Sitka or Bust: Commute The World

I woke up and realized that I’ve completely lost feeling in the tips of my toes. The big toes are definitely the worst, but the littler ones are on their way. I don’t like the way the blanket rubs them because it feels like my toes are foreign, like I am suddenly able to understand the toes of another. I just want my own toes back. I won’t call my mum today because I’m calling papa bear, I really only have enough time after work gets out to wait in line for one phone call. And mum got the last one. Maybe he’ll enjoy my stories and my monotone weariness.

I hope I make super crew, but at the same time I just want to sleep for more than five hours and be able to shower in the same night. Internet would be nice too. Super crew is a lone group of stragglers who stay at the plant longer than the mainline crew. They continue working after the main rush of salmon has ended and we shift the fillet lines from five to only one. How prestigious would it be for me to be chosen for Super Crew after arriving late and after many of the crew members had already been pegged? I always work hard, even when I’d rather flop onto the conveyor belt and get packaged into little baggies. Sometimes its just nice to get a little pat on the back.

I saw Linda pounce on an unsuspecting sleeper in a hoodie today. She gave her the “I’m watching you” sign before threatening to send her to fish house. I love how fish house is a punishment. There are a bunch of crews that work at the plant; Fish House does the decapitating of the salmon and guts and gills them, Fillet takes the decapitated fish and turns them into clean and proportioned sides of fish, Roe Room steals the eggs from the carcasses for caviar, and Vac Pac seals the fish into bags for shipping. There are other departments of course, but those are the biggies that people work in.  My roommate once told me that working here is like working in a sweatshop summer camp: we get rewarded with fake monopoly money for candy bars at the store and punished with the slime line that is Fish House. I secretly want to know what the slime line entails.

I ate an apple today. You may think that is a boring thing to write about, but when this place only offers food that has been canned in the early 30’s, I get excited over what I can. This was the first piece of fruit I’ve found here and I ogled it for a while, half expecting it to be some sort of illusion or food mirage. I sat eating my rice and watching the apple on my tray, just watching it sit there and look tempting. I knew I didn’t have much time to eat it, and apples really do take a lot longer to eat than say a pudding cup or French fries. I told myself to hoard it for later when I could savor it, I planned it out in my mind while I was scarfing my plain rice: I’d put it in the pocket of my smelly fish overalls and retrieve it at the end of my shift. I was  steadfast in my thoughts even as I saw my hand act of its own accord and bring that shiny apple to my mouth. It only dawned on me that I was ruining everything when I tasted the beautiful flesh. Sleep deprivation is making me senile and slightly ridiculous.

At best though, everyone who works here has to be sort of crazy. We play pranks just to pass the monotony. My supervisor grabbed my foot from under the conveyor belt today as I was pulling bones and I jumped. Apparently he just went down the line of the conveyor belt, grabbing ankles to scare people. My supervisors are hilarious. I bent down to look under the belt and found him returning to work, hosing the pink slime off the concrete of the floor and the metal of the machinery. I knew he was going to look up so I grabbed a fillet from the line and dangled it from my fingertips. He caught my eye and I mimed throwing it at him, the thing had to have been two feet long so he panicked and jerked back in surprise. He laughed though, what a keeper. Even if he was the one who told me writers don’t make any money and I should find a better professional goal.

The daily activities of plant life are definitely ingrained into my personal schedule now. I fear that I will wake to the shouts of “Fillet, fillet” for the rest of my days. The gear room is getting especially crowded during break times and following meals, I find myself always dodging flailing arms, rubber gloves coated in slime, and puddles of mystery substances all over the concrete floor. To get to my gear hook, I have to climb through a mass of wriggling bodies in various stages of frigid dampness and brush aside the spread of rain jackets and extra large rubber pants. No matter how long I leave my gear to dry, it will always be soaked through in the morning, well 10PM is my morning. I actually got punched in the face today as I was walking back from my break. Sure it wasn’t an epic brawl, but it got my blood pumping. It takes a very bored person to see a punch to the face as a welcome distraction. As disoriented as I was, I apologized for “running into” his fist and continued on to my mandatory station on the belt.  I now know to keep a wary eye on Turkish kids who struggle putting their sleeves on. Can’t say I haven’t done it myself, struggle that is, not punch someone in the face.

The grip of my fingers is surprisingly weak. I feel like a newborn reaching out to an extended finger to grasp,  but at least when babies hold on people say how surprised they are that the baby has such a good grip. If I were to shake someone’s hand at this point they would smirk and roll their eyes before giving up and casually remarking to their friends later what a limp shake I’d managed. Oddly enough, my biceps are getting either bigger or more defined through my “strenuous” and “excessive” tweezing. What is really hilarious is watching my put my pants on. Normally such a mundane task would be performed though a state of unconscious muscle memories, but now I have to direct each tiny muscle group of my hands and fingers to do precise movements at synchronized times. I feel like I’m always working with my left hand; a floppy and lazy appendage that I’d always ignored for its brilliant sibling.

Towards the end of my shift tonight my boss came over to me and worked beside me for a while. I was chatting up a storm as usual, my hoarse voice barely audible over the thrum of the machinery and the screeching bangs of metal trays being moved on rickety carts. He kept looking at me with a weird expression on my face as I went back and forth from tweezing and cleaning the machine’s blade. Finally, he smiled and crooked his finger at me, motioning that I lean in towards him. I gingerly leaned over the conveyor belt, thinking he wanted to say something but he thought I wouldn’t be able to decipher it through a combination of the din and his accent. Slowly he reached up with his tweezers and peeled a large, dried-on piece of something from my face before going back to work. I laughed nervously. What else do you do after your boss picks a mystery crust from your cheek? I honestly hope it was salmon and not some large booger or something, especially since he used his work tweezers to remove it. Nothing that can be removed from your face by a tweezer wielding boss is  ever attractive. I hope he has forgotten all about it, but I know it will haunt my memories forever.

It may only be my 5th day but people are beginning to show signs of severe mental deterioration. Manv  fall asleep while working, complain of various painful ailments, quit showing up, or even resort to creating small sculptures of salmon remains. I have seen these tiny Castaway-esque “Wilsons” and they are both creative and disturbing. When the fillet is sent through the de-boning machine it often clogs the  blade with the scattered matchsticks of salmon bones. These thin bones still have meat clinging to them, but that just adds to the effect. A baseball sized shape is formed with the easily mold-able remnants and the conveyor belt sweeps it down the line, with every worker adding tiny signatures to the creature. Some blood clot eyes here, a gut smile there, we make do with what we find on the line. Once they reach the graders at the end they generally place the completed sculpture on the control box for the conveyor belt, allowing it to perch high above the belts where each line can compare their own and silently pick favorites.

I almost died walking through the plant again by slipping on salmon goo, aptly dubbed pink slime. Because the  conveyor belts are on risers, we must  walk underneath them to enter and exit the plant. I made the mistake of not wearing a hood the  first time I walked in and got a shirt full of pink slime all over me. It drips from the undersides of the belts, from the metal grating of the floor, gets propelled by the blast hose or a worker annoyed at having so much stuck to his gloves. Duck your head and tuck your hair because you will get hit by something. I tend to more than most and I don‘t understand it. My supervisor checked on my progress today and as I turned to talk to her she noticed my utter devotion to decorating myself with pink slime. She wrinkled up her nose and gave me the once over before saying, “You dirty. How you get so dirty?” The question was apparently rhetorical because she waited for no answer and instead turned a vicious blast of water on my bibs with no notice. After startling briefly, I swiped gingerly at my front to help encourage the slime off my raingear.

My left foot swelled up at the 8 hour mark of my shift. We had just returned from a break and I didn’t want to draw any attention to myself so I just wiggled my toes hoping they had just fallen asleep or something. When I felt the distinctive pins and needles I knew that they had not fallen asleep,  but had instead lost circulation. I had an inner struggle with myself over making a dash to the bathroom to remove my sock and let my foot expand a bit more. I was going to decline and just let my foot turn black and hopefully sever itself while I worked, but my glove slashed open on an errant fishbone and I finally had an excuse to leave the line. Citing a need for new gloves, I limped awkwardly to the gear room, sat on a slimy bench, and removed my sock. I threw the sock into a “secret heap,” really just my extra pair of pants, and hoped it wouldn’t get pilfered. I spent the  rest of my shift barefoot in the one boot, and it was glorious. I think the freezing temperatures helped with the swelling. My roomie offered  me some dubiously obtained stashes of medication.

Kind of sucky conditions here, and the morale is circling the drain. But on the plus side I’ve definitely gotten skinnier because the food is horrible and constant weariness keeps me from doing anything in my free time besides sleep.