History I

When you entered the building, the first thing you noticed was the sharp smell of chlorine. The second thing you noticed was a fainter, slightly sweet, clean smell - fresh fish. I had experience, references, I signed the non-disclosure (Surimi was high-tech, proprietary), and so started my brief career making artificial crab.

One night, a nosebleed took me off the line. Accidental, fortunate, probably the product of the dry air, dehydration, and sleep deprivation, I was sent to the QA office to staunch the flow. Ernie, the Quality Engineer, in lab coat, safety glasses, poofy hairnet, was dissecting a package of "flake". He cut the vacuum-packed pouch open with a razor knife and methodically fingered the product until he found something.

"Look at this! What do you think that is?" I plucked it from his open palm, enjoying this demonstration of trust.

"A ball bearing?" The production equipment must have required thousands of bearings.

"No, a BB!"

"What’s the difference?" I feigned bovine ignorance.

"Oh, there’s a difference…" He snatched it back, dropping it, with a rattle, into a shallow stainless pan.

I watched him, blankly daubing at my nostril. Eventually I trudged, in my floppy rubber boots, back out to my spot on the packaging line.

Later, around three in the morning, Ernie appeared on the line. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. He repeatedly ran a pair of pouches through the metal detector, the same route that all packaged product took. Each time a gate popped out, across the conveyor belt, and directed the packages into a separate plastic tote. I knew, with certainty, those packages also contained my BB’s.