Cleaning

I was walking through the hospital corridors this morning when I saw a man wielding a dust sweeper, painstakingly collecting every fibre of dust along the margins of the corridor, and it reminded me of the time a dozen or so years ago when I worked as a cleaner at Whitworths in Irthlingborough. I'd worked there a few times in the production area doing various jobs. Sometimes I'd run a packing line, where we'd run a machine that put pre-packed bags of sultanas or other dried fruit into the cartons. Easy and repetitive (as long as the machine behaves itself). Another time I worked on the dried apricot production line. When the apricots arrive at the factory they are well and truly dried into a hard mass. They are soaked in a weak acid in order to separate them and soften them. Funny enough, I haven't fancied one since then.
Then I worked in the pepper and spice department for a shift. I was on the floor above the packing line. I had to keep the pepper flowing through a hole in the feed hopper where it was gravity fed into the little pots that you buy in the shops. I used a broomstick.
Such variety! Those little packs of casserole mix? Packed them. Currants, sultanas and raisins? Packed them as well.

Then there was the small matter of disposing of all the cardboard and packaging that the raw materials came in. I worked on the baler for a few shifts before I reached the pinnacle of my time there. I joined the cleaning team.
We cleaned the wash areas and the toilets around the factory. We kept the rest rooms and canteens clean, sweeping and mopping. We emptied the ashtrays in the smoking areas, we picked up any rubbish lying around.
And we spent a long time hiding away, because with all the will in the world it only takes fifteen minutes to sweep and clean the restrooms after the mid-shift breaks,and the rooms weren't dirty anyway. We found an empty office in an old part of the site and made ourselves scarce for an hour at a time. It was a big site and they just assumed that we were working at the other end. The place was spotless, so if we didn't do even the little bit we did, then you'd soon notice.

So we squirrelled ourselves away, reading books and doing the crossword, waiting for the next foray with mop, broom and bucket.
I drove past the site last year. It's gone. All the buildings demolished, with no trace of the busy and bustling enterprise that employed hundreds of staff over three shifts just a decade before. They're going to build houses, but where will all those potential buyers find jobs to pay their mortgages?