Job Update 11/30

Cutter's Log - Stardate 1102.03.11
Current Song - Miami (Will Smith)

I decided rather than drive into Rockford, or the Quads or DeKalb, that if this recent round of gas stations does not work out, then I'll consider light factory work locally.

There are a few stations left on the "hoping" list that I have sent applications to. I'm hoping to get an answer by late next week or else I will move on. It won't be the first time I literally wrecked my body in order to sustain an income.

I once had a packing job for two months, and a factory job for three hours. The latter was at Dana, where hand skills were plenty and I had none.

After high school I needed money to help fund my college education and there were no newspaper openings available. I hated walking into temporary agencies because I felt like I was better than this kind of reputation. (I sure had an ego back then). Burton found me work at Crest Foods in Ashton.

The first days are literally orientation: food safety, OSHA, and a couple of other meetings. Then we went into the factory area, and I was placed on Line 2, which I think is one of the three fastest lines. When applying at Burton, I had to take a skill test with my hands. Apparently I didn't do so well, and they didn't put me in a packing position. Instead they looked at big, burly me and thought I was good enough to stack boxes onto pallets.

That first week was an uphill climb. The last day of training on that line involved packing six boxes of packaged something into a box - which meant boxes were flying off of the line. I was just too slow to keep up with it and the trainer did most of the work that day. But I was stuck to my own line, Line 25, which was upstairs in a seperate room.

I worked two months on Line 25. Once in a while I would fill in on Line 24. The particular line was a rice line, meaning there were 24 packages of rice in each box that I had to stack on pallets. There were certain ways these boxes had to be stacked, and certain ways boxes had to be wrapped. Since boxes were coming off of the line non-stop, and pallets could only be stacked so high, sometimes I was pushing pallets outside the room and seeing boxes fall off of the line because I was so slow.

Then the feet were killing me every day. They laid out this rubber "comfort" rug that had circular holes in them - hardly confortable. I didn't think the maximum Dr. Scholl's padding would do much help. Every night when I came home from work I had to lay down and rest. My back was sore from lifting. My feet were sore from standing on them for a long time. Eventually I had to ask for restroom breaks just to catch some sitting time.

I finally left when Sauk started its fall semester, because my classes were in the morning. But the toll this job took on me was what I called devestating. I'm very reluctant to do work and chores that involve bending my back. Instead of bending over, I have to balance my body on one foot and keep my back fixed on one position. Standing on my feet made me not want to walk around a lot (and by looking at me, you can figure out what THAT led to). Even when I worked at gas stations I couldn't stay on my feet for hours at a time. I needed to sit down and catch breaks. With every passing day the pain would lead to a more sedentary me, and making me worse physically. And even mentally because I wasn't able to move around as much as far as personal emotions go. I used to be energetic when it came to trying to find a girl of my dreams. It just seems anymore that this has been buried deep underneath other worries.

My biggest problem is that physically I don't know if I'll be able to stay on my feet for hours at a time doing repetivitve motions. I think the only way that can be fixed is if I am able to drop some weight - and that cannot be simply done overnight.

Right now I have to decide if my body will be able to do so much work in order to get so much money. I don't want to tear apart my body, but if this job economy stays this way I don't think I'll have a choice other than to ruin my body - both physically and mentally - in order to survive and make ends meet.