More Words, Deeper Hole

I worked my way through undergraduate life working in the quality control lab for a nitrocellulose factory. There'd be hourly new samples. But depending on just how busy things were, and how efficient you were about your business, there'd be from ten to as many as fifty minutes free time each hour. More during the evening and overnight shifts, of course. Even more if there was a lightning storm nearby.

The company left us that time, as long as we stayed in the lab (apart from smoke breaks, for people who somehow could not quit smoking while working in a plant covered with a thin film of proto-dynamite). With the proviso that if senior plant people were likely to walk through --- so, normal office hours --- you should try and not be obviously wasting time.

My stations even had this nice little side room that maybe once upon a time had some use, but now were just a great spot to deposit my hard hat, not needed in the quality control laboratory, and my book, and discover that the rigging of the hat was surprisingly good as a way to hold a hardcover open and hold the pages still, somehow.

Anyway the two-month stretch where I bounced between second and last shift was maybe the most efficient books-per-day reading time of my life.