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Tomatoes were the job for me here. Steaming kettles were coming down the line, the tomatoes just having been cooked so it was now easy to remove the skins.
A card was hanging on your apron and if the supervisor judged the pot full enough she would mark your card.
On my second day, my pot was 3/4 full when I was told to move over. I just stood there, as I had no clue what was meant by, moving over. Again, move!
The supervisor yelled it now. Move! I did not react I just stared at her.
She was now getting to look like the color of my tomatoes.
A lot of the women had stopped working. Shocked at the audacity of this new girl not to move when told to do so.
All of a sudden my kettle gets grabbed and shoved down the line.
"Heh, that is mine and I want the credit for it."
So I went after that pot, and of course that had been the idea all along.
I had learned another new word.
If you did more than your quota, you were paid extra.
I was over my quota in three days so they moved me to a table with green beans. The machine takes of the ends of the beans and it is your job, to find the ones the machine has missed. Can you imagine staring at green beans streaming past you for 9 hours at a time?
Most of the people working there were foreigners. They would shake their heads at me, and tell me that I was a bad girl that I should still be in school. I told them that I had left school six years earlier.
Well sorry, but we need to go back to those beans.
I found an apple box and sat down on it. This was better by far!
The women were hissing at me that I could not do that. What do you mean I can't, I just did!
I was never told to stand up and not one other woman took my example. Why were these women so afraid of authority?
My thinking was if I lose this job, there would be others, for I know that I am a hard worker.
Next we had to do apples. I lasted one day there. Rows and rows of apples pass you by, and you have to decide in a split second, what grade they are 1-7 different grades. The apples are then going down the line, to fall in a certain bin because of their size.
Then women wrap the apple in a tissue, to be put in a slot in a box, ready then for shipping.
I now was put in charge of weighting the apples and to keep score.
Up to 2 lb over was allowed but it was never to be under the weight it was supposed to be.
After the fruit was all done, I went to the employment office.
They told me to come back in two weeks. I was back the next day. They showed me on a calendar where it showed two weeks later. I was back the following day.
This went on for another day. By now all the people in the office knew me. "You really want to work don't you," Of course that is why I was there wasn’t I?
I was send to the five-dime store. They put me in the hardware department, $25.00 a week would be my wages.
Hardware is difficult even when your English is good.
Well I just had to play at being “stupid” a little more often. One day a couple came in asking for ornaments. I did not have the foggiest idea what they were. I would go to another staff member and tell them that I couldn’t find ornaments, trying to mimic the words as best as I could. “They are right there honey”
So “honey” would now know what ornaments where, never to be forgotten!
I stayed in that store about six months. Then we moved to Jasper, a National park, what a priviledge that was.