“Kibbutz Life 3: “Working in the Plastics Factory”

   I mentioned that Kibbutz Erez had a lucrative dairy farm. Other than that, if they didn’t have bad luck, they wouldn’t have any luck at all. They almost had a bonanza of an industry. They made plastics for the European nations in NATO. These plastics were covers for tanks and armaments. Erez was the only source for this special material. Well, when the Soviet Union fell the need for this plastic went the way of the Edsel. Now Erez was stuck with plastic…LOTS of plastic. What to do?

   They re-branded the plastic as linings for swimming pools and while their market wasn’t as large or lucrative as NATO would have been, they did fairly well. But they only cranked out the stuff when they had a large number of orders, and that didn’t happen often. In any case they asked for someone to help out. Helloooooo! 

   I was assigned a certain corner of the factory. I gave myself a title: Assistant to the Associate Deputy Manager. There were humongous rolls of plastic; they were extremely heavy. They had to be wrapped for shipping and to do so there was a device, a large piece of machinery that would lift them onto a table. I had to work the gizmo and then wrap the roll. They don’t have OSHA in Israel, and they are not particularly patient when “training” someone like me. As I was lifting the roll, the grabber opened, and the roll fell. Thankfully I moved my feet in time otherwise they would have been crushed. 

   Now earlier I wrote that business was often slow but one way or the other I had to stick around in the factor. Soooo, with little to do, this Assistant to the Associate Deputy Manager got himself a whisk broom and cleaned all around my corner. It was absolutely, undeniably, unconditionally, the cleanest spot in the factory, probably in all the Kibbutz. What else was there to do?!