Mandarine. Dominic Billings
ingredients listed as water, rice, high-fructose corn syrup, cream, milk, protein concentrate, a pinch of salt.
This was followed by less than one percent of emulsifier to mix those liquids not ordinary mixable, as well as a humectant, keeping the product moist. Still yet, fractional amounts of gelatine, to thicken; both natural and artificial flavourings; and two synthetic colourings, one a lemon-yellow, the other more of a sunset hue, derived from petroleum.
For Pud Inc., the shelf life to display in supermarkets, whether chilled or at room temperature, necessitated ingredients one would omit if cooking for friends or family.
Gidelia was no rice pudding aficionado, but it was scarcely a prerequisite to occupy her post within Pud Inc. She'd barely dabbled with the product herself. She'd had sufficient fill back home of what there was known as arroz con leche. She'd never prepared it herself, but imagined, without ever having looked at her grandmother's recipe, was differentiated perhaps by its use of coconut. Also, the tin of sweetened condensed milk she'd conspicuously sample during her grandmother’s preparation.
So long as she was in the employ of Pud Inc., she deemed the company's successes to be parallel to her own. If she invested into the fortunes of its prosperity, she would also bear the fruits. As one of her sole buoys of refuge in America alongside Joanne, she would champion Pud’s interests, as though they were hitched directly to her own sense of security.
The spectre of unionisation was raised, a growing reality the company hadn't faced since the late '70s. Gidelia, an immigrant with a precarious visa status herself, was indignant at the ingratitude of those bridling against their employ.
An acolyte loyal to the upper branches of Pud Inc., contrasted with those organisationally subordinate to her, she henceforth considered her mission to act as a Pud secret police. Rooting out those spoiling for acrimony.
At the threat of the security of her own job being at risk, she'd gladly accept the dismissal on whichever grounds of intransigent staff. The liberty of America allowed businesses to move people on with greater facility than many other nations.
To Gidelia's mind, having been brought up under Chávez, who ostensibly adhered tight to principles of advocating strongly for worker rights, she knew this to in actuality be a ruse to badly mask corruption, and the accretion of power, in the name of power to the people.
She'd thoroughly impressed herself with the wealth of knowledge she'd managed to absorb relating to food processing, and the accompanying safety practices.
She had a sound overall knowledge of how the factory floor systems manufacturing the rice pudding ran, complex though the actual engineering was.
Whilst not proficient, she understood how to analyse hazards affecting food safety, whether in biological, chemical or physical form. Able to identify which points in the production line were critical to systematically preventing hazards.
She understood, from on-the-job absorption, the principles relating to sanitation. The effect of bacteria, viruses, fungi and related pathogens, affecting the food preservation, safety and control.
Gidelia didn't nominally hold responsibility for ensuring such practices by any means, but nevertheless made adherence to microbiological integrity the product of her business. As much to clutch at a sense of control, as if she could control her future fate in the company, and in this country, by micromanaging microorganisms.
Industry standard called for maintaining controlled production facilities to ensure sanitary conditions. She knew from real-world experience, on factory floors, both here and at the meat packing plant, the reality could on occasion be a little skewed against expected policies and procedures.
At the meatpacking plant, she'd become inured to such oversights, scarcely imagining they affected her much, lying at the feet of her supervisors to address.
With the added responsibility in her role at Pud however, she now tangibly felt she had something to lose. She entrusted to herself responsibilities, neither reflected in her position description, nor the organisational chart.
Illness was not an eventuality which could be guaranteed against in food processing settings. But they could be minimised by adherence to operational and scientific steps.
To Gidelia's mind, this required a full-court press, to bring the team to lock-step with her own mission for success. Whatever the respective staff’s individual apathies or personal issues - she decided on behalf of all staff on the factory floor that they ought aim for safely specified manufacturing conditions, or face her bullying.
She'd elected herself to control the production process, to mitigate spoilage, as though it were spoilage of the conditions allowing her to stay in this country. Holding out the prospect of reuniting with her family, the product safety assurances a proxy for her personal sense of security.
She understood the fallibility of trying to purify the worker bees of the production line without potentially destroying the process by heavy-handedness.
She knew her fate within the company could evaporate at the hands of a microscopic, food-borne infection or intoxicant. This eventuality could lead the public to doubt Pud's safety, from which the narrative would likely elude Pud Inc.'s grasp. Fumbling toward an incomplete knowledge of the situation. Leading to an unstable situation, perhaps costly product recalls. The effect of tens of millions of dollars for damages in cases of illness of less than a hundred people. Particularly if infants were affected. Less than a hundred people, eating only a few grams of a food containing the offending organisms, could lead to bankruptcies, lawsuit settlements.
From her cursory experience of only a couple months within the ranks of two food processing factories, Gidelia had adopted the philosophy that food poisoning was entirely preventable.
But measures such as checking storage conditions on a periodic basis were insufficient to keep the product safe.
It instead required every individual to uphold a continual process of detecting, reducing, and eliminating errors. In a perpetual state of training, the production line only as strong as its weakest link.
Gidelia trusted the technology of the production line, but harboured doubts about each individual human working on the line. Their idiosyncratic needs and wants, as all humans possess, to accurately comprehend, and implement, the expression of existing procedures.
A language barrier existed due to the plethora of foreign-born workers, but Gidelia believed this was no excuse in achievement of product safety.
A one-woman audit ordained to root out instances of deficiency, attracting remedial attention. What she lacked in experience, training, or even responsibility, she compensated in vehemence, and public denigration of staff. If staff did not share her philosophy, why were they there at all, she would scold.
Ignorant of supervisor's actual authority over floor staff, Gidelia adopted the will to quarantine suspect batches. Stopping and re-starting production after safety or quality incidents. By sheer bullishness, ignoring the ignominy expressed by supervisory staff.
Outside the earshot of supervisors, she would re-organise the technical personnel, delivering conflicting information relating to duties and responsibilities. Sometimes outwardly excoriating and exposing individuals for their lack of qualification and experience to hold their roles. Even reconfiguring staff hours, in a particularly egregious example of overreach.
Ceaselessly demanding a "need to know" basis. Extending even to a hands-on role managing contracted parties, such as cleaners and pest control. Breathing down the necks of those within Pud Inc. who liaised with such contractors. An open-ended checklist, seeking evidence of consistency, taking names.
Over the course of several months, she'd poked her business - relatively unhindered by those higher up - into the building, ingredients, supply chain, packaging, storage and distribution of Pud's Iowa plant.
Usurping a role untitled and untethered, blending discretion to keep her interfering breaches, far beyond her nominal role, from her superiors, whilst voluminously castigating staff to set public examples.
Veiling threats upon supervisory staff