Dairy Work And Jamaican Joe

Worked in a dairy for a while. The section I worked in contained six long conveyor belts. Flatbed trailers stacked head high with crates of empty milk bottles were reversed each side of the conveyors and our job was to unload the crates onto them. As soon as you emptied one flatbed, you jumped across to the full flatbed on the other side of the belt and another trailer full of crates would appear in place of the empty one. It just went on and on and on, all day and all night.

You didn't need hands with fingers, you needed hooks, and hooks were what you'd got at the end of the day. You couldn't hold a cup, mug or a glass, you just sat there with your hooks resting on your thighs and hoped that someone would feed you.

There was a Jamaican guy in the yard who spent all day sweeping. I suspected he was given the sweeping jobs because the boss was racist so I asked him if he got fed up spending all day with a broom.

"I used to work on the railway," he said."All day long it was ‘Get that broom Joe and go sweep that platform’. In the end I got sick of it and came here."

"But you're still sweeping now," I pointed out.

"When I first got here they said, ‘Get that broom Joe, go and sweep the yard.’ I told them, I ain't sweeping no yard. I want to work up there on the belts like the other guys. I did it for just one day. Next day when I got in, I asked if they wanted me to sweep the yard and I've been sweepin' it ever since."

Then he grinned at me and said,"Man, I might be black but I ain't fucking stupid."