The Brewery Worker

An industrial brewery is working overtime to fill a particularly large order. All the workers are in, and the place is busier than it's ever been. The machines are humming, the tanks churning. The order's due and the trucks are waiting to go out.

At last the order is complete and the trucks are loaded. Everything's signed off and the job is done. Most of the workers head off home, exhausted, leaving just the clean-up crew to drain the remaining tanks and close up the machines for the night.

It's the line manager who first notices that something's wrong. One of the worker's hasn't signed out, but he's not part of the cleanup crew, and he's nowhere to be found. Even as he's checking with the guy's co-workers, the line manager receives a concerned call from the missing guy's wife.

"Where is he?" she asks. "He should have been home an hour ago."

Seriously worried now, the line manager starts searching the plant. He doesn't need to, though. One of the workmen comes running up to tell him. The missing guy has been found, lying drowned at the bottom of the tank. He must have fallen in hours ago, at the beginning of the shift when there were too few people around to notice.

Horrified, the line manager quickly takes control of the situation. The police are called, and he runs to the boss's office to initiate a recall. It's too late. The shipment's already been transferred, and their bottles are mixed in with all the others, on their way across the country to a thousand different stores.