The Iceman Cometh....Again
How that phrase causes images of horror to appear in my head, like bringing down a lumberjack axe on top of your head, top of your skull, how the skull would blow in, the splatter, BLOOD ON THE ICE!!
Once again I remain at the job I was working last year, the fun and joys of The Ice House. I'm sure I've explained how this job work before, but I know you people, unless you're coming here on a regular bases, you don't bother reading anything but the most recent.
This is the wounderful world of the ICE INDUSTRY, yes we do exist, and actually we are one of the oldest, like the Milkman, once your fridge was an ice box, held food, large block of ice in the bottom, hense the name, doy! The Job Title I guess would be VENDER, unless you're in retail you don't know what these Venders do. Kind of like a Vending Machine, we are the people who stock your shelves and bring you food. Chips, Soda, Beer, Bread, Snacks, Candy, Cookies, Ice, and I'm sure there are more. Its different compared to just regular items like toilet paper, light bulbs, actual retail crap.
You've seen the venders in their trucks of all shapes and sizes, I'm sure you've seen the Soda guys, bread and chips, etc. Ice you probably never catch at times. We venders run about all day from store to store, getting in as quickly and leaving even quicker, dealing with our customers, the store owners, as quickly as possible cause they're either really cool and nice, or complete and utter fucking assholes. No one really flocks to the same locations together, but usually you'll find another vender at the store. At times yes, some store owners get the fucking HORROR of 10 trucks pulling into their really small parking lot.
We are the Venders, and we are your gods.
There are many ways to create ice, besides just freezing it. The make retail ice you're going to need tons of it (literally), so you can't have a little machine you find in bars and shit making the ice. Thus you get massive industrialized machinery. My facility has two different ways to make ice.
THE BAR CUBE MACHINE
This makes an actual ice cube, more or less its 4 of these machines that drop ice into a large bin, same type of machines you'd have in a bar. Makes big sheets of cubed ice thinly connected.
THE TURBO
This machine is massive, compared to the bar cube machine which can only produce 2 tons of ice per 24 hours, this machine can shit out 40 tons of ice every 24 hours. More or less it makes giant blocks of ice, and crushes it into chunks, aka Crushed Ice.
So you got the ice, now lets bag it. Both machines move the ice with these metal tunnels with a corkscrew inside. The ice goes into another room and is dropped into one of two machines. One machine will automatically bag the ice, seal it and spit it out at you, you stack it on a pallet. The 2nd machine takes the smaller ice chunks and compresses them into 10 Pound Ice Blocks.
Once bagged, goes into a big freezer. From the freezer it will be loaded onto a large box truck which can hold 10 pallets aka 10 tons of ice. This is the vending truck, and I am the vender.
My job is to be up at the ass-crack of dawn, and on the road. Mornings are bad, typically I'm not awake and I even half-sleep behind the wheel. No one is around, and I've yet done anything bad, usually I drift, scare myself and wake up. My job is harder than the other venders, who can zoom up to the store and unload their shit anywhere, and cart their nice boxes into the store. You've seen them, the ICE CHEST, freezer outside with ICE on the front and side. I have to take this box truck, and back its ass up to that chest, then with a partner we get out, someone gets in the back and throws the bags onto the tail gate, I throw the bags into the ice chest, simple enough, eh?
1. Do not park in front of the Ice Chest.
If I had a dime for everytime I've pulled into the parking lot of a corner store, only to have someone come charging in and parking it right in front of that cooler. Whats worse is they stare at me with this dumbass blank look, sitting up in my cab with the door that says ICE on the side, Then they fucking look at the chest, and back at me, get out and go inside. Or I'm pulling in and someone is riding my ass to get to the gas pumps. I pull around so I can get into a backing position, and they drive all up behind me so I can't back up. Or just somehow you're fucking with me, this does not make a happy ice man.
2. Do not speak to the Iceman.
How many times must I hear "The Iceman Cometh" and "That must be a cool job" or "that must be nice for summer" as I stare back at you with that human-hatred look I have, the sweat running down my face cause I don't work well with heat, and become dripping. How I want to take that bag of ice and smack you upside the fucking head with it, asking how that feels. And for christ sakes just don't talk to me, you think I'm just sitting there going la-de-frickin-da. No, I'm counting, and yes it will FUCK me up if I have to change thought. You fuck the store owner or my company if you talk to me.
3. Beware the Rage of the Iceman.
In general I'm a calm and cool person, but god damn when I let loose you will know it. If the store owner is around I usually don't, but I know some have heard me. One marina in which it was hard to back down their fucking driveway, which had two hairpin turns and down a steep hill, I get out half way screaming "Fuck this, fuck this marina, fuck this customer, fuck this place, fuck this hill" fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fucking fuck fuck. Its fun. Someone parks right behind me on the side of a street at a difficult location, I semi-yell "god damn fucking rednecks around here" cause I'm 50 miles from home, get out and the guy actually has the rebel flag on his truck.
4. Don't Fuck With An Ice Vender.
This second year with the company is good, we were one of the only two ice manufactoring plants in Northern New York, there are others down below the mountains in the more populated area, and one company over in Vermont. Take a map of NY State, and from the middle of Lake Ontario, cutting East to West, slice the top of NY State off. This is what our company rules over. It was once shared by this other company, which ruled the eastern half, but due to bad practises, shitty service and just going into the red with costs, we now own their customers, and they no longer exist. So now we are more or less the Gods of Ice here, minus one guy who just sells ice, and buys it off one of the companies to the south. So unlike the other venders, you can't really fuck with us, and not like before when we had competition. I have a few customers who are acting like assholes and think they can go with another company. Its possible, the one guy who just sells it might snatch them up, or the people in Vermont, but the prices for the bags are just horrid compared to ours. The people in vermont sell 5lbs bags of ice for a Dollar a bag, we sell 7 lbs bags for Seventy-Five Cents.
That's the fun of my day, it means nothing overall, work is work, but its fun to bitch about it at times. TGIF.