A Fight with a Conveyor Belt

Jonathan Black

May 22, 2025

My friend Ray is dead. Like many others in the logistics business, he was a comrade-in-arms in a never-ending battle with a never-ending stream of boxes. Boxes of food, sanitary pads, tires, tissues, electric bicycles, coffins… You want it, we ship it. We once hurriedly pieced together a collection of family photo albums after their box slipped under the conveyor belt and was torn apart. When a strange and suspicious white powder started leaking from the bottom of a box, we were told to tape it up and send it, no questions asked. We had to keep moving; the stream of freight waits for no one.

Our employer, a successful Australian freight company, churns people into this battle of the boxes, and some, like Ray, don’t make it. Perhaps he had grown too old for the fight, yet he loved the work. He once told me that, in 20 years as a truck driver, he had taken only two sick days. His old boss had joked that it was two too many.

Ray and I were hired during the COVID lockdowns. I had lost my decade-long job as a machine operator at a small printing press, and at first, I thought Ray was a crotchety old busybody who might well narc to the supervisors if you got on his bad side. This first impression was entirely wrong. And yet, Ray did have the unfortunate habit of drawing the bosses’ attention, mainly through his constant questioning and general disdain for following any instructions that didn’t make sense to him. I, by contrast, was much more compliant. After working at a small business with a boss who had an extremely fragile ego and a quick temper, I appreciated working in a massive workplace, an environment where you could fade into the woodwork. Ray, in all his 65 or so years, had never learned this lesson, and he never would.

During onboarding, I remember looking around the depot floor at the other prospective employees. ‘So,’ I thought, ‘this is the refuse of society. These “essential workers” have had their worth weighed and have been found wanting.’

I myself had once been considered a “gifted child,” from whom people expected big things. If only I could go back in time and assure all the guidance counselors, teachers and mentors not to waste their time on me. Thirty-five thousand dollars worth of student debt later, through a winding maze of false starts and vainglories, I had arrived in an occupation I began to excel in as a machine operator. But COVID had thrown me even further down the rungs of society, and I landed finally on “professional box thrower.”

However, the unassailable part of myself, that north star which remained fixed above the fog of broken dreams and self-pity, was my greatest success: my two little girls and wife, for whom I would do anything and everything. So while they were gradually waking up to the gentle sounds of morning bird calls, my workmates and I danced to the steady hum of the conveyor belt and intermittent warning sirens: reaching up and bending down, back and forth into trailers, sidestepping five-ton forklifts and facilitating the endless flow of freight. To understand this dance, it may be helpful here to provide a rough sketch of the working day in an Australian freight depot.

The day begins at 5 a.m. with a high-pitched siren, signaling that the conveyor belt has been switched on. Overnight truck drivers back their trailers up to massive garage doors, and the extendable ends of the belt stretch like great robotic fingers into the trailers.

The primary unloading of the trailers is so arduous that there is an unofficial policy of prioritizing younger dock hands for this work. It is also used as a threatened punishment for older workers who slack off on the docks, where general freight is deposited via the belt, down chutes to designated suburbs at a much less frenetic pace.

Oversized freight is removed as it moves into the depot and placed on a belt that leads downward, away from the rest, to be hauled into metal cages by virile youngsters. These cages are individually delivered by forklift drivers to the separate docks, where they are arranged alongside the normal-sized freight, which makes its way around the main conveyor belt, running in an immense loop through the entire depot. After three hours of unloading, the day drivers arrive and start loading up their trucks for their daily diaspora through the suburbs and industrial areas. There is then a short interval before the PM crew arrives, and the whole process picks up again.

Ray and I were part of the AM crew, and what a motley crew it was. It was a multicultural, though predominantly male, mix. Even the two self-avowed–though covert–“white supremacists” jovially cooperated with the Māori, Sri Lankans, Indians, Africans, etc. And–again covertly–sold drugs to anyone and everyone who required them. These two latched onto me once I told them I was South African on my mum’s side, though I kept assuring them we were just boring old English, not Boers. They would quietly explain to me, “Indians are actually OK, but you don’t want them in charge.” They would occasionally supply me with what they called “up and goes,” which were small white dexamphetamine tablets. For someone not used to a 5 a.m. start, these were a small blessing, although, if I took more than one, they tended to wreak havoc with my bowels.

By any reckoning, these two were what you'd call rough. They had the strange look of prematurely old amphetamine addicts–leathery skin, missing teeth. One had a license, the other had a car. One had a glass eye, the other was half-deaf. Together they formed one very racist–though functionally friendly–worker.

Then there was Muhammed, an Afghan refugee, who worked about four different jobs. He had the odd habit of speaking about himself in the third person. When he bought into a now quite successful burger franchise, he told me, “This might be the end for old Muhammed.”

There was only one thing Muhammed hated more than Israel and Iran, and that was the Taliban. He had the word Afghani—in Persian—cigarette-burned into his left forearm, which he said was the work of Iranian police. For Muhammed, many of the world’s evils could be boiled down to the problem of “shit people.” He also lamented the influence of religion in the Middle East, often saying something like: “If this world is only a road to the next, then this world doesn’t matter.”

Returning to my departed work partner Ray, he was an annoying prick. This confused me when we first met.

I was walking past him as he was chatting with another older worker when he said quite audibly, “Yeah, he's a fucking idiot, totally incompetent, horribly ugly… oops, shhh, quiet, there he is.”

This was one of his standard jokes.

Another was his clever twisting of suburb names. For example, “Bentleigh” became “Bent Lee the gay Chinaman,” and whenever anyone mentioned Mount Evelyn, he would say, “Oh, Mount Evelyn, I went to mount Evelyn last night, but her husband came home.” I would stare at him in silence or roll my eyes when he told these jokes, which seemed to be his desired response.

Being an old hand in the logistics industry, Ray had a number of tricks to make the day more tolerable. Occasionally we would be sent out together on short early morning deliveries. Ray would purposefully take the busiest roads so that when we returned to the dock, the lion's share of the freight handling had been finished. If we were ever accidentally early back from a delivery, Ray would take the truck down a semi-hidden dirt road that ran behind the wetland which stretched out from the back end of the depot. This became something of a sanctuary to Ray and me, where we would sit and watch the hundreds of ibises that nest in the wetland.

Sometimes we would talk, but often, we would sit gazing quietly at this rancid oasis; one of the curious, empty, in-between spaces you find in industrial areas.

Once I remarked, “The ancient Egyptians loved these ibis birds.” 

I wasn't sure Ray heard me but after a long pause Ray replied, “They're just fucking bin-turkeys mate.”

One morning, Ray and I were working the dock and having our usual argument about rival football codes in Australia. Unless he was complaining about men in women's sport, this was the closest thing you would get to politics with Ray.

“The Australian Football League,” insisted Ray, “is a variation of an old Irish form of soccer. It is a noble game.”

I would counter, “If the Irish have anything to be proud of—and that's a big if—it is surely its rugby union team. Rugby union, and its lesser variant, rugby league, are a war of attrition, whereas Australian football looks more like a bunch of grasshoppers running riot on a cricket field.”

While this old debate dragged on, boxes were piling up—boxes we were responsible for. As anyone will tell you, the longer you work in a job and the more comfortable you get, the greater the tendency to push the boundaries of laziness. This particular morning, we evidently pushed them too far.

You could hear the supervisors’ walkie-talkies before you saw them. Soon enough, we heard the static and beeps, then a very upset-looking Indian appeared, flanked by two bored-looking Māori teenagers–our replacements.

“You two!” he barked. “You have been reassigned to the oversize belt!”

Ray and I exchanged despondent looks. The oversized belt was not only back-, knee-, and elbow-breaking work, but it also required carefully sorting fragile items that couldn’t safely travel along the general depot-wide belt.

We made our way down to the oversized belt section, separated from the general forklift area by only a yellow stripe on the ground. As a man approaching 40, I struggled to keep pace with the younger workers. In desperation, I decided to pop a couple of dexamphetamines I had loose in my pocket. This sped my heart rate up, and I suddenly needed to shit rather badly but it didn't give me the extra energy I had hoped for. Ray really stood no chance and soon quietly made his way to the back of the line.

It was from this quiet vantage point that Ray spotted the disaster before it happened.

“That flatscreen is going under the belt!”

The rest of us looked up to the ‘spaghetti junction’ of oversize belts leading into the central belt. Ray was right, one of the flatscreen TVs coming down had gotten wedged under the belt, which was still running but now had a small hump, with the side of the box jutting out.

“I’ve got it,” called a younger worker as he jogged over to the jam. He thought he could just yank it out by brute force. As he grabbed at the box, he wedged the box even further under the belt, immediately realising that his hands would also get sucked under if he wasn't careful.

You must understand, no one wanted to alert the supervisors. If the TV was cracked or smashed, it was better that it reached the customer, making it almost impossible to trace when and where the damage had occurred. The safer course of action was to put it in the cage and send it off as if nothing had happened.

“Wait,” said Ray. “I have this. Watch and learn.”

Ray closely inspected the incoming freight, leaving the TV for the moment. He waited until the heaviest-looking freight was half a metre from the TV, at which point the belt itself raised–just a few centimetres–before the giant freight passed over the trapped TV. It took several furtive attempts, with the TV undoubtedly becoming more and more damaged, yet it was gradually coming loose. Finally, Ray grabbed it and pulled, with surprising finesse. The box came completely loose, and Ray stumbled backward, across the painted line on the depot floor–straight into the side of a speeding forklift.

Ray did a strangely cartoonish pirouette through the air before landing and falling backward, hitting the concrete with a sickening crack. As Ray went into a spasm on the ground, my anus unclenched and my bowels partially evacuated. I bent down beside him, as blood pooled around his head, trying to hold his tongue so he didn't swallow it, all while clenching my ass cheeks, praying none of the runny shit escaped and ran down my leg. The supervisor jogged over and took my place, declaring loudly, “Oh God, he has shit himself, he is dying. You can smell it–oh my God!”

Without clocking off or waiting for the end of my shift, I walked in a daze to the car park and got into my car. I just sat there, staring out the front windshield. It was the smell of shit that eventually roused me. Still giddy from the shock and adrenaline, I started the engine and drove out of the depot. Soon enough I felt the bile rising. I pulled onto a side road and opened the driver’s side door, collapsing to my hands and knees and vomited violently onto the grass.

When I was done, I looked up and saw hundreds of black ibis eyes watching me with cautious curiosity. I had automatically driven to our hidden wetland sanctuary.

As the sun rose, the swampy musk of the wetland blended seamlessly with the smell of vomit and shit. I now felt slightly high from the dexamphetamine and for some reason, I had an overwhelming compulsion to wade into the murky water. The ibises took flight as I squelched toward them, and as I looked around the wetland, I noticed how much rubbish had accumulated from the depot; not just fast food and crisp wrappers, but car tires and even discarded freight packaging.

When the water was about waist-deep, I leaned back and floated supine watching the sky. Whether from the euphoria of the waning adrenaline or the lingering high of the dexamphetamine, I felt a strange and powerful comfort in being mere refuse amongst other refuse.

When I was back ashore, I pulled off my work pants and underwear. I wiped my ass with the leg of my pants before hurling them into the wetland, then drove home pantsless, and with a story to tell my wife.

A few days after the accident, the government workplace safety regulators, WorkSafe, arrived. This wasn’t the blessing you might expect. They came down hard–not just on management, but on the workers too. Earbuds, speakers, bluetooth devices, even radios were soon forbidden. Workers’ smartphones–unless you were a driver planning a route–had to remain in pockets under threat of confiscation. Soon we were told that drug and alcohol tests would be occurring weekly.

Ray’s recovery was long and arduous. During which time, the fracture in the back of his skull healed. He also finally had both wrists fixed for carpal tunnel syndrome. After about six months, he returned to the fray, and we even resumed our partnership on the only outward-facing dock in the depot–the only place where you could watch the sunrise. It was also the quietest dock in the place, giving Ray and me hours to chat and insult each other. When I finally told him I’d shat myself and thrown the soiled pants into the wetland, he almost collapsed from laughter. It wasn’t something he let me forget.

Ray recently died of liver cancer. That’s technically accurate–but anyone who works in a physically demanding job will tell you: aches and pains are normal. He thought the pain in his side was just the usual wear and tear. He was casually employed and keen to avoid the nightmare of workplace injury insurance again, so he ignored it.

His passing barely warranted a mention at work. He had stopped answering his phone, and I assumed he was undergoing surgery. One morning, my supervisor informed me curtly that Ray had died. I’m sure he’s already passed out of memory for many. After all, whether someone dies, is fired, or just finds another job, what difference does it make? 

As a younger man with romantic dreams of glory, the idea of being a tiny, replaceable cog in a vast machine filled me with revulsion. But as I have graduated into adulthood, I have come to understand that 'Arbeit macht frei' isn’t just a lie to make us work ourselves to death. This fundamental ideal of society is the persisting freedom in our unfreedom, a freedom that brings all mankind into communion.

If I’d passed Ray in the street, I might never have looked at him, let alone spoken to him. Yet by forcing us all together—grumpy old men, weird university dropouts, white supremacists, Afghan refugees, whoever—we are joined in careful interdependence. And what is this interdependence other than the strange and terrible adventure of life and death.