Working at the Cannery

Our Stake had a cannery assignment today. They had tons of peaches to can. We actually got a call earlier in the week that the weekend before didn't go so hot, and they really needed us to show up.

I got there at 2pm, they put me on the can dispenser machine. This was kind of nice, I didn't get too dirty doing it. It was also a job that involved a fair amount of piddling around. Lucky I had the labelers and loaders to keep me entertained.

A guy from my Elder's Quorum was assigned to help load the cases of peaches onto palettes. Right off the bat, this Guy started having trouble. I don't know if he didn't understand what exactly he was supposed to do, or if he was trying too hard not to screw it up, or what, but pretty soon, all labeling and boxing had stopped because the loading onto pallettes was so backed up. The guy doing the boxing started getting pretty upset, and the cans of peaches on the conveyor waiting for labeled really piled up.

I got sidetracked loading a new pallate of empty cans into the dispenser, the next thing I know, this Guy was no longer loading pallates, he was replaced by 2 ladies. He was given the job of folding open boxes. He alternated between getting too many out there, and making the piles too high, and not getting enough done. Again, the guy doing the boxing started getting upset.

I must not have messed up too bad with the can machine, I only got fired because the shift was over. The next shift was to be staffed by another ward, but as of Thursday night, they still had no one signed up. I waited out for people from our ward to try to get them to stay, but got no takers. I ended up staying for another 2 hour shift.

Having been replaced on the can machine, I was put on the front end peach sorter. This connects to the machine that cuts the peaches in half. This was much more involved and mind numbing than the can machine.

After 2 hours, all those peaches made me ravenously hungry for a few peaches. The cannery did not sell any little sacks of peaches... The whole time the 2 shift, I kept trying to remember the Peach song from Peach Week. I can remember some of the words, but not the tune. I still don't have it together. For those not in the know, Peach Week was a Moon Apartments tradition, where someone brought all kind of peaches in from his parents peach trees, we had a festival all that week, including a peach queen and her attendants....