Once upon a time in a factory in Scotland, I was part of the Quality Control team. We were happy and did our job well, but always found that fine balance between work and socialisation. So, we were a close-knit team until the Quality Control equivalent of Miss Trunchbull wandered in.
I’ve shared about her in the past on here. She was the sort of person who thought a factory that dealt with potatoes – you know, from the ground – should be spotless. No dirt. Yup, go figure. And by the time she came in, I’d been working there for almost two years, so I knew more than I ever thought I’d know about potatoes.
Anyway. She was the sort of boss who would plough in and try to prove herself in whatever way possible.
Now, I feel I should explain our system. We’d get potatoes fresh from the fields dropped off at the factory. Two crates from each farm would land outside the doors of our QA office. The rest of the batch would go in the warehouses. We’d check them, grade them, and basically let the picking staff know how much work they have to do to make it a half-decent bag full for your Sunday Roast. Worst-case scenario, we’d stick a “QA Hold” or “QA Reject” label on them, and the farmer would be left with crates of mouldy potatoes.
Normally, we’d hold or reject for very valid reasons. And it was often obvious when a batch was no good. If you’ve ever picked up potatoes at a supermarket, you’ll know what bad looks like; imagine that, but tonnes worth of potatoes in a crate.
One day, Miss Potato Trunchbull came strutting up to me, clasping in her hands a slip we normally pass to the forklift drivers to request a batch be brought to us. This is only normally done when we have serious questions about a batch and need to see if it’s all the same quality or if we just happened to get one bad crate that we could work with.
Miss Potato Trunchbull: “I need to look at this batch again immediately. Please give this to the forklift driver and let me know the second it arrives.”
Now, I’m an anxious person when it comes to work; I was automatically convinced I did something wrong. Was this a batch I approved, and it was all rotten? What was wrong? Did one of our major contractors decide we were terrible and we were about to lose them?
So, I scurry off, slip clasped in my sweaty little nervous palm, and find a driver. I ask him to bring it as soon as he can. It takes maybe ten or twenty minutes for them to get around to plopping it down outside the office. So, I go and inform Miss Potato Trunchbull that it’s there.
She comes to the office and walks through with that air of authority that she always had. We both go outside to the crate, and she places her hands on it and stares at it for… an uncomfortably long time.
Miss Potato Trunchbull: “…What’s wrong with this batch, again?”
I took a second to stare at her. It wasn’t a trick question. She wasn’t asking me to explain myself. She was literally asking me why SHE decided this needed to be brought to the office. I think I stared at her as long as she stared at those lifeless root vegetables… in that moment, there wasn’t much difference between the two.
Me: “Um, I’m not sure. These are the ones you wanted brought back.”
Miss Potato Trunchbull: *Picking up the most perfect potato ever and tossing it again.* “They’re not very good, are they?”
Me: “They’re not too bad to be fair. I think when we first checked this batch, it was near perfect.”
Miss Potato Trunchbull: Okay. Well… grade them again. Let me know the results.”
I did grade them again, which involved scooping out a basket full, washing them, and then scoring them on skin condition, whether they had scab, slug damage, cuts from machinery, peeling them to check for bruises, and cutting them to check for black heart. It was not a quick process. They were near enough perfect. I told this to Miss Potato Trunchbull. Her response?
Miss Potato Trunchbull: “Oh, they’re free to go on the line then.”
The funny thing is this: we had notoriously bad farmers.
Before I became a QC, I worked on the picking table. Every batch we had on the picking table, the QC would write the potato type, the key defects we’d be looking for, and the farmer they came from. There were some farmer names you’d just look at and groan. They were nearly always terrible. But the batch she requested was from a very good farmer who gave us near-perfect spuds every time. There was no reason for her to ask for that, or to waste our time with extra checks. Except to perhaps try to fuel her own sense of self-importance.
