Monkey vs. Robot

I always wanted to work in a factory. No, it wasn't because boot boys romanticized the factory workplace in the early seventies, but rather the experience. The mundane repetitious tasks and grinding of simple machinery would have been enough to give me an inkling of what it might have been like to slave away in the early stages of the industrial revolution as a new immigrant fresh off the boat(a Hungarian or Germ in my case) in a stinking meat factory or a steel mill. Actually, one of my more feasible goals in life has been to work as many jobs (most shit-tay and unskilled) as possible to have a better understanding of the workforce.

A small compilation includes: toll collector, phone solicitor, power plant shitworker, janitor, dishdog, mail clerk, deli-hand/foodeater, quasi bike mechanic, messenger, trail worker, flea market peddler, poster sales rep, guinea pig, landscaper and most recently cellar hand. Searching back into the dank environs of my memory bank the only jobs on my list that I haven't got around to have been Carnie, barkeep and Alaska fishermen. There is still time of course but after a recent trip to the Mendocino County Fair and a short whirl on the Gravitron I think Carnie might officially be crossed off the list. Honestly, I just don't know how long I can hang out with a bunch of leathery skinned dudes with soul patches and gnarly pony tails smoking resin behind the Eggbeater.

So, I always wanted to get my chops in ye olde factory, that was until last week. Last Thursday by mid-day I was over it. The warnings were there but they never really sank in. I should have believed Pat when he told me that working in a factory was so unbearable that it made him turn his back to Noise. Or possibly when my former roommates BBQ and Grandpa Crappaletti told of their horror stories of placing slices of cheesecake into boxes, once piece at a time for ten hours on end. But the idea was always there lingering in the back of my head, that was until I bottled Verjus and Pinot Noir juice at the winery.

The fun started on Wednesday when I was elected to help Manuel and Ulysses prepare the bottling line for two days of juice bottling fun. Upon his selection Jim quipped "I know you don't have much experience with hygiene, but the boys will take your understanding of clean to a new level." What the fuck? Was I being called out already? Over the last six months I have made a concerted effort to clean myself up. Hell, I thought I was doing pretty well. Friends didn't recognize me at the airport and ex-coworkers were a bit shocked. But maybe he smelled me out. The garlic/onion aromas mixed with heavy afternoon must is a dead giveaway that reeks of sketchy punkhouse dweller. Never underestimate an oenologist's nose.

While bottling is itself a delicate process, bottling juice (especially mid-harvest when millions of little yeast cells are floating about the cellar) is an incredibly nerve wracking business. For eight hours we cleaned the shit out of the bottling chamber, which sits betwixt the barrel room and a series of large insulated stainless tanks. Ulysses dusted away, Manuel dissembled the bottling line and I powerwashed the conglomeration of stones that made up the floor making sure the cellarmaster could see his face in every shiny pebble. Even the redwood walls were sprayed with a sanitizer to ward off nasty microbes that might foil our plans for deliciously sterile juice. The only thing in my life akin to such cleaning was the mini-bottling line at the Death Trap that without a doubt indiscriminately imparted it's proprietary yeast and bacteria into every homebrew, no matter how many failed food science experiences I cleaned up.

Thursday morning a number of vineyard workers joined us and we were under way. The clanking bottles on the line, the whoosh of the corker, the grinding of cogs and the bouncing Ranchera fused together to produce an ugly noise that vibrated my brain and tested my nerves. Stacking palettes was cake work but washing bottles with ozonated water and placing them on the line for two straight hours killed my back and strained my wrists. Place bottles on rods, spin, lift, shake, place on line, repeat. Two goddamn hours. Friday was not much better as I finished up my last two places cleaning bottles giving my elbow a nasty ache. The next stop was boxing the bottles, a 2 1/2 hour non-stop nightmare. For two straight hours there is no stopping, no cigarette breaks just boxing as the bottles come out onto a whirling table. Grab, lift, turn over wrists and place into a case.

I would seriously loose my shit if this was my full-time job. Can you imagine contorting your body every day into painful positions only to show up the next day beaten to do it all over again. At 27 you begin to consider your health, the vivacity of your body and protecting what you have. I'm close to another quarter life crisis. No health care, no stable job, no money and contemplating a second education and career from the ground up. Shit this is gonna be quite a ride.

Luckily for this cellar rat, the winery only bottles juice twice a year and everyone who works the line gets to take a bottle home. Pinot juice and vodka it is.