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Body
First of all, the work was
physically hard. For ten hours a night, I took cartons
that rolled down a metal track and stacked them onto
wooden skids in a tractor trailer. Each carton contained
twelve thirty-two-ounce cans or bottles of apple juice,
and they were heavy. The second bad feature of the job
was the pay. I was getting the minimum wage at that
time, two dollars an hour, plus the minimum of a nickel
extra for working the night shift. Even after working
over sixty hours a week, I still did not take home much
more than one hundred dollars. The worst feature of the
apple plant job was the working conditions. During work
we were limited to two ten-minute breaks and an unpaid
half hour for lunch. Most of my time was spent outside
on the truck-loading dock in near-zero-degree
temperatures. And I was very lonely on the job, since I
had no interests in common with the other truck loaders.
I felt this isolation especially when the production
line shut down for the night, and I worked by myself for
two hours cleaning the apple vats. The vats were an ugly
place to be on a cold morning.
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