Chapter 2

Changing some Assignments

“Good morning, Hill and Steinhauer, how can I direct your call?”

“Intake processing,” Dave replied to the voice. “I need to check on a re-assignment.”

“One moment, please.”

After a short span of music designed to bore you to death, the phone picked up.

“Operations, Max Burke.”

“Max, this is Dave Findley at Findley Processing. You have a Helen Gester scheduled, and I was wondering if you would mind a re-assignment?”

“Dave, I would like to tell you we don’t have a problem but we need to hang on to all we can with the cost of this cleanup. Who is the sow?”

Sow? Dave thought. This was not how to refer to Helen. She was one of the nicest people around. She was a little heavy, but sweet and always helpful. Cooked the best cheesecake in Chicago. Mark was going to have a real problem finding a good replacement for her. But with 15 women for every man in Chicago, it probably would not be too long.

“Helen Gester, 219-73-2215.” And sweet blonde hair at both ends. Dave and Margaret had partied with Helen and Mark a few times.

“Okay, I’ve got her. Almost past selection. We have a bunch of those. Looks like pet food to me, given her age and all. We can release her to you. In fact, tell you what, Dave ... have you ever thought of servicing some of our processees for us?”

“What do you mean?”

“Okay. We do about 140 to 180 a day, with a five day workweek. Sixty percent is parts, ground round and pieces. Probably ten percent or so are spit quality, with the rest pet food. We could outsource some of this to you if you like, if we could get the meat back. Our pet food does not have so strict a QC.”

“Okay. If we process your thirds and ship them, what will you give us?”

“How about fifty percent of the meat? That means $6.30 a pound?”

“Gross or net?”

“Net, of course. This is pet food. We aren’t real picky about the parts you throw in.”

“Bones, too?”

“Only if ground up to powder. We do a lot of bone meal for chickens.”

“Isn’t that going to cut into your margin?”

“Dave, I got to tell you, I have six hundred sows I have to pop in the next three days or I am going to lose my allocation for the month from the board. If that happens, I am in real trouble. If you take the pet food off the table, I’ve got the ability to keep up. And this could become a nice deferred deal for our low-value product. Do you think you could do thirty or so tomorrow, and about thirty or so Monday, Wednesday and Friday of next week?”

“Max, I think we have a deal. Call the meat board and tell them you are shipping Helen’s tag here, and I will start to set up a line for your thirds.”

“Dave, we have not even got the transmittal receipt yet. Call them and give them the registry number and use your own. And for helping me, I will give her to you for free.”

“Thanks, Max. I will remember this.”

“Send me the registry number and I will send you the Okay to Transfer.”

“Okay, I will do that and then pick up the job.”

That was not too bad, David thought. Picked up her process chit, got some new business, made the wife happy and it did not cost a thing. I won’t tell her that.

David’s next call was to the Selection Board. Like any other bureaucracy there was a process of waiting on hold, calls being transferred, and then finally talking to a nice lady named Delores, who was asking if this was a transfer for processing or for use as a goat.

“She has been selected. I thought that meant she can’t be a goat?” David asked. “I thought that only non-selected women could be used as goats. Can we use selectees?”

“No. You can apply a goat card to any selectee you handle for the first thirty days automatically. You have to file extensions every ninety days and you have to certify that the goat is either unavailable for breeding or cannot be bred. That’s just notification. My cousin was selected and she has been a goat over at Myers and Hancock for almost a year now.”

“I did not know that. Any special treatment required for them?” Dave asked.

“Not especially. You have to keep them naked and tagged, and file a completion order when you are done with them.”

“What kind of tag?”

“Orange Temp Exception Tag. Let me see something. According to this, you have eight exception tags on site.

“You mean the orange collars?”

“Yes, those are the ones. Those have your business name and a registry number. You can transfer the tag from goat to goat, but the person in the collar has to be on file with us within five business days.”

“Any compensation?” David remembered that the last goat he had was a FTE Union employee.

“Nope. You are keeping them out of the grinder, so that is enough. You should feed them though, you don’t want them losing weight and becoming worthless.”

“What about next of kin?”

“What about them?” Delores asked. “As far as they are concerned, the goat is already dead. You just have not issued a death certificate yet. Just remember, none of the domestic relationships, insurance, or inheritance can be cleared until you do. Some families don’t like to be in limbo on this stuff for too long So this is usually temporary. I think the longest license I have seen is nine months. And part of that reasoning was to bring a “B” to an “A”.”

“Are there penalties for a livestock runaway with a Goat?” David asked.

“Not as severe as if you lost a prospect. Not for you, anyway. Fine is $20,000 and suspension of business license for ninety days. Goat gets spitted slowly though.”

The sum of money was significant, but the suspension of his business license would be very serious. That would put a real crimp into David’s operations. Still, this could save him some money.

“Delores, this sounds like the solution I needed. Any restrictions on use of the goat?”

“You cannot have them do union work unless they are in the union or supervisory employees. The meatpacker’s union will have a fit over that. And you cannot run a traditional brothel with them. Anti-slavery statues will lock you up for that. They are only supposed to be used to lead and provide paperwork support,” Delores continued.

“Delores, I want to thank you. You have been a big help. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“I saw you are picking up some of H&S stock. Good. We have to find a way to keep capacity up for the market during the holiday. Shame yours is a pet food allocation at 70 percent. Have you thought to increase the human table portion?” Delores asked.

“Not really. Human table stuff is so darn uncertain. Pet food keeps and the thirty percent we process for human consumption, we send as stew and soup. So we don’t have the storage issues that others have. We don’t have our own storefront either.”

“Well, keep it in mind. This latest thing has caused us to do some vendor review.”

“Thanks for telling me. I will keep my papers cleared up,” David said.

“I don’t think your papers are the issue. Looks like you have Carl German as on-site. I didn’t know he was out of retirement.”

“Dad and Carl were old friends. I hired him as my on-site after dad passed. With us open three-and-a-half days a week, the schedule keeps him happy. And we don’t have a lot for him to do.”

“Well, if you want to get a greater human food portion, have him do the paperwork. If he says you are good, you are good.”

“Thanks for the suggestion. I will think about it.”

I need to keep on the good side of this lady. She gave me a lot of useful information in that conversation, David thought.

Checking the clock, David saw it was time for his morning coffee and walk-around.

Thinking back on his life, David and Margaret had shared a lot of wonderful evenings with Helen and Mark. Both at each other’s homes and at clubs in downtown Chicago where hedonistic behavior and group sex was the norm of a evening. Since the relaxation of rules around meat processing, a whole list of activities formerly in the back room were now winked at, if not totally endorsed by society. So a lot of experiences which were fantasies before were now the norm. And David, Mark, Helen and Margaret had shared a lot of those over the 10 years of their friendship.

I wonder how this is going to go? David thought.

Thinking on Thursday’s end.

David knew that he would have some good news for Margaret about Helen, but that was only a side note. There were a few other things in his mind that David wanted to mull over but he had to think through them more fully.

The economics of the current system caused the processer to be constantly aware of the value of his product. And since that product was perishable, and had quality issues, there was a lot of worry about waste and loss. Add to that the fact that you had to maintain strict controls over employees and livestock for the entire time, and you had a complex business. Much like the business of a slaughterhouse, you had to have USDA inspection, blood and urine test to validate the health of the stock, and quality controls over samples. This was one of the biggest things in protecting the food supply.

The USDA inspectors did not do any real work. Mostly they stood around and watched that those who came in were killed properly, and that the butchering processes were within the guidelines for the product market. David had followed his father in keeping the sanitation and operation processes at the Human Table level. It had kept his reputation high in the industry and allowed him to market to cachet animal food producers as having the highest quality protein for the can. That meant that he never had to worry about expiration dates on inventory.

“Free Range” processing (like Mary Magill) was expensive for a lot of reasons. You could not release the meat commercially, yet you still have to bring the commercial equipment to the location. Add to that most people did not have a proper preparation area (spitting table, carving tables, blood juicers). So you had to bring that equipment to the party. And people tended to get uncomfortable when a woman was screaming while being spitted, which caused a lot of talk in the neighborhood. You could not use any sort of drug influence on the subject for fear of contamination. (Although some did, David was sure).