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.