Beware the ides of ... March?

[Robert_Moriyama]

Okay, so I didn't finish the short story stuff until Thursday night (around 1 AM Friday morning, to be precise). But April approacheth behind another *@Y$&^#% snow squall (up here, anyway), and the March(?) issue hath not appeared.

What's uppeth, doctores?

:-?

[Robert_Moriyama]

... Don't the Peachtree State have any labor laws prohibiting that sort of thing? Mr. Chas. Dickens could write a serialized novel about the exploitation of insulation-factory workers ... :P

Of course, all the workers have "volunteered" to work this many hours (partly to make up for unpaid time off due to the equipment meltdowns, partly because the unspoken choice is, do it or find another job), so the employment standards probably don't apply.

Sounds like Nike could set up one of its indentured-labor plants in Dan's neck of the woods, with the workers literally chained to their workstations and pretty much confined to the plant-supplied housing (where they owe their souls to the company sto-o-re).

Next time you are in this kind of situation, Dan, please let the apedians know -- one of us can do the scut work and if necessary, do a Guest Editorial about the joys of globalization where U.S. workers have to compete with Third-World labor in maquiladora conditions!

(Sa-a-a-y -- there's a story idea. 'Rossum's Universal Robots', except the Robots are robota in the original Czech sense -- workers ... viz. also Charlie Chaplin in 'Modern Times', and the workers in 'Metropolis'. The plant operators better watch out, less their employees turn into Morlocks, and start to bite (chew, and swallow) the hand that feeds them.)

Robert M.

[Robert_Moriyama]

... You could write the fiberglass-insulation variants on a couple of Stephen King stories ('Graveyard Shift' and 'The Mangler') ... subtitled 'More Horror On the Factory Floor'.

Now, if only you could find the time to get your writing into print-ready form and score a humongous advance from some discerning publisher*, you could tell your employer to Take This Job and Insulate It. If only ...

On the plus side, you probably have so much insulation in your system that you have a rating of about R30. (Kinda like working in a formaldehyde plant -- fringe benefits include not needing to be embalmed.)

(*It would help if you could convince them that you're yet another of Stephen King's offspring.)

Robert M.