- My Satellite Setup
- A little less analogue, and a lot more crap.
- My Location
- UK
H+S . Forklifts
- Thread starter Channel Hopper
- Start date
- My Satellite Setup
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- My Location
- Wirral, NW UK
I beg to differ.
Many years ago I bagged a summer holiday job working for a subcontractor in the Shellstar fertiliser factory near Stanlow, Ellesmere Port. It was a tough job working two 12 hour day shifts, then two 12 hour night shifts followed by two days off.
The job was menial but very physical. You worked with a partner, one on either side at the end of a conveyor belt and rollers, to grab a 25Kg bag of fertiliser and then stack it neatly on a pallet until you had a certain number of layers, whereupon a fork lift truck took it away and left you with an empty one to repeat the process.
One night there was a lull and the driver had gone off for a smoke or something. One of the stacking crew jumped into the forklift and started playing around with the controls saying it was all right as he used to drive these things. I was sitting on the end of the line when he lifted up an empty pallet and engaged forward gear. My leg was trapped between the pallet and the end roller and I screamed with pain for him to get the damn thing off. Instead he left it in fprward gear and even span (spun?) the wheels as he pressed even harder against my leg. He later claimed that the gear selector was faulty but remain convinced that he didn't know what he was doing and had only watched people drive these things.
Amazingly I didn't have a broken femur but I did have a massive bruise and I'm sure the bone bent during the assault. The affair was hushed up - I was only a temp after all - and I didn't even get a day off with pay.
There were compensations though. Even though it was a 12 hour shift the crew immediately split in two and you worked an hour on and an hour off. It was also extremely well paid, in less than six weeks I had earned enough to take me right up to the tax paying threshold which was about £400 in the early seventies. In fact I even managed a weeks holiday before returning to college.
One other disadvantage. Your toenails turned black after a couple of weeks. Hey-ho. Health and Safety? Not in them days.
Many years ago I bagged a summer holiday job working for a subcontractor in the Shellstar fertiliser factory near Stanlow, Ellesmere Port. It was a tough job working two 12 hour day shifts, then two 12 hour night shifts followed by two days off.
The job was menial but very physical. You worked with a partner, one on either side at the end of a conveyor belt and rollers, to grab a 25Kg bag of fertiliser and then stack it neatly on a pallet until you had a certain number of layers, whereupon a fork lift truck took it away and left you with an empty one to repeat the process.
One night there was a lull and the driver had gone off for a smoke or something. One of the stacking crew jumped into the forklift and started playing around with the controls saying it was all right as he used to drive these things. I was sitting on the end of the line when he lifted up an empty pallet and engaged forward gear. My leg was trapped between the pallet and the end roller and I screamed with pain for him to get the damn thing off. Instead he left it in fprward gear and even span (spun?) the wheels as he pressed even harder against my leg. He later claimed that the gear selector was faulty but remain convinced that he didn't know what he was doing and had only watched people drive these things.
Amazingly I didn't have a broken femur but I did have a massive bruise and I'm sure the bone bent during the assault. The affair was hushed up - I was only a temp after all - and I didn't even get a day off with pay.
There were compensations though. Even though it was a 12 hour shift the crew immediately split in two and you worked an hour on and an hour off. It was also extremely well paid, in less than six weeks I had earned enough to take me right up to the tax paying threshold which was about £400 in the early seventies. In fact I even managed a weeks holiday before returning to college.
One other disadvantage. Your toenails turned black after a couple of weeks. Hey-ho. Health and Safety? Not in them days.