Friday, December 16, 2011

Bad work situations

Reading Ben's Blog I decided that it had triggered a memory of the worst job I ever had...and it was the same place Ben had worked in the past.  The place was called Burris Mills.  It was a flour mill.  I knew I was in trouble when I landed in the break room that first day and everyone was sitting around picking their noses!  The bad part was by the end of the day, so was I.  My eye started to hurt and when I picked at it, out of the corner of my eye came a long strand of white junk that actually hurt as it came out.  Eye felt a lot better after.  Then I remembered building kites in my youth out of paper bags/sacks and using water and flour as a glue to hold them together.  Hey, we entertained ourselves cheaply back then.  Anyway after a while I discovered that the dust in these places can flash into a fire real easily and lots of mills had them in the past.  The next thing of note were the regularly scheduled shutdowns for fumigation!  We taped all the opennings closed with plastic and went about spraying some sort of poison into and on everything.  Yep, flour too.  It was some sort of Bromide concoction.  Gas masks were issued and blood tests required afterwards.  Was interesting.  But getting back to the work week.  We worked a month on days, a month of swing shift and a month on graves.  Just about the time you acclimatized to one you were off to another.  Really stinks!  But I quit to go back to school and get my degree so I guess it all worked out in the end.  That poison must not have affected the gonads, had 4 darling daughters out of the deal.  Well, to be honest Mama had 4 darling daughters, I just hung around the outside.

Windy

1 comment:

  1. Good grief!! Didn't realize you had worked at Burris Mills.. I didn't work for them but was a USDA inspector. Take samples and fill out a paper and package it up, send to the office. Didn't you love that belt man lift between floors all the way to the roof? I'd ride up there some at night and watch planes land at the airport just south of there.

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