Trying My Hand at a Food Assembly Line

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an unemployed woman in possession of no fortune must be in want of a job. More unfortunately, such jobs often depend on knowing someone in said company in order to be hired. At least, this is how it seems to work for the large majority of us.

To this end, I have been merrily bouncing from place to place, volunteer work to volunteer work, my unemployment status on my lips and my work ethic in hand. Is it awkward to continually talk about said unemployment? Yes. Are some people not at all helpful and even inconsiderate in how they question me? Also, yes. But for the most part, I have found many to be sympathetic to my situation and the current craziness that is the economy.

My most recent attempt at foot-in-the-dooring was at a nonprofit food distribution center. They are involved in many aspects of community outreach, but the one I volunteered for involved helping pack food boxes. I felt somewhat qualified for this particular event having personally worked at a food pantry before. Not that one needs to have certain qualifications to pack food boxes other than the ability to keep up with a line, but it always helps my anxiety to be tangentially knowledgeable about whatever I’m doing.

I showed up before 9:00am, carefully following the directions of where to park. I also arrived early to ensure I found the correct warehouse. Despite this, I had a moment of panic as I started walking around the buildings (signage not being a particular strong point of warehouse areas) looking for the correct building. I spotted a lady several decades older than I, wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. This seemed to match my mental picture of a food-box volunteer so I followed her to a warehouse that was, indeed, the one I had needed to find.

I walked in, looked around, and headed for the fold-out table that had three people wearing staff-adjacent shirts.

“Hello! Do I need to sign in? This is my first time.”

I was greeted politely, informed that a general meeting would take place before we started boxing, and to please grab a name tag. I walked over to a different table, grabbed a name tag, and scribbled down my name. I stuck said name tag to my shirt then looked around for someone else to converse with.

Nobody wanted to talk to me, fiends.

This is fine. Totally fine.

I am a brave introvert! I can do this! …probably.

I examined the boxing area, observing how others were already busying themselves with small duties. Most of all, I paid attention to the small groups of volunteers. I have a very interactive mien which helps me integrate into unfamiliar groups because my face naturally reacts to the conversation of the group I am watching. If this reaction is welcomed by said group, I can join. If it’s not, I will casually glide away to find another.

This all sounds very suave and procedural, but the truth is I had to force myself not to dive for my phone for self-soothing. Making introductions is hard! Especially in groups that have a long history and don’t go out of their way to welcome outsiders.

Eventually however, my observation paid off in the form of a married couple. She was very petite, smaller than I, even, and seemed somewhere in her 80s though perhaps her general frailty made me guess a greater age. Her husband was a great, big, tall man that I would put closer to his 70s. They asked me if I had volunteered before, and when I said this was my very first time, the man walked me through the sequence of events on the assembly line. This was his wife’s second time helping, too, so we could both be newbies together. Huzzah!

Eventually, we were all gathered around to hear the rules and receive our assignments. It struck me then that I was the only person of my age group except for the staff members. Everyone else was in the retirement age, approximately 50+. This is not surprising as it was 9:15 on a Tuesday morning. Everyone my age was supposed to be at work. Le sigh. But maybe this would help make me memorable, a plus for someone trying to make job contacts.

I was assigned, along with another woman, to work on the oranges. A total of three oranges went in the box so we decided to divide them up 2/1. I would put in 2. She would put in 1. To my delight, the wife (whom I shall call Jane) of the couple I had talked to ended up being placed across from me on the conveyor belt. She shared corn crates with another volunteer, each being responsible for 1 ear of corn. Pretty simple, right?

Allow me to pause the narrative and describe the scene to you:

We were in an actual warehouse. This means it is not air-conditioned or heated. There are fans but that makes it very hard to hear one another unless you shout. The warehouse itself is longer than it is wide. The head of our assembly line is closer to the fans and the large pile of pre-made cardboard boxes.

Now back to my tale.

The volunteers at the head of the line are supposed to grab a box, place a survey paper inside, then roll the box down the conveyor belt to the next group. We used a manual conveyor belt, meaning it has wheels to make movement easy, but you still have to push the box to move it along. After various vegetables are added by other volunteers, the boxes make their way down to Jane for corn. Simple enough, yes?

Sort of.

Jane drops in her ear of corn. I drop in my 2 oranges then pass it down to my partner who would add the final orange. She then sends it on to the next volunteer who added avocados.

And then the line started to speed up.

Now, Jane is short. Shorter even than myself. With the flaps of the boxes raised, she wasn’t able to see inside and what had or hadn’t already been added. She had to stand on tip-toe, lower the flap, then lean in to peer inside. This, for a woman her in 80s, took a certain amount of time to accomplish. As she continues to take this time, boxes start to pile up. To expedite this process, I started keeping track of the corn as well as the oranges. I would grab the box her partner had just stocked, then maneuver it right in front of Jane so that she wouldn’t have to take the time to look in. This worked about 50% of the time as she wanted to be sure she wasn’t missing anything. That or she had no idea what I was silently doing, and I am very bad at expressing myself verbally and so had not stated my plan aloud.

However, on the other side of my orange partner, the avocado volunteer was struggling. I’m not entirely sure what caused the problem given the noise of the fans and my own need to keep track of two different types of produce, but slowdowns often occurred on either side of myself and my partner. She started grabbing onto the boxes I pushed to her and holding them in place so they couldn’t push into the line of boxes the avocado volunteer was working on. This, in turn, impacted my ability to arrange the single ear of corn boxes in front of Jane.

After getting scolded for continually pushing boxes down the line, I came up with a new plan. We’d already had two short breaks already. On the third one, I requested to switch sides with my partner. This would ease the cramp in my hand as I had often been two-handing my oranges so I could deal with the corn boxes. She readily agreed and soon she was fighting to keep Jane at a credible pace.

Fiends, I confess I was incredibly smug as I saw her moment of realization and the way she then started doing the exact same thing I had been doing. Placing a box right in front of Jane.

Vin. Di. Cation.

Corn and avocado issues aside, the assembly line actually moved along at a steady clip. Most of the volunteers were old hands at this (and were possibly paired with the newbies like myself). After about 25 minutes of work, we were given a mandatory line break. People broke away to get water, a snack, or head to the restroom. However, I noticed a few volunteers continue to work during the break. Not on the boxes, but the prep work for the boxes. Some walked around the lines, cleaning their aisles of empty boxes. Some opened more food boxes at their station. We had floating volunteers to do so when the assembly line was running, but occasionally we ran down before they got to our section.

Following their example, I removed the lids from a few orange boxes and even added one box to our table to make the five we had originally started with. Some groups stacked their boxes, but I decided not to try that. Our orange boxes were large, and these were regular 6ft folding tables. I didn’t want to be responsible for our table buckling mid-production!

I also noticed apple boxes were being saved for some mysterious purpose. Instead of tossing them into a pile next to the compactor, they were stacked neatly against the wall. Unfortunately, it was impossible to be efficient in stacking the apple boxes because the bottoms were separated early on from the tops. Only when the bottoms were finally emptied of their produce, were we able to reunite top and bottom.

After observing and jumping in to help on these ‘efficiency chores’, it was time to start our assembly line again. So. Many. Boxes! Fortunately, we had so many volunteers that what was supposed to be a three hour session was finished in just an hour and a half. Well done, volunteers!

After the last box made its way through the line, we began the work of cleaning up. Boxes had to be collected and stacked. The special apple boxes paired together. Staging tables cleaned and folded up. The floor swept and more boxes wrapped in saran wrap. We also ended up collecting all of the leftover food in a pile by the entrance.

“Grab a box!” someone told me. “We get to take home whatever is leftover.”

Really?! No wonder these boxing session were so highly attended!

When I asked what happened to whatever we couldn’t take, I was told the pigs got anything that we had marked as spoiled (except citrus), and the rest of the good stuff was donated to a nearby religious institution. Satisfied nothing went to waste, I grabbed a box and began my unexpected harvest.

Mother is always getting broccoli at the store, I thought. So I’ll grab three large heads. Nobody in our house eats avocados so I’ll leave those for the aficionados. Oh! She was looking for tomatoes recently! Let’s grab several of those! Hm, there aren’t many bags of spinach so I’ll only take one of those. Same with fruits so three each.

By the time I finished, my box was getting heavy, especially with all the work my arms had been doing on the line! I tottered back to my car and managed to pop it into the trunk before collapsing into my seat. Hard work aside, if I was going to get food out of this volunteer session, I would definitely be coming back!

Until next time, fiends.