Chapter 5: Doomsday
The working day would have gone on with its usual boring routine, but for a strange event. Some men walked onto the shop floor with the foreman. Now, bringing anyone down here was unusual enough in itself, but these people actually wanted to talk to the workers.
"What do you think Eurco wants?" asked someone as they walked up to the guillotines. This was the usual signal to switch off the machines and listen to his words of wisdom. Eurco ruled the floor with a rod of iron, but whereas a tougher man might be respected in his brutal reign; Eurco was just hated. He took pleasure in humiliating the men and knew that they knew it.
"Right listen you lot. This is the Quality Control manager." Eurco pointed at a weaselly little man, named Neville who stood and looked at the floor.
"No eye contact, that's a bad sign," Charlie whispered under his breath, to which Old Dave nodded.
"You lot will do exactly what he wants; when he wants it; where he wants it, and to the satisfaction of how he wants it. From now on, quality is our watchword. Don't you forget it?" Eurco stood back to see how much he had upset the men.
"Bollocks is my watchword!" said Bob throwing down the rag he had been wiping his hands on. Bob, was old gipsy stock and proud of it. Built like a prizefighter, he would not be told what to do.
"If you don't like it, there's the door, fuck off now!" Eurco snapped back. He knew there would be trouble, but had not expected it to come head-on so quickly.
"Don't you worry Mister, I will." Bob walked to the washroom, clearly on his way out. "We had so-called Quality Control in my last place. Closed us down. You lot will be next!" With that, he was gone.
The remaining men looked at each other.
"Any other comedians?" asked Eurco looking at the men with bulging eyes. "Right! Listen to what they have to say."
"Every job will be accompanied by the correct paperwork," said one spiky little man, holding up a piece of paper like a lost Chamberlain.
"Not everything, surely?" said Old Dave, with a smile.
"Everything!" Eurco echoed back. "Everything you do; every operation of the machine, and every piece of metal you cut, will be recorded here. We will check to make sure you are doing it right."
"But we can't fill one of those in every time we make a cut in the steel?" said Charley with disbelief. "It will take ages."
"No it will not," smirked Eurco, "because you will do it all in double-quick time. And for every clown who thinks he can cheat the system and not bother, or take his time; remember this!" Eurco let his words sink into the gloom of the factory floor. "We might be looking at redundancies this year. The weakest going first."
"That's not right!" cried the men.
"I don't care if it's right or wrong," Eurco continued to smile, folding his arms in defiance. "There is not a damn thing you can do about it. If you want to join your friend Bob there," he pointed a thumb at the man walking out of the door, "remember I will be sending a letter to the social so he can't sign-on. Plus I'll inform all the local factories that he is a bad worker."
Eurco left the men open-mouthed as he walked off. There followed a brief talk by the quality control men, which consisted of a plan to make their lives so impossible, that when they left; there was no hope in sight.
"He can't do that," said Old Dave, slumping at the machine.
"He just did it," replied Charley. "Poor old Bob. What will he do?"
"He can't leave the area, there's nothing else." Old Dave thought about a future with no work and no money. The picture was so bleak he quickly gave up on it.
"Eurco, is evil," said Charley, slowly going back to work, as he knew the foreman would be back shortly.
"He's mad," put in Old Dave, following him.
"It's as if he's possessed or something. What are we going to do?" The others just stared at Charley, wondering if he intended to come up with any solutions.
"What do you suggest?" asked Old Dave starting up the machine, as the factory filled with sound once more. "We can't win against Eurco, and we can't go on with this crazy Quality thing?"
"We could all leave?" suggested someone from the floor.
"To go where?" Charley pointed out the most obvious flaw. "Eurco would mark your card, where ever you went."
"He can't know about everywhere," someone added.
"He knows enough." Old Dave was almost spitting with rage now. "He can put the spoke into some nasty places. I've known him to get at people in other factories, even managers."
"Shoot him!" a lone voice, shouted out.
"Are you man enough to bump him off?" Old Dave sneered at the men as they drifted back to their oily machines. "It takes balls to do someone in, and I can't see any heroes around here." With that, they were silent.
"I'm just going to leave. Do a runner and get out of the area, there's nothing to stop me." One man threw down his gloves and walked off.
Charley watched him go, filled with envy.
"Why don't you come, Charley? There's nothing to stop you?" The man looked at him over his shoulder as he walked across the concrete floor.
"Yes Charley, what's stopping you?" Old Dave glanced across the steel sheet at him as they began working. "Now you are on your own, there's nothing left here for you?"
Those words stayed with Charley right until the end of the day, when he went home to his cold and empty house. It was true enough. What did he have to stay for? Since his wife had left him, there was no life left.
He had moved back in with his mother, as he could not cope without his wife. No good on his own. His mother loved it and went back to treating him like a child. Encouraging him to live like a teenager, untidy and obsessed in a fantasy world of science fiction comics and rock music. He would never grow up.
Maybe that's why the game brought him back to this point in his life and nothing later?
But what was so special about now?
Somewhere in the early '90s in an English country town?
They had married young to escape their parents, as Elizabeth and he both found home life oppressive. Setting up home was like a game for the first few years, and they were happy. The rot set in when he began working in the factory. Every night he would come home exhausted, and every night Elizabeth would come out with the same quarrel.
"You are turning into a vegetable Charley! Just like my old man. We never go anywhere or see anyone. What's wrong with you? You used to be so cool."
"I'm so tired," he would reply in defence. "Just give me some time to sort myself out."
The years went by, and Charley never found that day when things would be sorted out. Finally, Elizabeth gave up and packed her case. He has suspected the affair with his best friend Brian for some time. So it was no surprise when they announced they were setting up a home together.
The most cutting act to Charley was the argument over the garden tools. He had worked hard to buy those tools and he was damned if he was going to just give them up to Brian. A man who worked in an estate agent's office for God's sake?
Now he sat in his mothers' house, with his garden tools, and little else.
Why did he stay?
Maybe the same reason, he never put up a fight when his wife went? He was just too lazy and cowardly to do anything about it. It was so much easier to let life wash over you than it was to do anything about it. Life in the factory was cruel, but you got used to it.
Well, he had put up with it up until now. But this latest threat was too much. They could not go on working there. If the others were leaving, so would he. Of course, this posed the question of where would he go? What would he do?
Up till now, Charlie's whole life had been one long drift. Drifting into marriage and drifting into work. Sadly it was work he was stuck with. He was not bogged down like his friend Old Dave, or worse still some of the others at the factory. Who would be looking at bankruptcy or prison!
No. It was his own laziness that trapped him here.
So what was he going to do about it?
Charley realised the passage of time would solve the problem for him, as it always did. The Night came round today, and he found himself once again, getting ready for work. Time just happened and the routine slotted his life in place for him. This was the problem.
Charley only had himself to blame as the day dragged on, and the impossible toil of factory life continued.
"What we need is a miracle," said Old Dave as the quality control inspectors walked away from the machines. They had inspected their work and told them it was not up to standard. No one was surprised. It was fairly clear that everything would be rejected, as the inspectors had been put in place to prove that and nothing else.
The large pieces of cut steel sheet, gleamed in the electric light before them on the trolley, as the men lifted them up to be loaded back in the rack. The job would have to be done again, and they knew what was coming.
Sure enough, Eurco, the foreman, stormed onto the shop floor to snarl at the men.
"How much money have you wasted this time? Remember we are looking to cut out some deadwood this year." He was about to walk off the job, but something stopped him. "By the way, your little friend will be back tomorrow. It seems he couldn't find work anywhere else." He was laughing to himself as he walked back to his office to read the newspaper.
No one spoke to Bob the next day, as he took up his usual post on the machine next to Charley, and began feeding steel sheets into the machine. Finally, at the ten o'clock break time, Old Dave broached the subject of the days' events.
"Any ideas as to how we can make our fortunes?" He looked at the faces gathered around the workbench, as they poured out their flasks and opened their Tupperware boxes. "Charley? Any brain waves?"
"Other than running away to sea? No."
"That would do for me," said Bob as he studied the pages of the Brit laid out before them on the bench. The newspaper: The Brit captured perfectly the attitude of every working man. It was the newspaper for them and echoes their hopes and fears, no matter how distasteful that might be. "Laying down with that bird on a tropical beach, and having someone bring your pint to you. Whoever this Natasha bird is, she'll do for me" He pointed to the picture of tropical paradise printed on the pages below.
