Dead Cow and Fish Kill (standard:humor, 4891 words)
Author: Juggernaut	Added: Nov 21 2010	Views/Reads: 2818/2738	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A story on a company that runs factories to cook animal parts.

Dead Cow and Fish Kill 

Subba Rao 

“How are things this morning, Joe?” inquired Neil, pulling his car into
the animal rendering factory yard. 

“As usual boss,” said Joe, a big burly man, who had been working at the
animal- rendering factory for almost five years now. His friend Steve 
got the job for him. Joe didn't like the job at first; the plant stunk 
from cooking various animals' parts, dead cows and pigs, to make animal 
fat and meat meal.The working conditions were terrible in the plant 
with fat burning smoke and meal dust. Outside, the plant yard was 
always littered with stinking dead animals with bloated stomachs, 
animal bones scraped free of meat, slabs of animal fat, cow heads, 
ears, hooves, tails and heaps of dead poultry.The ground was always wet 
with animal blood, sometimes the excess blood channeled into the floor 
drains for collection.Truckloads of fat and bones from meatpacking 
factories kept arriving at the factory for cooking or rendering into 
animal grease and meat meal. 

The dead animals or deads as they were called waited for their turn in
the factory yard to be crushed into small pieces for cooking into 
animal fat and bone meal. 

Joe never went to high school, but made good money at the factory. Above
all, nobody competed for the stinking job. Sometimes, he worked over 
seventy hours a week. Joe always remembered Steve's advice: never stand 
still at any one spot; keep moving in the factory to look busy doing 
something; more importantly, make yourself stink more to avoid the 
factory manager coming too close to you to give more work. His old 
friend Steve died some time ago. Too much alcohol and alimony payments 
killed him.Joe remembered his friend's words, like a mantra about his 
stinking job: “It smells like money.” 

Cindy, Joe's girl friend, didn't want Joe to work at the rendering
factory. “You stink all the time Joe, leave the job,” she told him. 
“Honey, to me it smells like money,” he loved to say that to her. Every 
half-hour or so, using a front-end loader, Joe picked up a few 
deadsfrom the heap and dumped them into a large metal pit for grinding. 
Boy, it stunk. Then he corrects himself. “Smells like money to me.” 
Neil, the General Manager, stepped out from his car and walked several 
yards from the deadsand glanced across the heaps of offal, animal 
bones, and deads with a great sense of satisfaction. “This winter is 
too frigid for the animals,” Neil said to himself. “I should charge 
more to pick up the deads from the farmers.”He made mental notes on 
this and a quick calculation, how much more money he could make in 
total as a collection fee. 

“Are you expecting any visitors from corporate today, boss?” Joe
inquired, parking the loader along side Neil's car and jumping off. 

“Aah, some fat cats from corporate will be here today, wasting company
money on trips,” Neal said, making a 180 degree rotation on his heel, 
trying to look around the yard. “Get some men and clean up the yard.” 
“Not too long ago, you know Joe, I was working as a truck driver in 
this company,” said Neil, walking around slowly or wobbling like a 
penguin, as if to save his body fat.“And then, I was promoted to route 
manager, then to plant manager when John was fired, and now as you know 
I am the General Manager.” 

Joe stood with both hands across his stomach and listened to Neil like a
child listening to his teacher. Neil's black hair neatly cut in a 
corporate short style in contrast to Joe's unruly long blond hair and 
unshaven face was an indication of his progress up the seniority ladder 
and social standing at the company. Neil preferred Khaki trousers and 
striped shirts. He wore a blue overcoat while inspecting the factory. 
Neal learned one important thing from his old boss, Joel Bernstein, 
about the corporate staff. “Never make those ass.....mad.” Every 
corporate officer visiting his factory got the royal treatment. Neil 
made sure to make reservations in top class-hotels and trendy 
restaurants in town. Neil's boss, Bernstein, a Jew from the northeast 
was an unlikely person to rub shoulders with animal renderers, and yet 
he worked for thirty-five years in the business, breathing the foul 
smell from the factory until he retired. 


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