Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI

I walked into the front door my first day (this time I left the briefcase in the closet) and was told by the receptionist that “floor workers aren’t aloud to come in this way. Your entrance is around back.”

I went back outside the way I came and walked around back and found the “floor crew’s” entrance. I walked in and began wandering looking for my new boss, Bud. The place was huge and filled with towering, cone-shaped vats with hatches at the top and valves at the bottom. There were barrels of various chemicals everywhere. But the first thing I noticed was the floor. I was walking on half-dried glue. Not just one spot. No, the floor was literally covered in it wall to wall. There were stairs going up to a second level that gave access to the hatches at the top of these vats (I found out later they are called “reactors”). There were several people milling about up there so I went on up.

Then I saw Bud. He was crawling into a reactor through a hatch holding what looked like a long-handled paint scraper. He noticed me and waved me over.

“You ever scrape one of these out?”

Fighting down an ironic chuckle, I said, “Not that I recall.”

“Well, watch closely because the next one’s yours.”

I watched as he tossed aside the safety rigging and maneuvered through the small opening, down a hanging ladder into the reactor. He began scraping the dried gunk off the walls. Somehow he managed to keep his hard hat in perfect angled position. Then while 5 of us stood over the hole watching with arms crossed, one of the guys looked at me proudly and said, “Bud’s the best at this I’ve ever seen. Watch him work, fellas. Watch him work.” So that’s exactly what we did for the next hour. We stood over a hole, arms crossed, and watched our boss scrape glue crud off a stainless steel tank.

I worked hard at resisting the urge to say sarcastically, “Hmm. Looks like he’s scraping left to right now. I haven’t seen anyone do that since the Elmer’s incident of ‘93!” Or something like, “Ooo. Notice how he steps into the scrape. Truly he is one with the scraper.”

Then it was my turn, but I was saved by the HR rep coming by and taking me away for orientation.

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI

Technorati Tags: dirty jobs, unemployment, minimum wage, job, funny jobs, glue, factory, blue collar, HAZMAT, employment stories, employment, work, worst jobs