Short Story: A Dog's World Part III
(See the Prologue for A Dog's World here.)
Rocky } =
The Dartmouth truck sat next to the huge concrete bay, while its driver, Rocky, a huge black and white male Newfoundland, dramatically paced before the black plastic drapery that kept a cold sweeping December wind from penetrating the factory innards. Big Blackie Biscuit and Specialty Items, Inc. of Northwest Ohio, the U.S.A.'s main dog food, biscuit, and tag and chain factory, was warm inside, as always, Rocky noted.
He gave a great shake of warmth as he watched two Golden Retrievers (G.R.s) with square red tags scurry from the shipping office. Rocky lit a cigarette. Smoking inside was against plant regulations, but no dog gave him any resistance. There were blue triangular tags on the necks of the two Great Danes (G.D.s) who observed the mechancis of a monster green and yellow ram press situation near the center of the plant's truck receiving wing.
The press being closely observed was the infamous T-Bone Express biscuit maker. It was as tall as a three story house with tonnage of over 600 and a driving ram force that could wipe out a large brick dog house in a single stroke. All the truck drivers knew about the T-Boner. It produced an incredibly delicate T dog biscuit by cookie cutter principle. Eight cutouts were shaped per single stroke of the T-Boner's ram. Orders for the tasty Glazed T-Bone Biscuit were enormous in number, and Big Blackie boasted of having fifty trucks always at transport ready just to deliver the T-Bones in countryside areas north, south, east, and west.
Quality and production problems frequently revolved around the T-Bone Express, for its sheer size and power and its ram stroke prolificity caused maintenance nightmares. The T-Bone area was in constant uproar. Quality of product versus production numbers prompted head-on collisions between the quality department and production number supervisors.
Glazing the T-Bone Biscuit before, or after, cutouts constituted a major argument among maintenance, quality, and production heads. Opinions crashed, heads butted heads, over prolificity, or ram stroke, quality of product, and production numbers, in an attempt to fill vast orders. The argument over pre-glazing, or post-glazing, ultimately was left unsettled as first shift pressies were told to run one way and second shift opinion changed the run. The quality department remained stumped, and engineers stayed at the drawing boards. Production chiefs sweated blood on and on for higher numbers, and plant management screamed at them to produce more, more, more!
Rocky smiled as he held out a paw toward Red, the G.R. shipping supervisor, who had beelined to him as he sent Oscar, the other G.R. he'd been talking with, toward the T-Boner.
"Hello, Rocky," Red grinned. He gripped Rocky's paw, but knowing the Newfie's crushing strength, quickly released it. "Still the fastest driver in the west, aren't you, now?"
"Guess so," answered the soft spoken Newf. Drivers were told to drive fast, Rocky thought. He guessed a shipping chief was motivated to move rapidly, too.
"We'll have you loaded and out of here in half an hour," Red claimed.
Red was trotting off even before Rocky could nod an acknowledgement. Busy, but a good dog, Rocky thought. Dude sure has a strange-looking tail, though. A little greenish. And thick as a tree branch.
(Continued in A Dog's World Part IV ...)
