That first year of college was a whirlwind. I was on my own for the first time and loving it. I could hardly believe it when my spring finals were over and I was being moved out of my dorm by my parents all over again. I was excited to get home, as all of my friends from high school were going to be home that summer as well. Clearly, we would pick up right where we left off. This was not the case. In that year apart, we had all met other friends, had college comparisons to share, and something was just off about the whole summer...Oh yeah, it was that we were now extremely poor college students, and when we weren't sleeping we were working. My parents informed me around Christmas time, I needed to be making more than slightly above minimum wage, which had been the case the prior 2 summers...in Albert Lea, the seasonal work is short lived...and there is only one place college kids go to earn money: The factories. Albert Lea has a plethora of factories, but there was one that seemed like a natural fit for yours truly: the potato salad factory.
Hollandale farmers had been selling their crops of potatoes, onions and cabbage to the factory for years, so it just seemed right the former queen of potatoes would work there. I secretly hoped I wouldn't get hired..but no such luck, that first day of summer vacation in 2001 I was at the factory at 6:00am. I was in a hair net, white jacket, and gloves by 7:00...and by 7:15, I wanted to end it all. It is working in that factory that ruined picnics for me, for life. Once you see potato salad or coleslaw go down a ginormous slide, you will never again be able to enjoy a barbeque.
Here's how it works: Each day you show up for work, (dressed to work all day in an environment that hovers around 32 degrees.) you throw the hair net on, jacket, gloves, rub your sleepy eyes, and then slowly head over to the bulletin board where the day's work assignments are. Now for the regulars there, they could generally expect to be in the same area every day...but for the summer help, we were pushed around to whatever area needed us. Not only is this a potato salad factory, it is also a factory of salads in general, so here's where you may be assigned:
*Big Line: This is where the huge slide is: massive orders for restaurants, grocery stores, etc were pumped out here.
*Retail: Miniture version of big line, except a vat is where the salad comes from, not a slide, to be pumped into small containers.
*Jello: (One of my favs) It's warmer in there, and smells deliciously fruity!
*Small Salads: 3 small lines run with 3 people a piece, much smaller side salads are made here like pasta salads, or cucumber/onion, etc. (Also, primarily all women run these lines, and they are mother like to the college students)
*Creams: (Another personal fav) 2 adorable women run this line, they just putter with things like, oreo cream, strawberry cream, etc. all day long. Again, mothering figures.
*Labels: If there was going to be a change in what we were making and had to clean between coleslaw or potato salad and they didn't need everyone, we went to labels. If you were in labels all day, it was going to be a long one. At that time, they put labels individually by hand on every single cover, of every single container. It was mind numbing.
*Veggies: Here you prepped for all the lines. There was one woman who ran the area, and again, when anyone had a minute we helped in veggies...or if they just didn't want to let one line go home early, then we were forced to peel onions for however long the day dictated. (There was never a lack of onions, just when one pallet would get done, another would magically appear, because onions were an ingredient in nearly all the salads.)
*Cabbage line: (My most dreaded area..and where I usually ended up because I was being punished for talking too much while working on any of the lines.) Generally they ran the cabbage line 2-3 days a week in the summer time. Usually all college students. The only thing I remotely liked about it, is that you got to walk up this flight of stairs and stand on a platform. I felt like I was on a stage..until the stinky cabbage would start rolling down from the bin, one person spikes the cabbage to go through the coring machine, then about 4 other stood on the other side where it would come out, and peel the nasty, stinky, slimy leaves off of it, put it on a belt that ran adjacent to the stinky belt, to be chopped and rinsed for the salad. Then 2 seasoned professionals spun the water out of cabbage on the other end. GROSS.
Those are the main areas you had the privledge of being assigned to. That first day, I never thought I was going to make it a whole summer. There were initially 2 distinct social groups in the plant. One, obviously, the college kids, and two, the lifers. Of course, the snotty college kids that we were, tried, to stick together as much as we could...but we would get seperated throughout the days, and pretty soon, we were going to have to talk to the regulars. It sucked for me because Albert Lea is just small enough, that word got out I was the homecoming queen the year before, and the lifers were refering to me as 'Queenie', and made the most simple jobs, like stacking boxes on a pallet, difficult ones, because they wanted to flex their superiority. Now, there was no reason to do this, anyone that could stay for multiple years in there, without windows, with supervisors under the impression they were curing Cancer, were clearly a superior human being in my eyes. Lord knows, I didn't have the intestinal fortitude to do that job for life. I was way too girly...and mostly lazy. However, after a few weeks, I was starting to break down the walls between the college kids and lifers. I mean come on, they had awesome stories to speed up the time. Like the gal that was 60 and did online dating, and told us all of her stories, or the nice man who was clearly crazy, and had 4 teeth...I had many discussions with him..and to this day, I couldn't tell you what one of them was about because I couldn't understand a word he said. Or one of my personal favorites, the former drug dealer, now reformed, who I had only read about in the papers, and when I had to work with him I was petrified. My first conversation with him went like this:
Me: Hey, so cabbage today huh?
Him: I guess...So where you go to college at?
Me: Winona.
Him: Winona, huh? Good acid there.
Me: I was not aware of that.
Such a nice little guy. He had a great sense of humor and if there was one thing I learned from all of the people I worked with there, it's to not judge a book by it's cover. I know we all say we know it, and our parents preach it to us...but every single person I met there that summer (and 3 summers following) were some of the nicest people I have ever met. They worked hard, and drank beer harder. If there was something I could appreciate about a person, it was that. This also gave me the push I needed when I would get back to school in the fall to keep working when I did just want to drink beer and ignore homework...the thought of going back there for life, was enough to keep my nose in the books.
There were some perks of working in a salad factory. Not many, but a few. One of my favorites was when I worked in Jello or Creams. You see, when they got done pumping the product out..the vat was then empty, and ready to be cleaned out...however, sometimes I took it upon myself to enjoy a little taste of the goodness. Nothing will beat the day I was in jello, had turned around, slipped on the mess I had made while dumping the jello into a vat, and looked like I had been jumped by Rainbow Brite herself. So after bruising my ass, and my pride, I decided when the vat was empty, to get one of the big scrappers and get a taste of what was left, and would not be pumped out for consumption to the public. I looked around, no one was there. I took the 5 foot long scrapper, scrapped the sides, looked around again, brought the delicous strawberry fluffiness to my lips, and took a nibble...It was from God himself. Just as I was about to bring the fluff to my lips for another taste I heard: "Megan!" It was my supervisor...in trying to not be seen...but still wanting a taste, I quick gave it one more lick, went to toss the scrapper in the vat, but somehow got fluff all over me, my face and managed to rip my hair net off, and there I stood, hand in the cookie jar...or vat of strawberry cream, as the case may be. I just stood there and tried to act like nothing happened...but not wearing your hair net in a food factory is like not wearing pants in public. It's noted. I was on the cabbage line the very next day.
To this day I wonder what my co workers in the factory are up to. If some are still there, if they talk about all the pranks we pulled on each other over the course of the 4 summers I was there. Whether they know it or not, they made an impact on this lil' lady, and I appreciate them for it every day. Even if I can't enjoy a BBQ on the 4th of July...
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