It seems to me
the summer after I worked at Fisher Price I put an application in again, but
the toy factory was not hiring. Then I got word, maybe it was from my Aunt Norma,
that the pickle factory was looking for the summer workers who usually went to
Fisher Price. So I applied there. My brother, Clark, had his driver’s license by then
and was providing transportation for me.
The pickle
factory, whose name I will not mention but was located in Cheektowaga, did not
call for an interview right away, and since summer is so short, the chance of
working there was slipping away.
But then one day the pickle
factory office called and asked if I could start work at the beginning of the
second shift that day? Oh gosh – no discussion
of what I would be doing, just show up.
Did I mention that I have never liked pickles? The smell of a pickle on my plate next to a
sandwich makes me gag. I avoid most potato salads and deviled eggs because of
pickles. If I bite into a pickle slice on a restaurant hamburger, well
sometimes my whole day is ruined.
Clark dropped
me off at 4:30 and said he’d be back around 11. The foreman put me on a line
with three other people – two on each side of a conveyor trough. I recognized a
few of the girls from Fisher Price the year before.
A large truck backed
up to the bin at the end of our conveyor trough, and the truck tipped a whole
load of pickles into the bin. The pickles then began to move in one layer along
the conveyor belt – they were wet; I guess with the pickle juices. As the
pickles went by in front of us, we were supposed to pick out the ones that did
not look good and throw them into the barrel below the trough. I think we had
gloves on, but no safety glasses or ear protection (or nose plugs).
The pickles
moved so quickly, and the other people were grabbing the bad pickles so fast
that I couldn’t tell what constituted a pickle that needed to be plucked from
the pack, I just knew that my hands had to be moving at all times! So there
were really no criteria for the bad pickles – I mean I tried to discriminate,
but ultimately, I was just constantly grabbing a pickle and putting it into the
discard barrel.
It was a
horrible shift.
During the
break I talked with someone else I had recognized from Fisher Price. She said
it was her second week there, and she told management after one day that she
could not keep working on the pickle conveyor line – they would have to find
something else for her to do! Imagine that! I wondered if I complained would they listen to me?
The company
then moved the worker to the part of the factory where one puts the pickles
into the jars – I don’t recall if it is mostly automated, but I do remember her
saying that a human puts that very last pickle in because it is so hard to
squeeze it into the jar. That’s what she was doing – putting the last pickle
in. This sounds incredible as I’m typing it up now – but it is what I remember
her saying.
At the end of
the shift, I was told not to go in the next day – I was somewhat elated at the
thought that I was so terrible they did not want me anymore. But it turned out
they just did not need me the next
day – they would call.
It was two
days later when the pickle factory called again – could I be there at the start
of second shift that day? By then I had already eaten lunch, so I would either
have to eat again before going to work, or skip dinner. It began to dawn on me
that perhaps I was not being treated very well.
That second
night, I stepped up to the conveyor trough, watched the truck dump a load of
pickles into the bin, and once again, I spent eight hours just grabbing pickles
that may or may not have had too many blemishes for the pickle-eating masses
and throwing them into the barrel nearby.
Toward the end
of that shift, the guy who drove the
truck collected all our barrels, and dumped them back into the bin so the
pickles would have another pass by! He said management was not happy with our
reject selections and we were supposed to try again.
When the shift
was over I was told not to return the next night.
A couple of days later when the front office
called me again to report for second
shift, I politely responded that I was no longer working for them.
There was a
mad scramble toward the end of the summer for the company to get me my two days’
pay. But I finally received it in the mail. What an inconvenient situation for
all involved. I guess the only plus of my having worked at the pickle factory
was the fact that I had already hated pickles – it would have been a shame for
someone to learn to hate pickles what
with the oppressive smell and obnoxious task after two mere shifts of
employment!
The pay stub
had been saved by me for years and years, in a storage box with others, and
finally I scanned it along with others – and I have it on a flash drive – I worked
16 hours and the pay was $2 an hour – I cleared $27.41.
344 20151210 The Pickle Factory
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