The Idler

More Boxes

Some years ago I took a part time job working at a green house that produced lettuces. The lettuces were packed into big cardboard trays, and it was my job to take the flat cardboard blanks, fold over the end to make them up into trays, then staple each end using a large industrial staple machine.

This machine was a wonderful piece of engineering. It consisted of a pair of jaws that could put a thick metal staple through several layers of corrugated cardboard when the operator pressed the foot pedal. Impressive.

I was working with a another guy who had been there for several weeks, and was obviously an expert in the “grab it, fold it, hold it, staple it” action. We were paid on how many boxes we could make, so obviously the faster you could go…

I was so impressed that he could make trays up so quickly - and he could even talk at the same time. I sweated my bits off trying to match the size of his impressive pile of finished boxes. My puny contribution looked pitiful.

Then it happened. He put a staple cleanly through the top of his thumb. It had gone straight through, and out the other side. The machine had unflinchingly bent the staple round, to complete the join, and yes, his hand was now firmly attached to the box he had just made. Interestingly there was no blood. The staple had crimped the whole thing so tightly that the blood could only build up beneath the surface of the surrounding skin.

It let go only when the farmer who ran the place casually unbent the staple, and pulled his hand quickly form the offending box. Farmer type mutterings along the lines of “it’s only a little nick” could be heard as I finished up for the day.

David Eliott