The factory also made hotdogs; in fact, everything they made was like a hotdog, some were just bigger than others. Regardless they weren’t that bad, just as good as anything else produced in the factory. Odd ends of meat, preservatives, water, salt and a slew of other chemicals.

One day I was sent to the room with the blue bags; this time my job was to cut the ends off sticks of pepperoni so they could be packaged. Working too fast, I wasn’t being cautious and ended up misplacing my hand; the knife sliced through to my skin. Dropping the knife to the floor, blood flowed from my latex glove; the white insulating gloves underneath turned red. I was a little surprised; I hadn’t realized how sharp the knife was until now.

Luckily, the floor manager was right there. He lead me out of the factory and into the health and safety room. After a quick examination, it was clear that I only needed a Band-Aid. Then there was paper work, pages of it, for workers compensation purposes. You know, so they can avoid being sued. Returning to the floor, the manager said, “Don’t worry about it; I did the same thing when I first started.”

For a long time I hadn’t eaten meat, it disgusted me and this job didn’t help my bad logic. The meats we produced were the lowest of the low; I now know never to eat the ham at a popular submarine sandwich chain.

I worked in the packaging section of the factory. My first task, and the task I’d do for most of the time, involved pealing the meat tubes. Starting off with a sharp knife, I’d cut off the end of the massive frozen hot-dog, then peel away the paper-plastic casing, revealing the meaty mess. After removing the casing and throwing the hotdog onto a new rack, another person carried the meat to the slicer.

The factory was a massive automated machine. Once sliced, the meat rolled down a conveyer belt where it was packed in either a plastic bag or a plastic formed package. The packages rolled down another conveyer belt, where they were counted and thrown into boxes. Then the boxes rolled into a machine where they were sealed with tape. Another person placed the boxes into rows on a wood skid which eventually disappeared into a freezer.

A few times I got to put the packaged meats into boxes. Other times I’d have to go into the back room and pull processed meat, the worst was ham, from large frozen smelly blue bags. We’d place the meat on a conveyer belt and it would pass through a metal detector. The metal containing meat was rejected; everything else was brought back into the kitchen and mixed in with a new batch. We recycled and reused our meat, do you?

The factory was a massive refrigerated warehouse; in the back was a kitchen where the ‘meat products’ were made. The process usually involved ground up pieces of ‘meat’, water and salt thrown into a massive mixing bowl. Mixing the gruel with a flat beater the size of 6 men, spices and emulsifiers were added to the retched mess. The bowl bounced and rocked as the mixture steamed; after an hour of this the meat vomit was poured into a paper-plastic-tube miles long. The tube was filled to a certain point, then sealed with a metal clamp, filled and clamped again; this went on ’til the ‘meat’ was gone.

For the most part this is how the ‘meat’ was made, but there was one exception; roast beef. From what I could tell it was a chunk of real meat. After all this processing the ‘meats’ were piled into a smoking room where they rested for a few hours; when they came out they were solid and cooked. Then they were trucked into massive freezers, where they waited to be sliced and packaged.

A meat factory, but I was a vegetarian. The meat factory would be different, and that was all I wanted. Something different, anything different. After the interview and only a few hours later, I received a call. “We’d like to offer you a position in the factory… Would you be able to start tomorrow?” I hesitated for a moment; I still had a job but said, “Yes, I’ll take it!” This created a problem; I’d have to quit my landscaping job.

I called my soon to be former boss; his phone rang a few times, then went to the answering machine. Without much thought and a little rushed I said, ‘Hi Steve, it’s Sandy. I’m sorry about the short notice but I won’t be coming in tomorrow or ever again. I quit! Good bye.” A terrible message, kind of cruel, a burnt bridge, bad science an evil act, no reference letter here. Freedom and opportunity, a new beginning….. A meat factory, what was I doing?

The next day I got to sleep in and didn’t have work till 2; I love sleep. Lots of sleep and time to get ready, plus avoiding rush hour there was no traffic. I woke up at noon, got ready and headed to my new job.

When I arrived I was put into a room with the other new employees. We watched videos, read useless shit and were taught safe procedures. The whole process took 4 hours; after lunch we headed into the factory and were assigned jobs.

I’d been working my shitty summer job; the year before there was lots of variety, this year things had changed. Every day I mowed lawns,trimmed hedges and picked weeds from gardens; boring work that only got more boring with every house. Repetition is hell.

Not only was the job tedious but my co-workers were extremely close-minded. They bragged about their baseball skills all day; unfortunately neither played anything beyond house league. I started looking for another job, anything of change would have been better. Checking popular job boards, I posted my resume and applied for many positions with no success.

Searching the Canadian Job Bank, I applied for various low wage positions, including one at a meat factory. A couple of weeks later I received a phone call from the meat factory and they invited me to an interview the following Monday. The job had better hours and higher pay; by the end of the week I would make the same but spend fewer hours working for it.

On Friday I told my boss I had a dentist appointment on Monday and wouldn’t be able to come in, he made arrangements. By the time Monday rolled around I’d lost all hope in landscaping; I hated it and needed something different. The interview was easy and went well, it consisted of a hand-eye coordination test, some questions and an English test. The cat was in the bag… a meat factory?