Tickled Pink

"Found your problem!" The mechanic was a balding guy with a ponytail, and he was grinning right at me. "Now, little lady, how's about that reward?"

Candy Hearts

You crack open a fortune cookie and find: "Help me, I'm stuck in a fortune cookie factory!" Everybody laughs…but do you see people up in arms about it, anyone picketing for the ethical treatment of fortune-cookie workers? Some poor guy makes his one break for it, sends up a desperate flare, casts his little message in a bottle, and we all laugh.

But I tell ya, I know how he feels. I've been pouring pink syrup into a machine for six months now, day after day, and I can't take it anymore. I can sympathize with the guy. There’s nothing more monotonous than working in a food factory. Nothing interesting ever happens. Well, at least most of the time. I have no doubt the people who made the fortune cookies were driving the people who wrote the fortunes just batshit, and the guy cracked and went all Norma Rae on them. (No bad fortune cookie pun intended, I swear it.)

I ask you, what is so entertaining about some poor man's mental anguish?

That dumb-ass "Unwrapped" show on the Food Network came out to film here around Halloween. They've been airing that episode all week, so lucky me, I get to pick up take-out Chinese food on the way home from work and settle in for a little vegging action in front of the TV, and what do I see? My ass bent over tipping syrup into the hopper. Deja-fucking-vu.

If they weren't so small, I'd figure out a way to print a whole truckload of them that read:

Help Me, I'm Stuck in a Candy Heart Making Factory!

So all week long, no one can shut up about it, because I'm the only guy you can see in this little two-minute segment on their nauseating Valentine's Day show-aside from our manager, Sid Vicious. (Ok, so that's just my little pet name for him-but the punk rocker and our fat-ass manager with his big purple Barney ties and pink shirts, I kid you not, have not just a first name in common but a temperament, too. Except I think Vicious was more polite.)

All I hear all week is: "Ooooo Gus is famous now!" and "Hey, candy man, come give me some sugar!" (I admit it, that last line might have been hot, if it were coming from Maureen, Sid's brand new little secretarial acquisition, instead a seven-foot, three-hundred-pound man with a tattoo of a barcode on his forearm who wears Ozzfest t-shirts to work. What can I say? Mr. Big just isn't my type!) Woo-hoo, I'm a freakin'

celebrity, now, right?

So, Valentine's Day comes around, and I can't wait for the fucker to be over with.

That's all I'm thinking as I'm standing there at the hopper, pouring the fourth batch of the day, when she comes up behind me and says there's a problem with the machine down in Text. That's what we call the part of the factory where they have the stampers that put all the messages on the little hearts. Shit like: Kiss Me. Be Mine. They're updating them for the millennium now, Sid announced it this season. We've added Hot Stuf and Cool to the "conversation hearts" shtick.

Now, how is it my business what happens down in Text? I show up and pour syrup. That's my job. That's what I do. But she's standing there in this pink skirt barely covering her ass and a white blouse tied up at her waist, and I can see this girl's got a navel ring, for God's sake, how is anyone supposed to get candy made around here?

So, before I know it, I'm off like some cotton-candy covered knight in a white apron to see if I can fix her problem.

The problem is clear as soon as I get down there. No one's on the floor in Text!

Two people stand on the line and are supposed to go through the candy hearts as they come out the end. Quality control they call 'em. Well, I don't know about that, considering so damned many are stamped cockeyed or with the words half cut off, but I guess it makes sense, in the scheme of things, now that I know what "quality control"

was doing.

As we're standing there, the machine is going bonkers, spewing out candy hearts with no messages or bizarre letter combinations: MsC Me and KsOl LF. The hearts are shooting out of the machine and bouncing off the belt into the floor. One of them hits poor Maureen in the face. Lucky thing she was wearing her little rimless glasses!

So I'm off to figure this one out. Something is clearly jammed somewhere. I pop the emergency "off" switch. That's for when someone gets their hand caught in the machine or something. It alerts the boss in his office, so I'm expecting him to waddle in at any moment as I'm looking over the machine.

Maureen taps my shoulder, and I glance in the direction she's pointing with her little chewed-up pen tip. There, I kid you not, are our two quality control agents behind one of the ovens, working up a sweat. I don't remember her name, although I'm not likely to forget what she looked like bent over with her red skirt up and Mr. Big's cock ramming into her like a piston!