Fickle Food

Shannon over at The Reality Of A Brat is having a contest! One of the options is to write about your Worst job ever, so here is mine!

My worst job ever was as a meat wrapper at a local grocery store. Now I know many of you are thinking that standing on your feet all day in a freezing cold room, handling raw liver, pork, beef and lamb for minimum wage, sounds like the ideal job, but hear me out. When I interviewed for the job, I was assured that I would get thirty hours a week minimum, and I would only have to work one weekend day a month. And though the job paid minimum wage, I would get a dollar raise in 6 months. With three kids to raise we needed the money, so I thought, what the hell, I’ll try anything once.

Did I mention the concrete room was freezing cold? So cold you couldn’t feel your fingers? It’s surprisingly easy to cut off a finger when you can’t feel them. Which is exactly what I did. The end of one anyway. Talk about surreal, one minute I’m butterflying a pork loin, the next, a half inch of my pointer finger is hanging off like the lid of a flip top cooler. I had to go to the hospital and have it sewn back on. The weird thing was, it never hurt, not even afterwards. The only thing that hurt was the Tetanus shot.

I had a note saying I wasn’t to handle raw meat for a week. But the other two girls in the meat department called in sick, so my boss called me back to work, just to rotate and pull dated lunch meats, he promised. Did I mention my boss was a complete JERK? Within an hour he was badgering me to wrap meat, grind hamburger. I reminded him that the doctor did not want me to mess with raw meat for a week. His solution was to wrap my hand in two plastic gloves, taped at the wrist. I was wrapping a ham when I broke open the stitches and had to go back to the hospital.

After that, the boss and I didn’t get along so well. He started scheduling me to work every weekend. When I complained he told me he had a stack of applications from people who would LOVE to take my place. Which was probably true. Our town is small and rural and the Walmart has run off most of the other businesses. There were other problems as well, like not being able to take my breaks, disgusting work conditions–the big cutting saw threw meat debris everywhere, there’s nothing like picking pieces of raw steak out of your ponytail. I had this little song I used to sing, “Take the rib-eye from my hair…” to the tune of Help me make it through the Night. I felt gross 24-7. I had continuous bronchitis from the oven cleaner crap the deli sprayed all over to clean their rotisserie. And I developed arthritis in my fingers from wrapping meat in the freezing temps.

The final straw came when it was time for my dollar raise, and I only got a nickel . My boss told me I had clearly misunderstood him. I found out from the other employees that it was the same BS he told all the new applicants, just to get them to take his crummy job. It took about three weeks for me to find another job. But I was never so glad to leave a place! That grocery went out of business shortly after the big Walmart superstore came in and I wasn’t a bit sorry to see it go. I hope there is a special place in hell for people like my former boss.