Floating

15 YEARS AGO, I was a part-time/full-time “floater.”

I started working at Tyson’s Mexican Original plant in Fayetteville, Ark., while I was going to the U of A. They paid well enough that I could work 30 hours a week while going to school full-time. I eventually transitioned to 40 hours, working second shift (3-11 p.m.). After college graduation, I held on to the job until I could find one using my journalism degree. Fifteen years ago, I was still there, and would be for another year.

M.O. made tortilla products (it was a division of Tyson, known for chicken, but, like most megafoods, is diversified) including taco shells and chips made with limestone-ground corn (or “masa”). We were a major supplier for Taco Bell, which kept us very busy during the chain’s rapid expansion in the early 1990s. I started, like most, in a Level 1 job, standing at the end of one of the large machines that cooked and spat out tortillas or chips or shells and packing the product in bags and boxes. After a couple of years, I got a Level 2 job, which was stacking the boxes on pallets. It was still fairly physical, but not as tedious and, of course, the pay was better.

At the end of 1993 I had finally made the jump to Level 3. The department that made stacks of corn tortillas expanded into second shift. This product required big vats of corn to be cooked and ground on site, and “corn cook” (which included the grinding) was a Level 3 job. So that’s what I was doing for a living when I found out about you-know-what.

Just as I was starting my chemotherapy treatments, the plant managers determined that they would not need a second shift for corn tortillas after all. In some industries this would mean being laid off, but there was always plenty to do around this plant. Thus a bunch of us became “floaters,” doing whatever needed to be done that regular employees didn’t have covered. Sometimes it was make-work, other times it was filling in for absent workers. As regular job positions opened up, we would fill them and be taken off the floater list.

Within weeks, the Level 1 floaters found jobs, as there was a fair amount of turnover. But I was Level 3. This meant I was handy to fill in for an absent Level 2 or Level 3 job, and especially to give 15-minute or lunch breaks to those who were there. It also meant they had to make an effort to find me another Level 3 job, which meant I wasn’t coming off the floater list any time soon.

As my treatments continued, I found myself in an unusual situation in regards to the plant’s absence policy. Normally each absence adds up towards a limit you can be away from work over any particular period. But I triggered the “serious illness” clause. Technically every day that I called in was an extension of the original absence for chemotherapy. As long as it was all related to the Hodgkins, I wasn’t in trouble with the company no matter how many days I missed.

The downside was that time away from work was unpaid, on the other hand, I still had a job whenever I could make it in. And the supervisors didn’t mind it when I wasn’t there. An absent floater isn’t missed. When I could make it, I got to float around the plant, usually giving breaks.

Eventually, I’ll get around to a post about the chemo side-effects.

For now I should note that some lingered longer than others. I would feel fine enough to go to work, but then I would get out on the plant floor and feel – well, wrong.

The most pronounced was when I helped at the head the taco-shell line. At that end, big lumps of masa dough would be fed into a machine with big rollers that rolled it out into tortillas. These would be fed on a conveyor belt into a machine that formed and fried them into shells. For the machine to run smoothly and the end product to be right, we had to keep those rollers at a very precise setting to ensure the right thickness and weight of the discs of masa they were rolling out. A few times an hour, more frequently if we suspected something was off, I had to grab some raw tortillas off the line and weigh them. If it was a few grams too light or heavy, adjust the head and weigh again.

So this is not the place for a floater to actually have his head feel like it was floating.

Thank goodness I was usually just giving breaks. I might have to weigh things once, but wouldn’t have to act unless things were way off, in which case I’d be calling a supervisor anyway.

Sometimes I could barely make it for that short period before the regular worker came back. My heart would race, the machinery seemed to speed up out of control, but I’d look over at the next line – its rollers and belt were running at the same speed as mine. Normal. But still, I could feel the panic at the back of my mind, creeping forward.

Finally, one day when I was to work that job the whole shift, I had to beg off after about an hour or two. I said I felt sick, the supervisor understood, and let me drop back to giving breaks. I don’t think he had me doing a full eight hours at the head of those lines again. Part of me was grateful. Part of me felt I had failed. But I understood that at least I had a job.

I could float for as long as I needed to. I wasn’t going to sink.


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