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When I was attending college and came home for the summers, I could never seem to get a "good" job (you know, like retail or telemarketing). I'd always end up at Kelly or Manpower or one of the other temp agencies. They gave me their standard officework test. I aced the spelling and the math, but because my typing languished at fewer than 30 wpm, I didn't qualify for office work. I got "light manufacturing" assignments, all for the late-80's minimum wage of $3.35 an hour with no benefits. I eventually learned that the temp agencies were being paid around $15/hr for my time. Made me feel appreciated, let me tell you.
I spent a couple weeks cleaning medical devices, a couple weeks inspecting oily metal lawnmower engine parts, and other such excitement, but the worst job was definitely hands-down the four weeks at the meat packing plant. By the time it got to me it was already frozen, but it was still miserable.
Wisconsin summers are not as hot or humid as those we enjoy here in St. Louis, but they were bad enough. Now imagine that you are working an eight-hour day in a building kept at zero degrees Fahrenheit. You wear two pairs of socks with your steel-toed work boots, a shirt, a sweater, and a jacket, as well as thermal underwear with your jeans. Drive to work dressed like that, through eighty or ninety degree sunshine. Arrive sweating.
Go inside the building to your line, where you get to sort frozen stew meat, pulling out the chunks that are more than 2/3 fat and throwing them in a barrel. Or maybe today is a day for stacking hamburger patties in a cardboard box, twelve to a box. But don't fall behind as the meat keeps coming down the belt. Don't look at the other side of the building where the enormous hopper of ground beef is splurping out the future patties to be flattened and blast frozen.
Shiver all day. Look forward to that moment when you will walk back outside into the steamy heat and feel like you've just entered a sauna. It will feel like heaven, for about five minutes, until the many layers of clothing become oppressive--and you still have to drive home.
When I was attending college and came home for the summers, I could never seem to get a "good" job (you know, like retail or telemarketing). I'd always end up at Kelly or Manpower or one of the other temp agencies. They gave me their standard officework test. I aced the spelling and the math, but because my typing languished at fewer than 30 wpm, I didn't qualify for office work. I got "light manufacturing" assignments, all for the late-80's minimum wage of $3.35 an hour with no benefits. I eventually learned that the temp agencies were being paid around $15/hr for my time. Made me feel appreciated, let me tell you.
I spent a couple weeks cleaning medical devices, a couple weeks inspecting oily metal lawnmower engine parts, and other such excitement, but the worst job was definitely hands-down the four weeks at the meat packing plant. By the time it got to me it was already frozen, but it was still miserable.
Wisconsin summers are not as hot or humid as those we enjoy here in St. Louis, but they were bad enough. Now imagine that you are working an eight-hour day in a building kept at zero degrees Fahrenheit. You wear two pairs of socks with your steel-toed work boots, a shirt, a sweater, and a jacket, as well as thermal underwear with your jeans. Drive to work dressed like that, through eighty or ninety degree sunshine. Arrive sweating.
Go inside the building to your line, where you get to sort frozen stew meat, pulling out the chunks that are more than 2/3 fat and throwing them in a barrel. Or maybe today is a day for stacking hamburger patties in a cardboard box, twelve to a box. But don't fall behind as the meat keeps coming down the belt. Don't look at the other side of the building where the enormous hopper of ground beef is splurping out the future patties to be flattened and blast frozen.
Shiver all day. Look forward to that moment when you will walk back outside into the steamy heat and feel like you've just entered a sauna. It will feel like heaven, for about five minutes, until the many layers of clothing become oppressive--and you still have to drive home.
