Most Bizarre Student Jobs

coureur
Fri, 01 Feb 2013 20:05:27 +0000

coureur: one thing about our experiences is that we will never look at a jar of beets or a fish stick again without thinking of what people go through to make them!<<




Actually, green beans haunted me more than the beets did. I’d literally see green beans in my dreams at night.

One thing I found out about working in the cannery is the reason for the difference in quality between their own major-brand label and the generic or house-brand labeled cans. You often hear that cheaper generic or house brands are a bargain because they cost less but are the same beans canned at the same facilities than the higher-priced ones. And that statement, as far as it goes, it perfectly true. But it’s not the whole story.

You could always tell without looking whether they were canning for their own premium brand or a cheap house brand by how fast the lines were running. An early part of the process was the fresh beans would get dumped onto a moving conveyor belt that had lines of women (they were always women) standing on either side of the belt sorting the beans - picking out inferior beans and debris.

So when they were canning for their own premium brand the line would be running nice and slow, with the beans spread only one bean deep on the sorting belt. When they were canning for a cheapo brand the line would be running so fast we could hardly keep up with the process. And the beans would be stacked so deep on the belt that there was no way the women could spot all the inferior beans and pick them out, not to mention the rocks, sticks, dirt clods, candy wrappers, and dead mice that rode in with the fresh-picked beans.