I overheard
Nightshift playing on the radio and I turned it up. It’s one of my
favourites, and I used to play it a lot. Hearing it again after a long break
Got me thinking about its lyrics and its appeal. A 1985 tribute to Marvin Gaye
and Jackie Wilson, both cut down in their prime, Nightshift is a
Commodores song that memorialises the two fellow artists. ‘It’s gonna be a long
night’ coming to terms with their passing. An interesting analogy. It triggered
memories of my own experience of working nightshift
The Fish
Factory
When I was
in my twenties. Leonard, with whom I had recently bought an old VW Beetle,
landed an office job at the TableTop fish factory in Hout Bay. He heard they
were looking for a white Quality Controller to supervise the employees who kept
the factory running at night. Knowing that I needed to earn some money, he said
this was just the job for me.
“But what
do I know about quality control and the running of a fish factory?”
“Don’t
worry. You are a white man of sober habits, right? You don’t tell them how much
you drink, of course. They will give you a white coat, and you sit in the
office, and look out through the glass and make as if you are watching what’s
happening on the factory floor. Now and again you can get up and wander from
work station to work station holding a clipboard and pretending to write
something.
I held this
job for some three months, which was about as long as I could stand the bordom
and increasingly frequent bouts of existentialist nausea. Leonard lasted
longer. He was expected to do the work of an accountant, even though he was not
qualified, and he took the job seriously. He discovered that the British owners
of the company were prepared to cook the books and exploit the workers in
pursuit of profit, and he eventually resigned in disgust.
Our sharing
of the car worked out because we were both living in the Fish Hoek area at the
time. The route to work was over Chapman’s Peak Drive. The sunset journey took
my mind off the ten hours of tedium that awaited me, and the return trip on the
winding road high above the sea as the
day broke revived my spirits. Otherwise, I doubt I could have taken more than
six weeks of that job.
I must
admit, however, there were aspects that I enjoyed, and there were two memorable
highlights. Situated on the wharf, it was an authentic working factory, and
there was nothing pseudo or touristic about it, like there is with most
waterfronts nowadays. On a calm night I would leave the workers to their own
devices and get away from the clamour of machinery and raised voices for a
while, and walk along the quay where the trawlers were tied up. The air off the
cold ocean carried on it the mingled smells of a harbour: iodine, diesel, wet
rope and nets, sodden wooden pallets, oil paint, rusting iron, and the
essential ingredient, fish. Looking out at the lights reflecting off the black
sea, I listened to the slap and gurgle of water, and the creaking of hawsers as
they tautened and stretched. I savoured the experience, knowing it was special
and memorable.
I also
enjoyed getting to know the different food production processes. Apart from the
cleaning, cooking, canning and freezing of fish, mainly pilchards and hake, the
factory also made pastry and pies. I could stand transfixed for many minutes,
the way bystanders gather to watch an excavator or bulldozer digging a hole, as
a conveyor belt brought an endless stream of cans from where they had been
filled and sealed, or the amazing sight of huge sheets of puff pastry
being rolled out and cut into
rectangles. I can still see the old woman whose sole responsibility it was to
sit at a wooden table and peel onions. Thousands of them. Unsurprisingly, she
was known as Auntie Onion.
The first
highlight involved an occupational accident. One evening when Leonard arrived
with the car, I could see he was agitated.
“The fucking callous bastards!” He said this with such anger I feared he
might vent his feelings by smashing something. He was referring to the fish
factory management. Earlier in the day a worker operating a slicing machine had
attempted to unjam the device and had two phalanges of his right index finger
amputated. The Manager had not only refused to halt production in order to
retrieve the section of finger, but had ruled out taking the victim to
hospital, saying all that was necessary was a dressing from the First Aid box.
When Leonard heard about this he remonstrated with his senior and ended up
taking the injured man to the local clinic, using our Beetle to do so.
“This is the face of heartless
capitalism,” he declared. “It’s all about profit. People, especially
non-whites, are expendable.”
That night I detected a mood of
sullenness on the factory floor, and the workers avoided eye contact with me.
Then, around 2 a.m., a man appeared in the office doorway. He was holding a
polystyrene plate, and on it was a grisly exhibit. He had spotted the finger
while preparing ingredients that went into the making of fish cakes.
The other incident that has
dominated my memory of the fish factory interlude involved a female colleague.
Unlike me, she was a genuine quality controller and supervisor. About my age,
she was light-skinned, had shoulder length straight brown hair, regular
features, and a wide mouth with a fine set of teeth behind full lips. Her eyes,
which had a slight oriental slant to them, were lively and humorous. Her white
uniform could not hide the fact that she possessed a shapely body. She must
have noticed the way I looked at her, and whenever she came to the office to
write a report she made increasingly friendly conversation.
One Friday, around midnight, she
entered the office. I concealed the Albert Camus novel I had been reading, got
to my feet, and gasped. Her white jacket was unbuttoned to reveal a
close-fitting blouse with a plunging neckline. The sight was so alluring it
caused the blood to rush to my face and my legs felt weak. She smiled with
satisfaction at the obvious effect she was having on me, and got down to
business. Seeing that tomorrow was Saturday, and neither of us would be working
over the weekend, she suggested I take her for a drive in the afternoon.
Flustered and tongue-tied, I didn’t know what to say.
“I’ve had white boyfriends before,
you know.”
If I had been able to consult my 75
year-old self, I know what he would have advised. ‘Don’t be an abject worm.
Seize this opportunity with enthusiastic gratitude, or you will spend the next
50 years regretting the way you passed up the chance to, at very least, taste
that sweeter than honey mouth.’
The Old Mutual
Roland, with whom I was sharing a
run-down terrace house in Woodstock. worked at the Old Mutual head office in
Pinelands. Hundreds of employees occupied a huge building set in extensive
ground, and all of them were engaged in the administrative running of the
country’s largest insurance company. He was making his way up, and had recently
been promoted to a position in the newly established computer system
department. He knew that my unemployment benefits had run out and that I needed
to find work. One evening he came home and said they were looking for someone
to work nightshift in the printer section of the computer laboratory.
“But what do I know about computer
printers?”
“Don’t worry. This is a purely
manual job suitable for someone with a low IQ. It will be very undemanding, and
there will be plenty of time for you to read. This position is made for you.”
It was in the mid 1970’s
when I was about 25 and, being work shy, rarely lasted in a job for more than
three months. I told myself I was gathering life experience and certainly not
settling into a career and becoming a sedulous minion in a large corporation.
The ‘computer lab,’ as it
was known, occupied a space in the basement of Mutual Park. It was divided into
three sections. The principal area, viewed through a protective glass wall,
contained the mainframe installation. Five rows of multiple tall steel cabinets
hummed and whirred as they processed huge quantities of data before sending
instructions to the printers. These cabinets stood on a raised metal floor that
concealed thick bundles of cables and allowed chilled air to flow upward. The
room was kept cool and dry — both for reliability and to protect expensive
hardware. Only accredited
technicians could gain access to this area.
I worked in the adjoining room where
the six free-standing printers were situated. They were about the size of the
one-armed bandit in Parker’s corner café where I bought my bread and milk. The
Operator explained how a dot matrix printer worked. He said it received
instructions from the computer ordering it to print information by using a
print head containing a vertical row of
tiny metal pins. These pins struck an inked ribbon against paper to form
characters as patterns of dots. Each letter was built from a grid of dots.
He took me to one of the machines to see it in
operation. This thing did not work quietly. The noise was intermittent and
erratic, and something like a metallic whirring chatter and screech. Green and
white striped paper was moving slowly from an accordion stack on one side, and
leaving on the other after being tattooed. On both vertical borders of this
paper was a strip of holes that were grabbed by revolving tractor sprockets
ensuring perfect alignment. The continuous stream of paper was expelled from
the printer and found its way to the floor, where it collapsed in a neat
zig-zag heap.
The
Operator told me that I was to ensure that the printers did not run out of
paper, and he showed me how to feed the first page of a new stack into one of
the voracious contraptions. And that was about the extent of the work. He
assured me I would not be working alone and, if anything should go wrong, an
experienced colleague would come to the rescue.
Adjacent to
the printer room was the self-service canteen, where one could sit at a table
and drink tea or coffee, and eat a pre-cooked meal at midnight.
By the end
of the first week. I had mastered the work. I had no intention of staying for
more than three months but tried to imagine what it would be like to become a
Mutual Man. Feigning genuine interest, I asked the Operator to describe the
career path he envisaged for himself. He was an earnest fellow, roughly my age,
and he spoke with evangelical zeal. With a little AI boost to my memory, I can
recall how he enthused about his position and his prospects.
He said
that the field of data processing was expected to
continue its rapid expansion as businesses, banks, insurance companies,
hospitals, and government agencies increase their reliance on computerized
record keeping and automated transaction processing.
Computer
Operators, like him, with proven reliability and experience on large-scale
mainframe systems would find strong job stability and advancement
opportunities. He expected to soon become a Senior Operator, Shift Supervisor,
or Operations Manager. Furthermore, this jog could be a pathway into Programming,
Systems Analysis, or Systems Programming. The growing demand as
companies converted manual systems to computer driven solutions meant that data
processing was widely regarded as one of the most promising and stable
technical career paths of the future.
I tried to
give the impression that I was seriously considering following in his
footsteps, but knew that to do so I would have to agree to a prefrontal
lobotomy to neutralize most of the right side of my brain. And why would I want
to do that?
In the
quiet interludes when the machines could be left to their own devices, I was
reading On The Road., and the effect it had on me confirmed that I was
totally unsuited to this work I was engaged in, and the sooner I resigned, the
better for my psychological well-being. The shift ended at 5am, and it was an
immense relief to leave that windowless environment and make my way to Mutual
Station just a few hundred yards away, and stand on the deserted platform and
breathe the cold dawn air. The Whites Only coaches were all but empty, and the
solitary walk from Salt River station along Salt River Road and up Roedebloem
to No 13 Palmerston afforded enough time and space to cleanse my mind of Old
Mutual contamination, and begin to plan another road trip in the company of a
couple of friends, and some girls, maybe.
Groote Schuur Hospital
I frequented the bars of Cape Town
in order to drink a beer or two and, at the same time, study different
character types. By doing this I probably learned more about human nature than
if I had taken a degree in Psychology or Sociology.
One day I met a barfly who had
recently come out of hospital after undergoing an appendectomy. I asked him if
the nursing staff had treated him well.
“The nurses were good. No
complaints. But I had a bad experience with a porter. When they are not pushing
patients about on trolleys or in wheelchairs, they are sent to shave the groins
of men about to undergo surgery. This fellow who came to me looked like he had
no forehead, and communicated by grunting. He gave me a painful shave with a
blunt safety razor and then stole my comb when I wasn’t looking. No, these
porters, they only have a job because they would be incapable of doing anything
else. It’s called protected employment.”
Some time later, after spending
several idle months recovering from nearly half a year at the City Council
doing mindless clerical work, I recalled this man’s words. How about being a
hospital porter for a short while? This is what I asked myself, not wishing to
take on anything too demanding.
At Groote Schuur Hospital I was
directed to a Matron’s office on the fourth floor. Tanding to attention before
this woman, I asked if she could give me a job as a porter. Middle-aged and
grey haired, she looked at me across her desk and asked some questions. I tried
to talk like a Woodstock oke, and said I had only passed standard 7, but I was
strong and hard-working, and I tried to give the impression I was dim but
honest. After a short while she interrupted me and told me to stop telling
lies. She had seen right through me like I was made of glass, and I was sure I
was done for.
“Forget about being a porter. You
would be more useful as an orderly.”
“What does an orderly do?”
“He is a cross between a porter and
an assistant nurse.”
“But what do I know about Nursing?”
“Don’t worry. The nurses will tell
you what to do.”
And that is how I became an orderly.
I washed, shaved, fed and assisted
the sick with their pissing and shitting requirements for three months, and was on the point of
resigning when that matron upstairs called me in and said I was needed on night
duty in C2, the orthopaedic ward.
“Night duty? That means I must stay
awake at night and sleep in the day?”
I was on night shift for six weeks
but never got used to it. It messed with my circadian rhythm, which kept
telling me to get some shut-eye when it grew dark, and not to lie in bed
snoring at midday.
The shift stretched from seven to
seven and was mostly uneventful, which made time drag. It wasn’t without
memorable moments, though. A highlight was the arrival of the food trolley at
11pm. The Sister, the four or five nurses and I would take our seats in the
duty room and partake of hot tea, coffee, or Milo (my choice), and gorge on
toast with grated cheese and hard-boiled eggs.
Talking of the duty room brings to
mind a scene one night around one o’clock with the sister seated behind the
desk with not one but three bibles open before her. I had just come from the
sluice room, where I had emptied a motor cycle accident victim’s bedpan. She
was a happy-clapper who had difficulty keeping quiet about her relationship
with Jesus. On this occasion she was telling her audience about the power of
prayer. By way of example, she described how she had left her washing out to
dry while she went shopping. She heard thunder and there was a cloudburst. She
got down on her knees, right there in Checkers, and implored Jesus to get his
father to divert the downpour away from her house. I presume she gave the
address and, lo and behold, when she got home her washing was bone dry.
One night we were without a Sister
and, to make matters worse, the senior nurse had to rush home with gyppo guts.
The wards were quiet until about midnight, when the busser sounded and the red
light flashed. It was Mr Jones, who had been in surgery the previous say. He
was groaning in pain. Urine retention. One of the nurses got on the phone and
called for help, but it seemed every houseman in the hospital had his hands
full. The patient was beginning to writhe and shout. None of us had ever passed
a catheter, but we got the dressings trolley ready with the necessary
paraphernalia, hoping help would arrive. When the man screamed we agreed that
one of us must act. The nurses looked at me and I got the message. I donned
gloves and was about to get to grips with Mr Jones’s organ when there was the
familiar sound of clip-clopping and Benny, the houseman from A1 arrived in his
wooden clogs. I was both relieved and a little disappointed.
Then there was the buxom nurse. I
was helping her to lift a heavy patient higher in the bed when she gave a cry
of pain.
“My back again. It’s these bloody
boobs of mine.”
She explained how, ever since her
late teens, she had suffered from backache caused by the burden she had to
carry about with her.
It had not escaped my attention
that, in silhouette, the bodice of her tunic appeared inordinately full.
“I would have a breast reduction,
only I worry about complications.”
My imagination was piqued, and I
thought of inviting her to accompany me to the linen room, where I could weigh
her mammaries in my hands. For future reference. Before I could summon
sufficient temerity to make the suggestion, however, she went in search of
Panado, and the opportune moment elapsed.
Night work affected me
psychologically, that is for sure. From childhood, I have felt myself to be an
outsider. I resisted the social pressure to establish a circle of friends and
fit into a group, fearing that I might in some way lose my identity. This preference
for solitude has at times brought with it feelings of loneliness and
alienation. Making my way back to my house in Woodstock after a long night,
walking against the early morning traffic, and seeing the rejuvenated faces of
those just starting the day, I knew I was moving against the normal flow of
existence, and would get into bed as the sun rose in the sky, and cover my eyes
with a dish cloth, a fugitive from the light, an outcast. I am convinced my
mental health would have suffered serious damage if I had not resigned when I
Did.
Covent Garden
I thought my history of working
nightshift was complete until I heard a
performance of Don Giovani recorded at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden. Covent
Garden? This jolted my memory back to 1972.
How could I have overlooked my very
first experience of being paid to work through the night? I was 21 and had
undertaken a hitch hiking trip Through France, Germany and Italy to Venice, and
back. Completely broke, I made it to Amsterdam and was given board and lodging
for a week at a Youth Hostel in return for cleaning lavatories three times a
day. My intention was to cross the Channel and make my way to 38 The Dale,
Keston, Kent, where my uncle and his dear wife would welcome me once again. It
was the price of a ticket on the ferry that prevented me from turning intention
into action. I needed to earn more than board an lodging.
When I met a traveller of Canadian
extraction in the lavatory, and he said he could employ me as an assistant
cleaner of roof gutters, I seized the opportunity.
This man was in a similar financial
position to mine, and had found someone to offer him casual work for three
days.
In the afternoons, between my
porcelain scrubbing duties, I accompanied the Canadian to an industrial area,
where we climbed onto the flat roof of a two-storey office building. Our
equipment was rudimentary, consisting of an aluminium extension ladder, a
bucket, a rope, a stiff broom and a spade. First, we had to sweep the roof
clean of leaves and dirt, and then clear the gutters and outlets. The loose
material was scooped into the bucket and lowered to one of us on the fround.
The bucket had to be emptied into a skip and then hauled up for the next load.
The work was repetitive and tiring, and we were relieved when, on the last day,
the supervisor climbed up, inspected, and gave a nod of approval.
We lowered the bucket for the last
time and descended. I took the broom and the Canadian picked up the spade. Only
a few rungs down, he lost his grip and, instead of falling to his death, he let
go of the spade and saved himself. The tool fell, maintaining an upright
posture until the stainless steel blade struck the paved surface at about
40mph. Kinetic energy was immediately converted into the elastic variety,
resulting in a bounce. The projectile rose some three metres into the air,
performed an acrobatic somersault, and came down at an angle to deliver a
glancing blow to a Mercedes Benz parked close by.
The damage to the bodywork was not
trifling, and we were fortunate to hand in the tools, collect our wages, and
hurry away from the scene of the accident before the alarm was raised.
Those three afternoons were just
enough to buy me a ticket on the ferry to Dover. I hitched to London, arriving
in the late afternoon as it was getting dark. Broke again, I wondered where I
might doss down for the night. It was October and getting cold. How could I
locate the Salvation Army? I was walking aimlessly through the streets when I
entered an area that seemed to be bustling with frenetic activity. Lorries were
coming and going, and men were scurrying about, offloading the cargo and
carting it into what looked like Victorian warehouses. I stopped a man and
asked him what was going on.
“Going on? This is Covent Garden,
mate. You looking for a job? Come with me.”
He took me to the back of a truck
where a man with the slightly aggressive bearing of an overseer was directing
operations. They exchanged a few words, looked me up and down, and seemed in
agreement.
“Alright, Sonny. Join the chain
gang, and you get five quid when the dicky birds start chirping.”
It was hard labour, carrying heavy
crates of fruit into the warehouse, and then pockets of potatoes and more
fruit, and vegetables, as one lorry replaced another.
By 5am the deliveries had dwindled.
My arms and shoulders were aching and I felt weak from hunger and lack of
sleep. The boss beckoned to me, handed over my fiver, and said there was a good
workman’s caff just down the road.
The windows were brightly lit but
misted over against the cold night. When I opened the door I was hit by a
clamour of Cockney voices and a blast of hot fog. I found a chair at a table,
and a waitress placed a plate of breakfast before me, assuming that was what I
was there for. Eggs, bacon, sausage and chips with tomato sauce, salt and
pepper. A jug-like mug of hot sweet tea.
I can still remember how much I relished that meal, and no English
breakfast has ever matched that one since.
These four episodes were put
together with details retrieved from the cerebral archive by means of memory
activation. Where some information could not be verified, it was necessary to
resort to plausible fabrication of what actually took place.
