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In a (very) previous life I worked for a company that made planogram software for Windows CE handhelds. This caused me to have a (brief) subscription to The Gro
by colinb 4y ago
In a (very) previous life I worked for a company that made planogram software for Windows CE handhelds. This caused me to have a (brief) subscription to The Grocer magazine. We had a contract with Transport For London (TfL) and Cadburys to help update the rather outdated chocolate vending machines in the London Underground - the metro/tube. These machines had no screen, or indeed viewing window. They looked like something from the 19th century. But they did have an IR port. I recall learning the details of the IR protocol ( > 20 years ago. I don't remember its name) with an aim to gathering telemetry as part of the refilling routine.
I got to spend a day following a guy from TfL as he wheeled boxes of chocolate around the stations, with a route calculated to require the least amount of stairs. He had caches in locked rooms in a few stations. What strikes me now is the sheer analogue concreteness of it all. The selection of chocolate was limited by the rather small machines. The machines had power connections but no other active comms. I don't think the IR ports were in use at that time, so everything boiled down to the TfL guy's record keeping on hand-written notes. The route was governed by the combination of accessibility - meaning we serviced some machines in a station, but not others on a different, hard-to-reach, level. We moved from station to station stopping off at the locked-rooms to restock his trolley.
I did get to visit the offices of the chocolate factory at Bournville, which could be smelled from some distance. Dreams of Willy Wonka aside, I didn't even get a selection box, never mind a tour on the chocolate river. Ho hum.
This job was probably the two worst years of my career. I learned for more than I wanted to about layout of cereal boxes and magazines in supermarkets. I travelled a lot - two international flights a week, every week. I nearly froze to death trying to find a bookshop in Montreal. But I learned one really valuable lesson. There are plenty people in the world doing jobs that are boring, even to them, but they don't care because they can make a living, and that's the important thing. I am not one of those people. A job that doesn't engage me is one that I do badly, and will eventually get fired from. I left this job just in time, for something much more interesting, and initially at least, much less well paid and I never regretted doing so. Not for a second.
- gadders 4y ago>>I did get to visit the offices of the chocolate factory at Bournville, which could be smelled from some distance. Slough is like this due to the Mars factory.
- m463 4y agoI wonder how many places are recognizable by the particular smell? gilroy california has a particular (not unpleasant) smell some times of year, I believe due to garlic.
- mbg721 4y agoThere's a stretch of I-75 in Cincinnati that has a sickly-sweet yeasty smell from a distillery near the highway. There must be a ton of places like that.
- gadders 4y agoThere's a company in Tonbridge in the UK that amongst other things dehydrates food. This is an old story but it's still happening: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-24131949 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-24131949
- cafard 4y agoAlong I-70 in Denver about a mile or so west of the South Platte one could often smell a Keebler Cookies factory. On I-70 on the other side of the Platte one could always smell the stockyards and I suppose slaughterhouses. I spent more time on the west side, fortunately. And for several miles around the Coors Brewery in Golden one could often smell malt.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoBloomers Chocolate Factory on Kinzie between River West and West Loop Gate in Chicago used to frequently smell sickeningly of chocolate (and violated EPA emissions a bunch of times in the process).
- soco 4y agoWhen the night train stops next to the cookies factory in Meilen (Switzerland) you should go out just for a second. Bliss.
- mschuster91 4y ago> There are plenty people in the world doing jobs that are boring, even to them, but they don't care because they can make a living, and that's the important thing. I see it the other way around... why do we keep people in such boring (or to use the official term, bullshit) jobs when we could automate away as much as we reasonably can and enjoy maybe a 20 hour work week or not work at all?! How much productivity, how much talent could we unlock from our society if people weren't wasting their potential away for something a computer can do faster and with infinitely better accuracy?
- uoaei 4y agoAgreed. Something to remember is, what people do with their free time is also economic activity. Usually they consume, but sometimes they also produce (arts, crafts, trades, etc.). These outputs have measurable effects on quality of life and local economic health. Not everything has to be filtered through the narrow lens of waged employment to contribute to the commonwealth.
- miguelazo 4y agoPerhaps 20 years ago, this comment wouldn't have landed as a joke to me. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36696533-new-dark-age https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36696533-new-dark-age
- mschuster91 4y agoThe problem is not technology, the problem is that we (and in particular, the Boomer generation that was in power of society for the last 30 years) stood idle while democratic control of society was ceded to ever larger private entities piece by piece. We could live in a world where technology serves the people so that we get back to the 20 hour work week that medieval peasants enjoyed - now, technology serves the ultra-rich elites (either as playthings or to further their interests) and increasingly repressive surveillance state governments, and unions have lost more and more influence.
- miguelazo 4y ago