Is money enough reason to drive yourself harder than your body is able to handle without falling apart? The first toe nail of the season has already been cut off, eulogised, and appropriately interred in a garbage bin. My feet are more blister than skin or bone now. One blister is large enough to have its own naval fleet. Every part of my body is so sore that even my thoughts hurt.
Everyday I work with visions of Jewish slaves forced to labour under a cracking whip to build the monuments of the Egyptian empire. I admit these visions have very little to do with my current predicament. Sure, I feel like a slave, and I know it is only a matter of time before Chief Nut Case starts wielding a whip on his exhausted workers. But I am there by choice, making me question my own sanity! I am being paid too, and I hope to have a large bank balance, rather than a sphinx, to show for my endeavours.
Week six has been set as the evaluation point. I intend to make it that far and determine just how much further I want to go. If I have enough money for a month or two in Asia, I imagine leaving will be a very easy decision to make. If I don't, and I am not yet prepared to sell vital organs for science experiments, I will figure out how much more punishment my body is able to take and set another time line. Probably a week later.
The X-factor in this line of thinking is of course the boss. Should he choose to be more vitriolic than usual with his blowtorch, I might be forced to tell him which orifice he can shove his slave-driving ways, then run like hell. My dodgy feet will be pretty useless at propelling me away with much speed, but Nutjobs physique seems better equipped for staff jaw breaking rather than pursuit.
We are now mid way through the tomato season, and it seems that the workload varies in intensity depending upon unusual factors. My supervisor pointed out the first quarter moon as it sunk in cloud flecked orange beauty over the surrounding hills last night. Or this morning. Or what ever the time it was. I used the distraction to stop work even momentarily, as she begun to wax lyrical about how it was a bad omen as the ripening depending upon the fullness of the moon. Fantastic, tomatoes with werewolf characteristics. I couldn't see how the moon could exert such an influence so I asked her to explain it to me at length. She saw through my ploy though, and told me to shut the fuck up and get back to work.
I exacted my revenge by stealing two tomatoes for my breakfast this morning. Unlike the fresher than fresh produce I had eaten on previous farms I had worked on, these just tasted store bought. They tasted like they were stolen actually, and even though guilt didn't completely ruin the meal, I took comfort in thinking that I spoil more tomatoes than that every hour at work.
Especially when I am doing a 15 hour shift. Some rubber-johnny made a woeful miscalculation and decided that the night shift crew should come in at 2pm instead of 6, as work would probably finish around 10pm. Adding insult to injury, the new lid guy had the day off as his girlfriend had just had her appendix removed. The biggest insult came when the machine broke down, four bins from the end. Why couldn't it have broken 5 hours before? And it broke down right in front of me, even though I was so many miles away I didn't notice until my helper went for a quick swing on the emergency stop cable. Nothing unusual had happened before it went all funky, but I am sure nothing with absolve me from blame, being the person nearest.
So I write knowing that this could be my last day of work. Chief Nut Case has a penchant for berating people for reasons known not even to him, so I'll wear my running shoes to work tonight just in case.
