The End of the Line

by Chloe Davies

The endless cubes of white, orange and green tumbled onto the conveyor belt. Barb loved her job. She liked her uniform, with its neat cap and capacious folds. She enjoyed being at her post. She liked the rhythmic clunks and whirring of the machinery. She liked the fact that no one spoke to her much, apart from Jan, when they went on lunch. She liked that there were no expectations, and no need to justify her lack of ambition. She simply clocked in, sat on her stool and waited patiently as the mountains of frozen vegetable chunks fell from a great height and trailed past her.

Her bulk was deceptive; when the moment came, she pounced like a cougar. Her ability to recognize a substandard julienne remained unsurpassed. Swiftly and with precision, she would spot and discard the vegetables unsuitable for bagging. Her fingers, despite three decades of operating in chilled conditions, were human tweezers, accurate and unerring. Meanwhile, her mind wandered. For thirty-two years it had meandered, uninhibited and unrestrained, whilst her standard issue stool reluctantly relinquished its form and moulded itself to her comfortably proportioned behind.

She thought about everything and anything. Sometimes she pondered a book she was reading, or a programme she had watched. Sometimes she thought about an argument she was having with Tony, or a problem one of the kids was having. Sometimes though, she didn’t think about anything. She just zoned into the factory, with its silence and noise, and worked, only to find, to her surprise, that it was suddenly time for lunch or a break.

Barb had never wanted to be a supervisor. She had been offered, several times, but management had finally got the message and stopped asking. She just wanted to carry out her quality checks in peace. And since they had never had another checker to equal her efficiency, attendance record or timekeeping, they let her. Until Thursday 10th October 2014, when all employees were called to a meeting, and told that PLK Foods was moving production to Japan. The Yorkshire plant would be closing in a month’s time.

Barb returned to her stool like a sleepwalker, her expression glazed like the doughnuts she loved. Her initial thought was that maybe she could move to Japan. But she instantly dismissed this as ridiculous. Of course she couldn’t move to Japan. She didn’t even have a passport. And you probably needed all sorts of documents to move to Japan. The unthinkable had happened, and she decided not to think about it.

At dinner that evening, she didn’t say anything to Tony. She had planned to, but when he was in front of her, noisily shovelling shepherd’s pie into his mouth, and plenty into his beard in the process, she found she couldn’t. She needed time to digest the enormity of the news. Tony didn’t remark on her silence, but then Barb wasn’t much of a talker, and Tony wasn’t one for remarking much, so on the surface at least, the evening passed much as always.

The next morning, sat on the edge of the bed and bent double in the physical challenge of encasing first her broad feet, then her stout legs in thick black tights, Barb reflected that there was no need for immediate action. A month was a long time. She went to work as usual and buried her head in the mountains of frozen beans, peas, carrots and root veg. Jan wanted to talk about it at lunch. She had told her husband last night and looked online. There were other jobs but they were minimum wage and there was nothing so close. It would mean two bus rides instead of one. Had Barb looked? Jan thought they should apply for the same places and gave Barb the details. Barb nodded and ate her sandwiches.

That evening it was all over the local news. ‘Why didn’t you say owt?’ Tony wanted to know. Barb said nothing. She sat in silence and ate toad-in-the-hole and wished she were a sausage and could hide silently in a mountain of batter. ‘You’ll have to find another job,’ Tony told her. Like she didn’t know. She could do maths, better than he could. She knew that if they lost half their income their breadline budget would be in peril. Still, she didn’t answer. She had spent thirty-two years on a stool, picking through peas. She wasn’t prone to hasty response.

The mood at the plant had changed. Most people were angry or reckless, knowing that it didn’t matter what they did – they were losing their jobs in ten days. But Barb carried on, sorting and checking, unperturbed. Despite Tony’s mounting irritation, she had not yet applied for a single job. She went through each day as if nothing had happened, ignoring the vitriol of her colleagues. Jan had found a job, at a dairy factory almost an hour away. At home, Barb refused to discuss the situation. Eventually, Tony gave up, and mealtimes were largely silent, as he chewed and swallowed his frustration, knowing her too well to push.

Eventually it came, the end of her final shift, as inevitable as the end of the thousands of shifts that had come before. Slowly, deliberately, she punched her number into the clock for the last time. She walked out of the gates. The sun was setting in the autumn sky, blood red and beautiful. Yorkshire sunsets, reflected Barb, were worth more than all the money in the world. The bus arrived, and for only the second Tuesday – discounting holidays of course – in thirty-two years, she didn’t get on it. Instead, she stood still and watched as the sun was swallowed by the sky. Then, she began the walk home. So that was that. No more PLK Foods. No more lunches with Jan. No more frozen vegetables, thought Barb. Then something struck her and she almost smiled. It was time for a fresh start.