Save Me - Lisa Scottoline [117]
“It’s about damn time.” Sue nodded in agreement, and the older woman turned to Rose, smiling and extending a hand.
“Annie, I’m June Hooster, and welcome to Homestead. You’ll love it here, it’s a great company. Juanita screens on this shift, and I’ll introduce you to her.”
“Great, thanks.”
“Wonder what Trish was going to do with you? Put you in a uniform?” Sue eyed Rose’s loafers. “And you got the wrong shoes on. You need ‘shoes for crews,’ that’s what we call ’em.”
“Sorry, she didn’t say.” Rose stepped aside as another employee walked in the door, punched in, then headed toward a room at the end of the hall. “I hate to go home after I drove all this way. I even got a sitter.”
“Now that’s a different story.” Sue laughed, patting her shoulder. “Don’t waste a sitter, I never do. I take the long way home if I have a sitter, just because I can.”
June smiled at Rose. “Come with us, and we’ll get you a uniform and show you the ropes. We’re not allowed to have cell phones or purses on the floor, so you can stow your valuables in a locker.”
“Thanks, but I left my purse in the car.” Rose followed them down the hall and through the door that read WOMEN’S LOCKER ROOM. She felt bad lying to them, but it was hard to stick to a diet.
Especially in a potato chip factory.
Chapter Sixty-seven
Rose stood on the factory floor next to Juanita, feeling like her twin in an identical yellow jumpsuit, earplugs, and hairnet. Only ten employees worked in the immense room, which contained four huge lines of machinery that almost fully automated the production process, making chocolate-filled crackers and pretzel nuggets, then dropping them counted into bags which were sealed and packed into cardboard boxes. The boxes then traveled via a waist-high track of stainless steel rollers to Juanita and Rose, who X-rayed them.
“This job is easy, and don’t let it intimidate you.” Juanita kept her eyes trained on the X-ray machine. Its screen glowed an odd green hue, showing twelve ghostly circles. Juanita pointed to the image, her nail polish bright red under her clear plastic gloves. “Look. All you gotta do is make sure there’s twelve bags in each box. Like right here, see?”
“Yes.” Rose nodded. “Do you count them?”
“Yes, you got to, starting out. When you’re experienced, you can eyeball it and tell. But in the beginning, you gotta count ’em.”
“Okay.”
“Watch.” Juanita was already closing the box and sending it along the roller track. “If it’s okay, you close the box. If it’s not, you take it off the line and put it back here.” She gestured to a wheeled table behind them, just as another box rolled in front of her and she had to feed it through the X-ray machine. The green screen came to life. “See, this one’s okay, too.”
“It’s tough to keep up the pace,” Rose said, meaning it.
“It is. You gotta be quick. The main thing here is production. We got to keep the lines moving. No stopping.”
“It’s like Lucy and the chocolate factory, huh?”
“Sometimes it is.” Juanita smiled.
Rose hadn’t realized how stressful a factory job could be. The boxes came at a relentless clip, and the room felt overly warm despite large industrial fans mounted on the ceiling. A low-level hum filled the air, challenging her earplugs, and the floor vibrated from the heavy production machinery.
“The other day, one of the lines broke down, and the engineers fixed it so fast it could make your head spin. Like they say, time is money. If a single line is down a day, it costs us a hundred thousand dollars.” Another box appeared, and Juanita fed it into the X-ray machine, checked the green screen, then closed the flaps. “You can’t let a box go through with less than twelve bags. Then an account paid for twelve, but only got eleven.”
“That’s bad.”
“Sure is. Bad for me.” Juanita pointed to a black number code on the side of the box. “This number tells which lot it was, and they can trace it back to which shift the mistake happened on, and then Scotty comes to me and says, ‘Juanita, you’re the screener, you screwed up.’ You get a few