My Job in an Apple PlantWorking in

My Job in an Apple Plant
Working in an apple plant was the worst job I ever had. First of all, the work
was physically hard. For ten hours a night. I took cartons that rolled down a metal
track and stacked them onto wooden stands in a tractor-trailer. Each carton
contained twenty-five pounds of bottled apple juice, and they came down the track
fast. The second bad feature of the job was the pay. I was getting the minimum wage
at that time, $3.25 an hour. I had to work over sixty hours a week to get a decent
take-home pay. Finally, I hated the working conditions. We were limited to two ten
minute breaks and an unpaid half hour for lunch. Most of my time was spent outside
loading dock in the freezing cold. I was very lonely on the job because I had no
interests in common with the other workers. I felt this isolation especially when the
production line shut down for the night, and I spent two hours by myself cleaning
the apple vats. The vats were an ugly place to be on a cold morning, and the job was
a bitter one to have.