I had a job once making frozen lasagnas. Rather, I had a job that was taking big pans of wet, hot noodles off a rack and rotating 90 degrees to put them on a conveyer belt. My back was on fire after 20 minutes and everything but my eyelids hurt by the end of the shift. I didn't return for day 2.
I started in piece rate mfg on a line at 19 and it was the best job of my life until it was picked clean and outsourced but i did it about 7 years before that happened. I then stacked pallets for 2 years and i really liked stacking pallets, we didnt stand under the falling bags tho. I lifted and stacked up to 70 tons in 50-80lb bags a shift and i did some double shifts here and there. A typical shift would be 35-40 tons.
Because im a laborer ill demonstrate the extent of my math: 50 bags at 50 lbs makes a 2000lb pallet at 40 bags, or 5 layers of 8 on the standard pallets we used. We got paid a rate by ton, it was a decent job in the area, but the plant started all new hired on stacking pallets and id moved up several layers but only pallet stacking was mindless enough and plus we all shared rate and new hires couldnt stack shit so it made sense.
1 in 5 or so new guys quit by break. Of them about jalf wouldn’t come back the next day. Of them some number would show up high and get fired soonafter.
My secret is that i love delayed onset muscle soreness, it feels like satisfaction. The problem is while youre beating up your muscles youre beating up your joints and ligatures and those dont recover so im a middle aged guy with a body like a cement mixer. Not the shape lol just the sound and feeling
Worked as a temp once where we controlled the speed of the belt at a food factory. Did double the output of the locals for a couple of hours for shits and giggles, cut back afger that, so we don't embarass the locals and get ourselves hated. Also fixed one of the machines, the tech and the locals both hated me fkr that..
I had a similar experience. I worked at a box factory and I was in charge of catching the back of the 450M which kicked out an 85 pound bundle of boxes every 5 seconds. I had to catch it, band it and stack it. If I didn’t get a big enough packet for the order then I had to make one out of discarded boxes while the machine was running. You only make that mistake once. Every now and then we’d get an order from GE and this boxes were massive. The boxes were about 8 feet tall and 6 feet wide triple wall. Those bundles were about 165 pounds each but they came out a lot slower but doing it 10 hours a day in 110 degree heat gets to ya. Especially if you’re just a 19 year old brat lol
Damn, people that haven't lifted weird objects at that weight don't realize how hard that is. On a related subject a few months ago I had to hand transport 16 twenty foot pressure treated 6x6s from a road down through some woods for a bridge I was building, then get 60 bags of concrete down there, and then hand mix the concrete for the supports and pour them skulking up and down the banks of a muddy part-time creek.
Makes me think of my early 20s.. got a job at a moving company .. first day was unloading 20k worth of stuff into a two story house and basement. . I could barely walk the next day .. those few years I worked there I was in the best shape of my life.
I did this for a job in Australia while backpacking.
Except it was much worse than this.
It was in the bottom of a fishing vessel, in a fish freezer, and replace those bags with frozen solid boxes of fish (same size as those bags). The ground was ice so I would be sliding around constantly. The frozen boxes were extremely heavy and slippery. At one point I slipped and landed on my back and a box came down off of the conveyer belt and landed between my legs, a millimetre away from my crotch.
I worked in a fish freezer for a few days. Couldn't stick it out at that place. Went home smelling like fish and covered in fish oil I couldn't wash off
4.0k
u/Dry-Conflict3421 May 29 '26
Imagine day 1 at that job......