The reason the car was so cheap he told me was that the steering column was not joined and that you had to lift the steering wheel to make the connection and steer. It sounded like bullshit but if there was ever a man who would pay €50 for a car which you cannot steer it was him. As we get to my machine, I sit down and the story ends with him abandoning the car on the nenagh bypass. I see the supervisor for line 3 coming towards us.
“Hey are those boards on trolley beside your machine tested yet? You are holding up the line” he says to the tech.
“Ya they‘re done and they have passed. Just throw them down the line.” says the tech.
As the supervisor walks back towards the line I look at the tech.
“When did you pass them I haven’t seen you at your machine all day?” I say.
“Ah, I didn’t test them. But they are probably fine.” He says looking around.
I worked on line three for a few days and knew that on a good day 50% of those boards would pass. As I watch his supervisor throw the boards down the line and listen to the tech bitch about the fact that I don’t have a seat for him I think ‘God this is shit, but thank fuck its Friday.’