“The thing of it was, Garraty, the factory was on piecework. That means we got lousy wages, but a percentage for all we did over a certain minimum. I wasn’t a very good bagger. I did about twenty-three bags a day, but the norm was usually right around thirty. And this did not endear me to the rest of the boys, because I was fucking them up. Harlan down in the dyehouse couldn’t make piecework because I was tying up his blower with full bins. Ralph on the picker couldn’t make piecework because I wasn’t shifting enough bags over to him. It wasn’t pleasant. They saw to it that it wasn’t pleasant.
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