Glide

Sublime: " Got to find a reason, reason things went wrong, got to find a reason why my money's all gone"


I was told that I'm too valuable to work the mechanical jobs.  I've worked various duties at Glide, and they all range in effort and lack of effort, there is no try only automatic movement.
       Glide is all about work and the different types of work involved in order to utilize efficiency to serve homeless community. Often shifting from one foot to another to pass the time (Phillip Levine).  When I started volunteering at Glide several months ago, I was assigned to the assembly line, Henry Ford was a purveyor of this system that used workers to systematically build model T's while simultaneously leaving his subservient's docile and alienated, hence the term "alienated labor" coined by Marx.  A total of eleven people work on the assembly line, sometimes ten that I've noticed.  Each person does two things except for the corner guy/girl. They all stand at a station facing each other with a transparent glass barrier in between. The first tray, and all subsequent trays, pass through every station to end up at the hands of the guest.  The initial tray begins at the inner side of the glass within the quartered section of the kitchen that houses the food section. The person at the head serves the main course, which is a choice of the regular default mash up or the vegetarian version of the mash up. I personally very much find it a luxury to have the choice of a meatless meal.  A choice of bread and vegetables is offered followed by salad and/or fruit; the tray is now half way home.  Next it's passed through the threshold and into the outer section of the glass facing the dining room progressively making its way back.  A plastic cup is added; water is the only beverage offered where one each table a pitcher full of it sits and is constantly being refilled by volunteers.  Beyond the cups, fruit is usually given, pear, apple, tangerine, orange, or watermelon are the most common, and we discard rotten fruit.  Next comes the salt and pepper packets, which for me was a tedious fucking job.  I'm reminded of one regular older lady who always works salt and pepper like her name is engraved on it.  I'm convinced she mastered the art of serving micro packets of elemental grains which helps make mass produced food more tolerable.  It's too bad they don't also offer habanero hot sauce.  They tray now journeys to the corner guy. This person, bless their heart, never adds anything to the food and instead maneuvers it beyond the 90 degree corner and onto the next person who completes the cycle by handing it to next hungry man or woman.  Each section has it's distinct purpose, and if one fails the goddamn plane crashes into the mountain.
      I want to digress on the function of corner person.  I'm almost certain that this position is the most mechanical job in the entire facility if one were to distinguish levels of mechanical aptitude.  The precise movement of the hands directing the tray of food to its adjacent destination requires minimal brain activity.  I use my brain more in my sleep, yet it's such an integral function within the whole equation that if it's omitted the entire operation would run much less smoothly like a screw that unfastens causing inefficiency and an epic headache.  Cogs in the system is what it is to the widest sense.  Passing down a tray is ridiculously easy for a cognitive person yet to build a machine to emulate this task would take an extraordinary amount of time, talent, money, and maintenance. All sorts of esoteric components make up the internal structure of an electrical device. How many computers have you built? Circuit boards, intricate wiring configurations, and computer chips are just some things to think about. And yet a human being can do this duty without so much as grasping with the hands the plastic plate and lightly nudging it along.  Now imagine doing this for eight hours a day or longer everyday for thirty years cooped up inside an automotive factory. That is how a human being is stripped of his/her mental faculties; that is how zombies are made.