Value

“That will be five dollars,” I say, handing the woman a plastic shopping bag of straight-neck yellow summer squash.

She turns up her nose a little bit, hesitating before pulling a bill out of her wallet, and holding it out to me. These are the first fruits of the season, finally harvested after hoeing up the ground into mounds, pulling grass, planting seeds, watering, mulching with horse manure, and hours of squishing squash bugs and scraping clusters of eggs off of leaves. I look down at the waxy yellow squash in the bag fondly as though they are my children, finally mature and ready to send off into the world. I want to admonish this woman holding out Lincoln’s bony face to me: I hope you can cook. You better not leave these unattended on the stove. You better not cook them in the microwave. Deep fry them. Grill them. Bring out their best flavor. I sullenly hand over the bag and take the bill from her as though trading my livelihood for a piece of paper.

I initially intended to start selling produce from the Neighbor’s Field at Jubilee at the new monthly Clarkston Farmer’s Market on the last Sunday of every month, where many of the growers in the field already have friends and potential customers who would be a good market for some of the specialty crops they grow and could purchase them on EBT. However, as I talked to the growers about the possibility of selling at this new market, many were excited about the idea of selling their surplus produce, but adamant that they did not want to sell anything on a Sunday. One woman told me, “Sah Yay Shu ta eh bah—Jesus doesn’t like it.”

There is great wisdom in the practice of taking a day of rest or refraining from certain practices for a one day every week, but in the world I come from the idea of stores being closed or transactions ceasing on Sunday is an antiquated fantasy. It feels like a tragedy to turn away from such an opportunity as the market simply because of the day of the week. I want to tell my friends in the Neighbor’s Field that the world of no selling and buying on Sundays is dead and that they should assimilate to the modern world. However, If I recall all of my attempts to set aside a day of rest with any consistency, I run up against the reality that all have failed and I often rather fall into the tendency of many Americans to overwork myself and dismiss mindfulness and gratitude as unnecessary luxuries. I decided to start selling at the much smaller and low-traffic Comer Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings. Several growers contribute their produce to the market table but no one seems to quite share my excitement about the idea of selling their vegetables for supplemental income and perhaps eventually in lieu of the chicken plant.

After bringing in a meager sum at my first market, I return to Atlanta to spend the weekend with some of my closest gaw lah wah friends. Although all of us would claim to be critical of the consumerism in our society, but we spent much of our time together shopping: wandering around downtown Decatur, stocking up at the natural food store, REI, and wrapping it all up with a late night ice cream run. It is as though this demon is wired into our nature. It is the primary skill we possess and the practice that we fall back into unless we intentionally avoid it. We lost something of the intimacy of friendship and time spent together while filling our empty baskets.

Shopping as recreation is the most explicit manifestation of the disease of consumerism. As we give ourselves over to this disease, we surrender ourselves and all of creation at the feet of Babylon. Our economy is no longer based on the simple exchange of goods and the valuing of unique skill sets and resources, but on the lust of corporate empires. We must to find new creative ways to share our resources and abilities with each other in recognition of the relational value of these things, in recognition of the human dignity of the participants in the economy.

The garden welcomes me back at the beginning of the week with new Bermuda grass to pull from the mounds and many more ripe squash jutting out from under the leaves. I kneel in the unkempt dewy grass and pull weeds up by the root from the squash mounds. I pull out a kitchen knife and sever the ripe fruits from the plants, refilling the empty basket from the market with plump yellow squash, which might be fried, marinated, grilled, perhaps even pickled. This is a labor of love which never be compensated by the dollar, but only by the deep peace that comes from willing the land to spring forth with good food.

An old Karenni man meanders down the hill, his head wrapped in a stocking cap and a watering can swinging in his hand, as he does most every morning. I know he cannot speak a even a little bit of English, so I simply wave and smile as he enters the gate and he holds up his hand in return before loosening the spigot to fill his watering can. We come to this field with unspeakable wounds, but in working this soil, there is healing.

Partner

He holds up his index finger to show a deep jagged cut across the tip marring his distinctive pattern.

“Chicken bone,” he says, chuckling. “Green card office ta eh weh bah. Ya bah leh ga dah gay luh kee ta blaw—The green card office did not like this. I have to go back again later.”

“Na hay na supervisor lee ta bay nayahh—Did you give your supervisor that paper?” I ask pointing at the excuse paper from the green card office.

“Yes. She say ‘I don’t want.’ Very angry.”

During orientation at the chicken plant, new hires are referred to not as employees, but “partners.” “Partners” share in the wealth of the company with their hourly wage and share in the common mission of creating “product.” They are partners in the work and the wealth of an industry continuing to boom despite the economic downturn.

I first recall hearing the word “partner” in elementary school when assigned to work in conjunction with another student. This meant completing a science experiment together or peer-editing each other’s writing. It was sometimes a relationship of unfortunate dependence. We later learned its sexual connotation, which never failed to be a source of humor in the classroom.

“Partner” originates from the Old French word parçener, meaning “a joint heir.” The French word is derived from the Latin partitionem, from which we get the English word “partition,” expressing separation or division. Carrying such an etymology, words cleverly probe employee’s perception of their position, not as exploited labor, but as bourgeois recipients of a shared inheritance. The usage of such language incarnates the exploitation by attempting to disguise slavery as dignified work.

“Welcome to America. We want you to be our slaves!” So expressed one of my close friends as the experience of resettlement in the United States. Yet he punctuates such statements with a fertile gratitude, often, much to my dismay, referring to the United States as “the land of opportunity.” I have a right to my cynicism given the history of oppression and exploitation in this country in the name of “opportunity,” just as my friend is justified in his anger at the subjugation of his people despite promises of a new life of dignity, yet these sentiments are only of creative value if they are used to fuel the creation of a new economy.

We need to recover the notion of our country as “the land of opportunity,” as a hopeful notion of this place as a realm of creative possibility. The land itself, refusing to become desert despite years of cotton monoculture proclaims this hope.

“Opportunity” comes from the Latin phrase ob portum veniens, which means “coming toward a port.” It is no wonder that the immigrant would imagine America as “the land of opportunity” while coming into harbor in New York or landing at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. We who would refer to ourselves as Americans are obliged to remember the circumstances of our arrival in this foreign land. The demon who drives us into despair, forgetfulness, and inattention is the demon who exploits the newly arrived with inhumane labor. Let us retreat from our fluency to unknowing and see our surroundings with new eyes, humble eyes, which cannot fathom ownership. Let our speech become silence that we ourselves may come into port, arrive in our own milieu. History is writing itself as we speak.

The great Sufi poet Jelaluddin Rumi speaks thus via contemporary translator Coleman Barks:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

doesn’t make any sense.

This inheritance refuses by its very nature to be partitioned. To be an heir of opportunity is to share in the unbounded creative possibility of fertile land. We construct our fences, but without fail the wires will rust and crumble. Our divisions in the face of time prove themselves to be only figments of our imagination, property markers to make us feel separate and secure. In this field, there can be no boundaries, no partnership, only union.

“Pa ga oh peh ee du luh pa say oh, pa ga pway hee ta pluh peh Comer—We will stay here until we have money and then we will buy a house in Comer.”

“Pa ta tha law tah ta mee mee ah ah, bah hsa pa loh bah hee ta pluh—We don’t want many things, but we need a house.”

Tourist

“Excuse me, but are you from Asia?” the African-American guy sitting next to me at the lunch table asks with a confused look on his face.

“Haha, no I just speak a little bit of Karen, their language.”

“Oh. I was gonna say. You didn’t look like you were Asian. What is that?”

“Mung bean sprouts,” I say popping one of the crunchy little white shoots into my mouth, “Do you want to try one?”

“Nah…well…I suppose I oughta try just one,” he says, putting down his bag of Doritos. He picks up one of the little plants and looks at it as though it is an alien larva before taking a bite. “Mmm. Alright. I have never had anything like that before.”

“Right now the best food is in the woods,” Eh Kaw chimes in, “green briars.”

“Say what?”

“Green briar shoots: the young tips of the thorny plants in the woods that are coming in right now. They are a tender and a little bit sour. Very good,” I explain.

A bowl of young sweet gum leaves and green briar shoots makes its way down from the other end of the table for the man to try.

“Nah… I think I am ok.”

“You sure?” Eh Kaw asks, “At least try the green briar.”

“OK,” he says, nibbling on one of the shoots, “Hey, not bad! Thanks.”

RINGARINGARINGARINGARING! Everyone stands up and prepares to return to the floor.

The chicken plant is a strange patchwork of tight-knit cultures. Karen friends are often eager to share with me the several words of Spanish, Kiswahili, or BVE colloquialisms they acquired during their labor in the meatpacking plants of Georgia. Employees maintain the most ardent allegiance to their own group, yet many practice a glib comraderie that transcends those boundaries.

Perhaps the strangest thing about my sojourn at the chicken plant to my co-workers was my seeming membership in a group visually not my own. Everyone has their niche and for many it is their cultural niche that secures their employment at the plant in the first place. I arrived as a participant-observer of sorts, which was not unapparent to my co-workers. I arrived unable to blend into my group, unable to lose the attention attracted by my individuality.

I framed employment at the chicken plant as an experiment in solidarity, an intentional move out of love for my Karen brothers and sisters, and certainly a new experience. Yet participating in this new milieu necessitated seeking a sense of belonging. I in fact relied as a recipient on the solidarity of my Karen friends with their younger white brother.

I often hear of mistreatment by black and Latino co-workers and witnessed first hand several incidents in which black and Latino workers would interact congenially with one another or me as a white man and then turn around and issue caustic treatment to internationals. My black supervisors were also not hesitant to treat me rudely, established in their position of superiority. Feeling drawn into membership in the Karen community at the chicken plant, I myself began to feel some of the disdain my friends have expressed to me for their black and Latino co-workers because of mistreatment.

My educational and cultural background trained me to regard racism as a folly of the ignorant, yet stepping out of my “white-as-anethnic” sensibility it becomes a real demon to contend. When your own individuality is dissipated by membership in a close-knit cultural body, it is not reasonable to regard consistent mistreatment by others belonging to another cultural body as individual aberrations. There is indeed a culture of abuse. Yet to regard all people with a particular physical appearance as culprits in said culture would also be in error. This is the error of racism: failure to discriminate between distinctive cultures.

Is it ethical for me to consider “joining the tribe?” Is this a failure to discriminate between my experience of comfortable affluence and the refugee experience of the Karen? Certainly there is a gargantuan gap to be acknowledged here, a seemingly irreconcilable void, yet to regard it as essential is this same failure, which deems cultures as absolute. Our memory is always available to the mediation of new experience. This is our essential human freedom—the invitation to the path of salvation (healing).

I can never truly know the plight of the Karen because I have the freedom to leave. My foray into the working class was insulated by the fact that my termination was of little consequence to my quality of life. But even when a tourist comes across fertile ground, he must criticize the conditioned impulse to capture it in a snapshot and return to the rocky soil where produce comes in on trucks and gets sold in supermarkets. As ludicrous as it may seem, he must consider the possibility of throwing away his passport and planting some seeds just to see what germinates.

In wake of the sudden end of my employment at the chicken plant, Naw Say invites me to follow her to pick strawberries for a local farmer in the evening. We drive up a dirt road to the gate and she gets out to open it. I drive into a verdant enclave of trees and shrubs where we are greeted by two smiling faces. “Ha luh ghay?” the man tries.

“Uhh, Ha luh a ghay” Naw Say replies, laughing in appreciation.

He hands us each a stack of shallow boxes and we follow him down the hill to the strawberry patch.

“Where is Pa Saw Paw today?” he asks.

“She had to stay at home with her kids, so I came in her place,” I tell him.

“Well thanks for coming to help.”

“Sure. I am happy to be here. This place is beautiful.”

“Yeah. We really lucked out. What kind of work do you do?”

“Well I worked at the chicken plant in Athens for one month, but I just got fired for being too slow.”

“That’s a hard place to work,” he says.

Words like “solidarity,” “intentional,” and “downward mobility” swirl about my brain, but I cannot seem to put them together in a sentence to show that I have a college degree, so that he will recognize that I am not actually a low-class worker. Solidarity undoes itself when it is approached as a purpose unto itself. Buried beneath my shame is the only wealth I have.

“So pick only the berries that are completely ripe…No yellow or white,” he instructs me. Naw Say is already a quarter of the way down her first row as I begin searching under the first plant.

Eggs

I plunge my hands into another green plastic tub of nuggets and pull up with pieces of chicken  hanging from my fingers like fleshy rosary beads. I fling the product back down into the tub in disgust. No yellow dot for this one. I pull a hold tag out and scrawl “CUT THROUGH” in all capital letters. I am on a crusade against strung-together nuggets. My supervisor told us that the customers are complaining about this, so we are to tag any tub we find with more than two connected pieces. I make it my mission to save the reputation of the chicken plant and impress my supervisor with my high standards and unrestrained holds. I carefully mark another tally on the hold log, trying to save the white paper from the raw chicken goop on my glove.

“YOU’RE TAGGING EVERYTHING MAN!” yells one of the runners, angrily pulling the tub I tagged off of the line.

“IF IT LOOKS BAD, I TAG IT. I AM JUST TRYING TO DO MY JOB!” I reply. I want to say something to him about how this whole place is built on taking advantage of people and the way to subvert that is not through carelessness but obedience, but all he seems concerned about is the extra work I am creating for him by placing so many holds. One of the unanticipated effects of this is the extra work I create for myself: a steady stream of rejected tubs coming back for rechecks, keeping the line backed up at DSI 5. My co-worker, Roberto, appears suddenly beside me and begins pulling product to weigh at my station.

“HILDA TOLD ME TO TAKE OVER LINE FIVE HERE. SHE WANTS TO TALK TO YOU IN THE OFFICE.”

I take off my gloves and walk up the steps of the foot bridge over the conveyor, through the series of plastic flaps, past a giant crate of discarded chicken dyed pastel blue, and into the QA office. I am relieved to have a break from the constant work of the line, where my brain was struggling to keep up with my hands, but unnerved by my assistant supervisor’s sudden interest in talking with me. Most days she does not even reply to the “Good morning” I greet her with in the office at the start of the day. Most of my questions regarding work or the location of needed supplies are typically met with a rude response implying that I should have already known the answer to my own question. I walk into the office where she is making more hold tags.

“Roberto said you wanted to talk to me?”

Without looking up from her work she says, “Go back to the line. I will come and get you. Just stay off of line 5.”

Caught in the familiar gap between obedience and initiative, neither of which are sustainable traits in this place, I return to the line in frustration. DSI 1 is the only unoccupied station, where there is only one tub awaiting inspection. I stir the product, weigh thirty fillets, affix my yellow dot, and slide it onto the line. I lean against the counter, waiting anxiously for my assistant supervisor or another tub to inspect.

Hilda strolls out onto the floor. After five or so minutes of socializing with fellow supervisors, she calls me with her hand. She maintains her usual morbid silence as she leads me back to the office. When we arrive, she tells me to sign in my pen and thermometer and watches impatiently as I do so.

“Follow me,” she says. We cross the production floor again and exit to the front part of the building where we turn into the human resources office. Hilda escorts me to a room where my supervisor and one of the human resources personnel sit waiting for me.

“As you know, the first forty-five days are a probationary period. It seems as though you are not a good fit for the QA position, so we are going to have to let you go… I am going to need your ID card. Your supervisor will clock you out,” the man in human resources tells me in a practiced voice. I turn to my supervisor, remembering the many times I asked him for feedback to no avail.

“Can I ask why?”

“Well, speed. The line was always getting backed up. I got called out to the floor five times because of you! And you failed to fill out the weight histogram correctly.”

By this time everyone is on lunch break and so I go into the cafeteria, but cannot bring myself to sit down to lunch just yet, so I go into the bathroom, shut myself in a stall, and surprise myself as I fill the toilet bowl with tissues full of snot and tears. It hurts getting fired, even from such dismal work.

The next day was supposed to be my first mandatory Saturday overtime in my month-long career at the chicken plant. Instead, I take my usual morning stroll to the Comer Farmer’s Market where Corey tells me Baw Baw has been trying to call me because her stomach hurts. Knowing she is nearing nine months, I walk quickly over to her house, knock on the door and walk in. Baw Baw stands in the living room clutching her belly.

“My baby brother is coming!” Blay Blay says.

“Ya gaw na ta blu blaw leeeh. Na ta paw phone ba ma nu leh—I called you many times already! Why didn’t you answer?” she asks.

“Did you call Sue already?”

“Uhh. Ya te aw he luh a na ree ta hsee ta kaw, bah hsa ya hso ga moh Wisdom ga oh pleh hsoo nya—Yes, I told her to come at 10:30, but I think Wisdom will be born very soon.”

I quickly call Sue at Jubilee and tell her to come now to take Baw Baw to the hospital as I prepare to watch the other four kids and try to get in touch with Hei Nay Htoo at the chicken plant. Russ and Christina at Jubilee volunteer to watch the kids so that I can take Hei Nay Htoo to the hospital. I agree to take over watching the kids Sunday morning until their parents get back from the hospital.

Wisdom Yoha Htoo is born 8 pounds, 11 ounces on Saturday, April 14, 2012 at 10:58 AM at Athens Regional with no complications. Hei Nay Htoo and I arrive shortly after the birth. I am then sent on a mission to find rice and Mama noodles.

The next morning I drop scrambled eggs into hot oil and watch the yellow mixture puff up as it fries. I place the fried eggs on the table with rice, Sriracha, sliced fruit, and five plates. Wonderful, Blay Blay, Hae Tha Blay, Ga Pu, and I sit down on the floor around the table to eat breakfast as we wait for Wisdom to come home.

The Secret

The bell rings continuously for a minute to ensure that absolutely everyone knows their precious fifteen-minute break is almost over. We stand up and file out into the crowded hallway leading to the production floor. I retrieve my smock from the hook and hustle between machines to my station where five seventy-pound tubs of product have already accumulated on each side of the computer terminal, awaiting my inspection. I slowly ease back into the rhythm of scooping handfuls of fillets, depositing them on the counter, weighing them piece-by-piece, and quickly tossing them back into the tub after the weight registers in the spreadsheet.

“YOU NEED TO PICK UP THE SPEED A LITTLE BIT, OK?” my supervisor surprises me from behind over the rumble of the sizers. “THIS AFTERNOON WILL BE YOUR FIRST TEST WITH ONLY THREE PEOPLE ON THE LINE. WE’LL SEE IF YOU CAN DO IT!”

I reprogram the computer for the next variety of fillets and quickly scoop a larger handful of fillets, hoping I can save some time on having to pull the sample of thirty pieces multiple times. As I lift the gloppy pile, two fillets slip from my grasp and fall on the floor. I place the rest on the table and begin recording the weights in the computer stretching the smaller pieces out to check that they fit the template. I toss the already weighed pieces into the tub with haste sending several sliding off the edge of the counter.

“EXCUSE ME!” a voice calls. It is one of the line supervisors. “DID YOU DO THAT?” she asks accusingly, pointing to the fillets on the floor.

“YES…”

“I JUST CLEANED THIS AREA! BE CAREFUL! THE CEO IS COMING HERE TOMORROW AND I KNOW HE DOES NOT WANT TO SEE THAT!”

“OK. I WILL.”

Tesfaye comes over with the ice cart and with his grabber retrieves each fillet that I dropped from the floor and places it neatly on top of the ice.

“GOOD MORNING, ZAC! HOW ARE YOU?”

“I AM FINE! HOW ARE YOU, TESFAYE?”

“GOOD!”

“HAVE YOU WORKED HERE A LONG TIME?”

“ABOUT A YEAR AND A HALF. IT IS MY FIRST JOB IN AMERICA!  I LIKE IT!”

He smiles at me as he drags the cart off to the wash station. The rollers on either side of me are again full with tubs for me to inspect. The line runner arrives with two more tubs on his cart and glares at me as I grab a handful of nuggets to weigh. We are supposed to inspect thirty pieces per lot. A lot can include one to three tubs according to our discretion. The assistant line supervisor from the other side leans over to me and says,

“THE SECRET TO THIS JOB IS KEEPING YOUR OWN SECRET. YOU CAN’T DO IT HOW THEY TELL YOU.”

I laugh as he gestures to indicate that I should just place stickers on all the tubs to keep the line moving. He slides the tubs I have already marked with my yellow “Q.A. Inspected” sticker onto the conveyor for me, nodding his head towards the uninspected tubs.

“C’MON MAN. IT IS ALMOST YOUR BREAK AND THERE IS A LOT OF CHICKEN HERE!”

I do a hasty sift through each tub, affix my yellow dot to the tags, and walk away for my lunch break a minute late.

My employment at the chicken plant is padded by financial security and an unacknowledged college degree, which allow me to frame it as a short-lived sojourn. Yet for most of my Karen friends and I would speculate the vast majority of the hourly workers here, this is far from a new experience. It is the means by which their families are surviving in this twisted economy. The first forty-five workdays are a probationary period, a time wrought with anguish for someone who relies on this income to make rent. The company can let you go at any time unless your performance meets their standards, throw you away under the counter to be dyed blue and discarded.

I return to my post for a moment to re-sheath my hands and then off to check the wash stations where all product that makes contact with the floor is sent to be cleaned with water treated with some special chemical for sanitizing chicken. New tubs appear on the rollers as I walk off towards the far corner of the production floor. I pick up the washed chicken and move it to an adjacent tub as I glance at it for dirt or hairs. I count ten pieces then reach up for the clipboard to indicate that the washer properly cleaned the product for this hour.

“ZAC,” a voice calmly interrupts. I turn to see the USDA lady whom I met in the morning staring straight at me.

“YOU ONLY CHECKED ONE SIDE OF THE FIRST SEVEN PIECES! I WATCHED YOU! I AM GOING TO HAVE TO TELL YOUR SUPERVISOR ABOUT THAT.”

Before I can say anything she walks off towards the QA office. My hands shake as I pull another ten pieces and check them thoroughly. The assistant QA supervisor comes out to scold me.

“EVERYTIME YOU CHECK THE WASH STATIONS, YOU NEED TO CHECK TEN PIECES! THE USDA LADY JUST CAME BACK AND TOLD ME YOU ONLY CHECKED THREE PIECES! RANDY IS NOT GOING TO BE HAPPY WHEN HE HEARS ABOUT THIS IN THE MORNING!”

Trembling with worry, I finish the last hour of work mindlessly weighing nuggets, unsure whether tomorrow will be my last day. I surprise myself with the realness of the fear, my attachment to the position. My presence here no longer feels to be an experiment in subversion, but my actual life.

If I focus my attention on what could be, my eyes close to the beauty in present circumstances and the very way to “what could be” functionally closes. Beauty arises from charming fear and gratitude into coalescence. Fear, volatile as it may be, keeps me attuned to mystery. It is an invitation to the practice of gratitude. On this dynamic path to contentment, everything is pregnant with possibility.

I emerge into the warm afternoon through the turnstile and hop in the passenger seat of Hei Nay Htoo’s van in the parking lot. My muscles sink into the car seat, giving thanks that they are no longer required to maintain my frame standing erect. Sweat pours under my sweatshirt and long underwear as my body adjusts to the new climate of Northeast Georgia spring. I watch the giant fans outside the plant whirl above an intricate buttress of pipes as we pull away. I am now a denizen of this strange cathedral.

Quality

“NO SPITTING ON RESTROOM FLOOR,” a sign declares in all capital letters from the wall. I search awkwardly for the lever to turn on the water in the long trough sink as seasoned workers hurry about the bathroom on their break. The man next to me gestures down below and I finally see a pedal which I lean into with my knee and send scalding water cascading from the faucet and splashing onto my sweatshirt.

I yank open the bathroom door and walk out into the cafeteria. The lunch line is off to the right and vending machines line the far left wall. The long sidewalls are covered with small gray lockers. Long fold out tables with bench seats fill the center of the room in rows of two. It is as though I am walking out of the smoky bathroom of my high school back into the crowded cafeteria. I feel as though I need to have a pass to prove that I am allowed to be here. I glance nervously among the tables and breathe a sigh of relief as Eh Kaw waves me over to the Karen table where there are already many Tupperware containers of curry spread out between bowls of rice.

It is my first day as a Quality Assurance Technician at the chicken plant, which is mostly spent watching the others quickly weigh random samples of “product” and place holds on seventy pound tubs of chicken nuggets which contain too many pieces several grams too heavy or connected together by fat or cartilage. “The most important thing is speed,” my supervisor tells me as he sits me down in his office to read company and department policies to me, after which I am to initial off on several items on a list.

Quality assurance as it turns out is mostly a matter of quickly collecting data to keep “product” moving along the line. While I am required to stick my sheathed hands and arms into the tubs and stir around to look for foreign material, mostly my purpose is to ensure the homogeneity of fillets and nuggets to keep Chick-fil-A and Zaxby’s from making too many complaints. I am to report any defects, or signs that the product originated in a living creature: cartilage, excess skin, fat, bloodspots, or worst of all, bone.

My first day is relatively easy and I question the suggestion made by the representative from human resources during the classroom orientation the previous week, that you take a couple of over-the-counter painkillers before work everyday for your first week. The second day, however, I am to report at the regular time and so I carpool with my Karen friends in Comer already working at the plant. A silver SUV pulls up outside the house at 6:35 am the next morning, roughly ten minutes after Eh Kaw knocks on my door to wake me up.

I sip on my thermos of tea as we cruise down 72 towards Athens in the darkness before dawn. The headlights illuminate a large tractor-trailer stacked high with cages in the lane adjacent to us. Gloomy white shapes squirm inside the squatty cages and feathers rush in the headwind. We are caravanning from Comer together with our product.

Quality can never be evaluated by adherence to a particular model, because quality exists only relative to particularity. If you eat the same identical piece of chicken every day for lunch, eventually the distinctions of “good” or “bad” lose their meaning because no experience is unique. There is only one experience: chicken. The chicken plant is the industrialization of our oblivion. Without the mindfulness with which to actually make distinctions between experiences, we become the all-white meat fillet that fills our belly. As we genetically engineer ourselves into machines, we make our world into a place where consciousness is a scary thought. What is the purpose of all of these people working in a cold and noisy factory under fluorescent lights to produce low-quality food to fatten the drive-thru patron? What are people for?

When my great-grandparents immigrated to the United States from Germany they were poor working class people living in Baltimore city. My great-grandfather established a bakery in his new country and this was the means by which he supported his family. After my grandmother completed the 8^th grade, she went to work in her father’s bakery also. As the story told many times at her funeral in January goes, this is where she met my grandfather, who kept coming back for doughnuts. This is my most recent relative whom I have heard of employed in the work of food production.

We encounter low quality when we are unable to conceive of the existence of multiple realities: rich and poor, delicious and bland, life and death. Our memory becomes bleached by monoculture. As my psychiatrist recently reminded me, “Depression is not good for you. There have been studies showing links between depression and all kinds of health problems, especially memory loss.”  The symptoms are perhaps a sign of the disease.

My second day I begin working alongside one of the other technicians who kindly teaches me all of the different tasks and tricks associated with the job. Tub after tub of chicken comes on the rollers to be processed. My lower back begins to ache from standing and pushing the tubs as 4:15 PM approaches. The lines show no sign of stopping. The product continues to appear without notification from anyone as to what time the machines will be shut off and the birds will be finished so that we can go home for the day.

I am faced with the challenge of remembering the distinctions between the days of my toil, of countering the temptation to classify my new work as monotony and follow this to its logical conclusion of meaninglessness. I must frame my new position as an act of anamnesis for my middle class mind to accept it. If I am to pursue quality I have to counter my journalistic judgment of the chicken plant. To find joy to in my work I search for a melody for a line from the morning psalm so that I can sing it to myself as I work. I will sing of your salvation! I will sing of your salvation! The chicken plant is an absurd venue in which to sing of God’s healing, but it is precisely for this reason that there is quality to be found here amidst the roaring portion sizers, plastic tubs of raw poultry, and wet concrete floors.

Disappear

“Have you been here before?” the woman asks from behind the desk.

I look around the office nervously. Sterile tables and chairs float like islands on the expanse of green carpet. The security guard glances up at me from his desk at the back of the room.

“No. Well… not for myself,” I say, remembering my trip here last year with Hei Nay Htoo and Tha Htaw. Blay Blay and Ga Pu were in tow since Baw Baw was still working at another poultry plant. We had to make a stop halfway to Athens because Blay Blay got carsick all over himself.

“Fill this out to complete your registration,” she says handing me a pen and packet of forms.

I sit down at one of the many empty tables and begin filling in my contact information on the top of the generic form. I hesitate at the line for college or university education. Cautiously I scrawl out, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, check the box indicating that I graduated, and then write in my major: Religious Studies, hoping this compensates for having a bachelor’s degree in the first place. I find comfort in the thought that I am only at the Georgia Department of Labor, and know the person with whom I am meeting.

A short black woman comes out from the office area and calls my name with a thick West African accent. I hardly recognize her, but know this must be Sola, so I get up to greet her. She smiles at me and asks jovially:

“So how come this time you are here for yourself? You are looking for a job?”

“I just moved in with Eh Kaw in Comer and am looking for a job at the poultry plant,” I say as I follow her into her office in the back.

“Did he start there already?”

“Yeah. I think they wanted him in H.R. but he insisted on working as a wing cutter on the line.”

“It is very slow right now. They really are not doing very much. Maybe if you go with Eh Kaw…”

“Yeah that is what I thought I would do, but he told me to come through you because usually the people he brings are given the hardest jobs. He has seen me try to cut meat before and is pretty sure I would sever a finger if I worked as a wing cutter.”

“Well, I will do what I can, but I never know when they will come to us and ask for people. You might have to wait several months…”

She points to a stack of applications in a tray: all people waiting for work at the plant.

“Home Depot is hiring right now if you are interested in that… or since your last job was as a tutor, what about this preschool teacher position?”

Feeling discouraged about the possibility of the chicken plant I let her tell me about the other job openings in her database. A middle aged white woman comes in to the office and starts talking to Sola about some video series on job searching to show for an event at the labor department. I gradually tone out there conversation in spite of my impatience and try to imagine myself with an orange apron unloading freight from trucks.

“…And this is Zac. He worked with Jubilee Partners and now he is coming to me to look for jobs,” she says with a chuckle. I smile at her co-worker.

“What kind of job are you looking for?” she asks.

“I want to work at the chicken plant.”

“I have been telling him about other possibilities, but he wants to work there,” Sola chimes in.

“You don’t want to work there,” the woman says, “I went for a meeting there once and it… it was horrible! I knew someone who worked there once who told me they could never get the smell of dead chicken out of their car! It’s not for you.”

“Are you sure you can handle it?” Sola asks.

“Well… I want to try… So many of my friends are working there and I feel like I need to know what it is like… Eh Kaw asked it of me.”

“So you just want to experience it? How long do you want to stay there? Six years? You think it is worth you just going in there to see what it is like when there are so many people waiting for jobs there?” the woman barks at me.

“It’s not for you. It’s for… who it’s for,” Sola agrees.

Who is this dastardly group that the chicken plant is for? Most Karen certainly have a knack for butchering meat and the plant does provide necessary employment and decent wages to many much more skilled with their hands than I. However, as ragged white-feathered chickens, unable to walk if they are kept alive too long, are brought in by the filthy truckload in order to please our hungry consumer society like a demon child being suckled by the boneless breast, we must acknowledge the reality that we are all being processed.

If the chicken plant vocation is intended for anyone, it is meant for the people who have taken and eaten. We the processed meat, are called to the line. We must without hesitation hop on the conveyor to our deconstruction. James writes:

Let the brother in humble circumstances take pride in his eminence and the rich man be proud of his lowliness, for he will disappear “like the flower of the field.” When the sun comes up with its scorching heat it parches the meadow, the field flowers droop, and with that the meadow’s loveliness is gone. Just so will the rich man wither away amid his many projects.

 “If you really have it in your heart to work there we will see what we can do, but I am telling you it might be several months,” the woman says leaving the room.

Sola hands me an application.

“Make sure you omit your college degree on here. Can you fax this to me by tomorrow?”

“Yes. I will.”

The next day I return to the work of watching my niece and nephew in the morning for a few hours while Baw Baw goes to English class. Blay Blay and Ga Pu follow me outside of the K-House and I direct them to edible weeds for a wild salad.

“Blay Blay, can you pick the little umbrellas?” I ask, pointing to a patch of thriving cranesbill.

“Oh yeah!” he says, scampering towards the foliage, carefully snipping off the tops of the umbrellas and placing them in the metal bowl.

Ga Pu looks at the cranesbill with apparent disinterest and hops over to where I am picking violet.  Her eye catches a tiny lavender-colored flower, which she delicately plucks from the ground. She hits my arm forcefully, to pull my attention from the violet leaves.

“Zac! Zac!” she calls. I finally stop pulling the leaves and look to see why she is so excited. She holds the wild pansy up in the air for me to see, eyes big with wonder. I find another wild pansy growing close by and pop it in my mouth, pleasantly surprised by the subtle burst of floral wintergreen. Her brow furrows.

“Can you put the flower in the bowl?” I say, picking more pansies, in hopes that she will follow suit. Her lips curve into a smile as she places the flower in the bowl and hunts for another. With each pansy she picks, she comes over and hits my arm again, holding the single flower up as high as she can before placing it carefully in the salad.