Chicken Limassol

Yesterday I worked in a leading Cypriot chicken processing plant. Somehow, this should sound more impressive than it actually does. I mean, did I really slave my way through university to say that I spent a day working at a leading Cypriot chicken processing plant? cluck cluck cluck.

Never mind. It’s hot. I’m exhausted. And it’s Friday afternoon. I’m going to tell this story come hell or high bouillon.

I’ve been in Cyprus since Tuesday, seeing one company per day. These are participants in a Lean Sales training programme (yes, it’s really called “Lean Sales”), who are entitled to a full day follow-up session. And yesterday it was the turn of the chicken plant.

It’s a modern facility of sweeping lines and glass-walled offices, set in an industrial estate in the hills above Limassol. From the reception area, you see the beautiful, hazy blue Mediterranean down to the south. To the north, the pine-covered Troodos range looms. It’s got to be the nicest little chicken processing plant in the world.

Have you ever seen a chicken filleting line? It's really something. Stainless steel equipment, gleaming tile walls, shock freezers, and lots and lots of chickens. Whole fresh chickens, frozen chickens, chicken wings and drumsticks, chicken burgers and nuggets, chicken gyros and souvlaki… you get the idea.

The carcasses are rolled up in plastic mesh boxes from the slaughterhouse. They are passed down the line on a rolling belt, where white clad workers hygienically slash their way through the day’s work. First the neck. Then the chicken is lifted and speared on a vertically-rotating spike. The wings and drumsticks are slashed off, one person per carcass, revolving it to reach its other side. Any remaining skin is stripped off. Then the hulk is removed from the spike for filleting. This is the most labour-intensive process. You need several strokes of the knife to take off the fillet, but you want to preserve as much meat as possible. After this, little is left but bones and gristle. I didn’t want to ask what happened with the remains, but they are used for something.

All the while, workers move purposefully back and forth, wheeling trolleys, barking out orders, opening refrigerators, dressed in their aseptic white costumes, hairnets and gloves. Between watching the flashing lines of plump chicken carcases making their way to the supermarket shelf, dodging menacing trolleys on a slippery tile floor, and making sure the damned hairnet doesn’t snap off, it’s more challenging than usual to look professional.

To make things even more surreal, the plant manager was a simalcrum of a slightly older James Franco. The chicken carcasses spun on their proverbial wheels. Doughty Bulgarian women slashed pink chicken flesh with their steely knives. Peter Parker's nemesis gave me the evil eye as I tried to explain the concept of net customer profitability. I thought for a moment I might have been a character written into the wrong movie.

But this too came to an end. We ate oven-baked chicken in the cantina. We drank iced frappe and discussed numbers. We swapped war stories. By 17.00, as we were all running out the steam, George made his discrete entrance, his black Mercedes gliding through the factory parking lot just outside the conference room. I shook hands all around, sang my praises and farewells, and was floated back to Nicosia in air conditioned splendour.

Today is Friday. It’s 18.00, over 35 degrees, and I’ve just returned from another memorable factory. I’m exhausted, short several G&Ts and will soon leave for Larnaca Airport and home. Another tough week on the road: 60 hours travel and work in four days.

In this fog, Prospero’s words bring a soaring comfort to mind:

You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Sir, I am vex'd;
Bear with my weakness; my, brain is troubled:
Be not disturb'd with my infirmity:
If you be pleased, retire into my cell
And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,
To still my beating mind.