Wednesday, December 16, 2020

The One With The Fruit Hulling Job

 I had gotten a new job at a fruit processing place or was possibly just touring it, and I was learning from a woman who ran a machine that processed strawberries and raspberries.

You'd take a fruit from the left, put it in the machine, and an arm would come down and scoop off the top (for both the strawberries and the raspberries).  All the strawberries seemed to be the same size (very large - like almost green pepper size), and you'd send them along on one conveyor.

The raspberries, however, had to be sorted by size.  There were 5 raspberries of different sizes as examples and you'd match yours up and send it down one of the 5 conveyors. She'd take the fruit, have it hulled and hand it to me to sort.

At one point, I noticed that she was wearing a face mask but I had forgotten mine, so I went to grab it and came back.

One of the strawberries was too big, and the arm would miss (doesn't make sense, I know).  The woman said, "Don't move the strawberry toward the arm.  Let it miss and you'll get an error code.  'B', no wait, 'G'.  Yeah, 'G', and that means 'Beetsey'".  I asked, "Beetsey?".  She responded, "Yup!  Look it up!".

She moved to the side and let me do both parts, and I noticed that while she was wearing a face mask, she was coughing and sucking on a cough drop.  I asked her if she was OK and she said, "I feel good, but I have this cough."  I told her she should tell her boss and she said, "Yeah..." 

And then I woke up.